Edmund White
Edmund White
Edmund Valentine White IIIis an American novelist, memoirist, and an essayist on literary and social topics. Much of his writing is on the theme of same-sex love. Probably his best-known books are The Joy of Gay Sexand his trio of autobiographic novels, A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Emptyand The Farewell Symphony...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 January 1940
CountryUnited States of America
asked assure herself peggy tickets tourists
Sometimes Peggy herself would sell tickets to her museum, and if tourists asked her if Mrs. Guggenheim was still alive, she'd assure them she wasn't.
novel novelist straight
A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.
I was never an assimilationist. I always thought gays had some special mission.
french good
I was too prissy, too refined, too abstemious, too French to be a good American writer.
everybody good quite though
I think I could be a cook. Everybody always says I'm good, though I think it's quite gruelling as a profession.
death
I think I'm very stoic. Death and dying are things that I'm used to.
describe effect events gay growing individual liberation life mainly political truly
While writing 'City Boy,' I relied mainly on my own memories. In particular, I was able to describe the effect of gay liberation on an individual life (mine) as events paralleled my own growing self-acceptance; in this case, the political truly was the personal.
alison embodies possibilities seamless seem thoroughly writer
I can think of no other writer who so thoroughly embodies the Jamesian spirit as Alison Lurie. Like him she can excavate all the possibilities of a theme. Like his, her books seem long, unbroken threads, seamless progressions of effects.
age early everybody goes holy maybe origins sacred totally
From an early age, I had the idea that writing was truth-telling. It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature - the holy book. There's nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious, and it should be totally transparent.
empty exciting felt fuel guess hand happened history lucky subject tap
I guess I felt I was lucky because history just happened to hand me all these empty niches, and it did fuel me. It is always exciting when you tap into some new subject matter.
behalf campaign marriage married
I don't have to get married myself in order to campaign on behalf of gay marriage.
novels published six until written
I didn't get anything published until I was thirty-three, and yet I'd written five novels and six or seven plays. The plays, I should point out, were dreadful.
absurd bookstore french jewish nobody people though
Nobody in France would ever say 'He's a Jewish novelist' or 'She's a black novelist,' even though people do write about those subjects. It would look absurd to a French person to go into a bookstore and see a 'Gay Studies' section.
tend worse writers
Most writers tend to get worse rather than better. I'm determined to be one that gets better.