An entertaining read about the most difficult genius , 02 Jan 2009
This is a carefully researched and entertaining biography of the vagabond poet Rimbaud's life. Beginning with a moving personal note about what Rimbaud means to the biographer, White goes on to describe the poet's early life, literary maturation and later frustrated drive for financial success with his typically warm and engaging writer's tone of voice. Rimbaud's intelligence and extremely difficult personality are brought alive with stories of his family life, literary associations and tumultuous relationship with the poet Verlaine. The evolution of Rimbaud's poetry which seems to take place in hyper-speed is intelligently explained with examples of the poet's work and how it relates to the poet's experiences and radical artistic vision. White is also careful to disentangle some of the popular myths about this mysterious poet's life.

It is mesmerizing reading about the quickfire creation of Rimbaud's ambitious output before his total withdrawal from art and the artistic community. Passages of the poet's work are sublimely beautiful and one can't help wonder what sort of literary works he would have created in his adult life if he had kept writing. That such a young man made such an enormous impact on his early champions speaks more about the bewitching influence of adolescent gusto, particularly from such a handsome and frustrated youth, rather than the quality of his writing. Nevertheless, the enduring influence the poet had on successive generations of artists is clear.

An entertaining read about the most difficult genius , 02 Jan 2009
This is a carefully researched and entertaining biography of the vagabond poet Rimbaud's life. Beginning with a moving personal note about what Rimbaud means to the biographer, White goes on to describe the poet's early life, literary maturation and later frustrated drive for financial success with his typically warm and engaging writer's tone of voice. Rimbaud's intelligence and extremely difficult personality are brought alive with stories of his family life, literary associations and tumultuous relationship with the poet Verlaine. The evolution of Rimbaud's poetry which seems to take place in hyper-speed is intelligently explained with examples of the poet's work and how it relates to the poet's experiences and radical artistic vision. White is also careful to disentangle some of the popular myths about this mysterious poet's life.

It is mesmerizing reading about the quickfire creation of Rimbaud's ambitious output before his total withdrawal from art and the artistic community. Passages of the poet's work are sublimely beautiful and one can't help wonder what sort of literary works he would have created in his adult life if he had kept writing. That such a young man made such an enormous impact on his early champions speaks more about the bewitching influence of adolescent gusto, particularly from such a handsome and frustrated youth, rather than the quality of his writing. Nevertheless, the enduring influence the poet had on successive generations of artists is clear.

A lot of washing, less to hang out, 07 Aug 2008
A reviewer of A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White is presented with a number of problems, In the paraphrased words of one of the book's characters, there may be a lot in the wash, but eventually not much to hang out, and this, by the end of the book, largely summed up what it had delivered. Be reassured, however, that the process of reading A Boy's Own Story is a delight from start to finish. Edmund White's style is quite beautiful, full of complex allusions, superb characterisation and, above all, masterful description. Every character springs to life off the page. If only collectively or individually they had more to offer...

A Boy's Own Story is an adolescent's discovery and realisation of his own homosexuality. The book promises a lot of sex and, sure enough, it both begins and ends with explicit encounters. Throughout the remainder, however, the sex seems to be more in the mind than in the experience. It appears that Edmund White's adult recollection of his teenage dilemmas could have been subject to the embellishment of later reflection. Repeatedly the author stretches time to explore the detail of options whenever the boy of the title is presented with a dilemma. These were surely the voices of later years speaking through an ostensibly reconstructed, but surely imagined past. The boy always spoke eloquently about his choices, considered options in detail, but perhaps not convincingly. One of the more engaging aspects of coming of age sagas is how innocence is portrayed and how its conquest is engineered. In A Boy's Own Story one feels that Edmund White wants to deny that he was ever innocent, or at least suggest that he would ever admit it. And so a spark that could have lit up the glowing prose never quite ignited.

When the book first appeared over twenty years ago, the fact that it did appear in its explicit form, apparently denying the guilt that oozes off every page, might itself have been worthy of note. Twenty years on it now reads as merely dated, but still it reads beautifully thanks to the author's supreme skill with words and expression. The issues that might previously have rendered it remarkable have, however, long since cooled, so now the reader must approach the book either as it is, as an autobiography, or alternatively in historical terms. The book, however, cannot sustain the latter approach.

I will now certainly seek out other books by Edmund White, but in the case of A Boy's Own Story I am tempted to conclude that though writers have to be self-obsessed, when that neurosis is turned completely inward, it raises new barriers that can exclude the reader. Hence the gloss. Hence the sheen of the whiter than white washing that proves to be just half a load.


Dull, 04 Jun 2008
The story is readable but doesn't seem to have any point other than taking snapshots of different points in the boy's life. The characters from the overly long chapters are reasonably built but then do not re-appear which was frustrating.

Beautiful writing, 10 Oct 2000
If for nothing else, read this book for the beauty of its writing. The story ought to fall into the coming-of-age category, yet even here it is better than the average. It is told with poignancy, humour and not over the top. But the style takes this book into great modern literature. How often can a damned good read also be so well written.

Some brilliant passages on the conflicts in love, 23 Nov 1999
Edmund White captures the reader's attention early on when the 12-year-old Kevin takes the lead after dark. The physical side of young love is described in detail here with tenderness and realism. Kevin's remoteness (ie no kissing) keeps the relationship one sided and one can imagine that the young Kevin forgets all about it once each session is over whereas our hero gets more and more worried about his deep feelings. As the book progresses, the encounters become random and are kept in the background, yet the soul-searching becomes more open. White captures the confusion of adolescent sexuality well, yet the final betreyal somehow doesn't resolve the dilemma...

an acute observation of gay youth, 05 Sep 1999
a pragmatic yet tender account of a gay boy adapting, succesfully, to adult life

Edmund White's reflections on Paris form the first in a series of alternative travel guides in which a writer takes readers on a personalised tour of their city. White fashions himself into Baudelaire's passionate observer, The Flâneur--"that aimless stroller who loses himself in the crowd, who has no destination and goes wherever caprice or curiosity directs his or her steps"--threaded with a Proustian sensibility, connecting personal and historical memories with locations. His chosen routes are the cracks that run through Haussmann's imperialist Paris, "the traces left by people living in the margin--Jews, blacks, gays, Arabs--or mementoes of an earlier, more chaotic and medieval France".

But even caprice is never entirely random. White retreats into the privatised public spaces of writers, artists and collectors: from the Hôtel de Lauzun where arty denizens including Balzac, Gautier, Manet and the ubiquitous Baudelaire attended exotic dinners parties fuelled by powerful hashish, to the Musée Camondo, built by a prominent banking family who were wiped out in the Holocaust. He maintains that the contemporary vitality of the city lies in the teeming quartiers where Arabs and blacks live, but, tellingly, rather than lead into a discussion of France's postcolonial history, White uses these areas to peer into the jazz-soundtracked encounter between Parisians and American blacks between the wars, the stage taken by Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, Richard Wright and James Baldwin. White is quintessentially an American in Paris and his struggle with the tensions between US identity politics and the universalist citizenship of France sometimes reveals more about the walker than the streets he walks, most especially in his discussion of AIDS in France.

White's Flâneur is the city guide as story-teller, rather than inventory-taker--a guidebook of which Walter Benjamin would have approved. The Flâneur is a jewel-box of a book offering rich rewards, which, while not serving up Paris as a list of sights for us to check, certainly conveys some of the city's aura in a beautifully compact format.--Fiona Buckland

An entertaining read about the most difficult genius , 02 Jan 2009
This is a carefully researched and entertaining biography of the vagabond poet Rimbaud's life. Beginning with a moving personal note about what Rimbaud means to the biographer, White goes on to describe the poet's early life, literary maturation and later frustrated drive for financial success with his typically warm and engaging writer's tone of voice. Rimbaud's intelligence and extremely difficult personality are brought alive with stories of his family life, literary associations and tumultuous relationship with the poet Verlaine. The evolution of Rimbaud's poetry which seems to take place in hyper-speed is intelligently explained with examples of the poet's work and how it relates to the poet's experiences and radical artistic vision. White is also careful to disentangle some of the popular myths about this mysterious poet's life.

It is mesmerizing reading about the quickfire creation of Rimbaud's ambitious output before his total withdrawal from art and the artistic community. Passages of the poet's work are sublimely beautiful and one can't help wonder what sort of literary works he would have created in his adult life if he had kept writing. That such a young man made such an enormous impact on his early champions speaks more about the bewitching influence of adolescent gusto, particularly from such a handsome and frustrated youth, rather than the quality of his writing. Nevertheless, the enduring influence the poet had on successive generations of artists is clear.

A lot of washing, less to hang out, 07 Aug 2008
A reviewer of A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White is presented with a number of problems, In the paraphrased words of one of the book's characters, there may be a lot in the wash, but eventually not much to hang out, and this, by the end of the book, largely summed up what it had delivered. Be reassured, however, that the process of reading A Boy's Own Story is a delight from start to finish. Edmund White's style is quite beautiful, full of complex allusions, superb characterisation and, above all, masterful description. Every character springs to life off the page. If only collectively or individually they had more to offer...

A Boy's Own Story is an adolescent's discovery and realisation of his own homosexuality. The book promises a lot of sex and, sure enough, it both begins and ends with explicit encounters. Throughout the remainder, however, the sex seems to be more in the mind than in the experience. It appears that Edmund White's adult recollection of his teenage dilemmas could have been subject to the embellishment of later reflection. Repeatedly the author stretches time to explore the detail of options whenever the boy of the title is presented with a dilemma. These were surely the voices of later years speaking through an ostensibly reconstructed, but surely imagined past. The boy always spoke eloquently about his choices, considered options in detail, but perhaps not convincingly. One of the more engaging aspects of coming of age sagas is how innocence is portrayed and how its conquest is engineered. In A Boy's Own Story one feels that Edmund White wants to deny that he was ever innocent, or at least suggest that he would ever admit it. And so a spark that could have lit up the glowing prose never quite ignited.

When the book first appeared over twenty years ago, the fact that it did appear in its explicit form, apparently denying the guilt that oozes off every page, might itself have been worthy of note. Twenty years on it now reads as merely dated, but still it reads beautifully thanks to the author's supreme skill with words and expression. The issues that might previously have rendered it remarkable have, however, long since cooled, so now the reader must approach the book either as it is, as an autobiography, or alternatively in historical terms. The book, however, cannot sustain the latter approach.

I will now certainly seek out other books by Edmund White, but in the case of A Boy's Own Story I am tempted to conclude that though writers have to be self-obsessed, when that neurosis is turned completely inward, it raises new barriers that can exclude the reader. Hence the gloss. Hence the sheen of the whiter than white washing that proves to be just half a load.


Dull, 04 Jun 2008
The story is readable but doesn't seem to have any point other than taking snapshots of different points in the boy's life. The characters from the overly long chapters are reasonably built but then do not re-appear which was frustrating.

Beautiful writing, 10 Oct 2000
If for nothing else, read this book for the beauty of its writing. The story ought to fall into the coming-of-age category, yet even here it is better than the average. It is told with poignancy, humour and not over the top. But the style takes this book into great modern literature. How often can a damned good read also be so well written.

Some brilliant passages on the conflicts in love, 23 Nov 1999
Edmund White captures the reader's attention early on when the 12-year-old Kevin takes the lead after dark. The physical side of young love is described in detail here with tenderness and realism. Kevin's remoteness (ie no kissing) keeps the relationship one sided and one can imagine that the young Kevin forgets all about it once each session is over whereas our hero gets more and more worried about his deep feelings. As the book progresses, the encounters become random and are kept in the background, yet the soul-searching becomes more open. White captures the confusion of adolescent sexuality well, yet the final betreyal somehow doesn't resolve the dilemma...

an acute observation of gay youth, 05 Sep 1999
a pragmatic yet tender account of a gay boy adapting, succesfully, to adult life

Reads like a hack job done for the money, 11 Jul 2008
This is a very disappointing book. It is subtitled "a stroll through the paradoxes" of Paris but there is very little of the contemporary city in it. Nor is there much strolling. For example, Edmund White starts a chapter on the Marais district but quickly digresses to the Jewish figures who lived near the Bois de Bologne in the 19th century then a long explication of the Dreyfus case. All of this can be read in any French history book and none of it is particularly Parisien. Likewise, his chapter on gay cruising has limited appeal - why do homosexual writers think they have to tell us the details of their sex lives which White himself admits most people will find "pathetic and sordid"? He gives a detailed bibliography at the end which confesses that he has plundered most of this from other people's books which makes it seem very like a hack job done without much care. There is little, if anything, here for anyone wanting to research before a trip to Paris. An up-to-date guidebook would be far more useful.

For all Paris Lovers Everywhere, 07 Oct 2005
Quite simply the wonderful, slightly eccentric and often daring memories of Edmund White's time in Paris.

The art of the Flaneur may be on the wane, but here in this book White jsut makes you want to walk and walk this lovely city.

Lots of great stories, pen pictures of fascinating people and the ultimate explanation of how Americans just can't be flaneurs!

Simply wonderful.

If you like Paris, take this and fall in love!, 14 Aug 2002
Highly recommended. Despite the heading, I did not really like Paris. When I visited Paris first, I lived in Zurich and from the Swiss orderliness to the bohemian French territory was a systemic shock to me. But over time I have read a few books about Paris and am now eagerly waiting for my next trip.

The Flaneur literally means a loiterer but purposeless this book is not. Loitering is also a slower description of the pace of this book. The visually driven descriptions of Paris intersperse beautifully with the history of how Paris came to be like it is. Through centuries of music, art and literature. The author is not just well-researched, he also has the qualification of being in love with Paris. So read it, I say and fall in love with Paris.

Pretty good but too American, 24 Sep 2001
A pretty good introduction to the history of Paris and some of its famous figures. If you're not too familiar with the city, this is a great place to start, since White is an excellent writer. It would have been nice, though, to hear more on what it was like to actually live in Paris as a present-day expatriate. Plus, apparently no one British has ever done anything worth mentioning there (and I'm American, so it's not like I'm partiuclarly biased that way).

An affectionate and telling portrait, 16 Feb 2001
The tone of this lovely book is set from the start. I laughed when I read the first sentence, I smiled at the second, and by the end of the first chapter I was already packing my bags (metaphorically), boarding the train, and longing to be in Paris.

Edmund White is an accomplished writer who lived in Paris for fifteen years, from about 1983, before returning to his native USA. If he was in love with the French (which seems likely) it was never to the extent to being blinded to their flaws. Taking the notion of the Flaneur, the attentive urban ambler, as his inspiration he takes a gentle and informative stroll through some of the lesser known byways of the French capital, and French history, pausing to point out curious features and to cast light along the way.

Somehow, without ever forcing the pace, he manages to explore art, politics, and sex. He discusses the paradoxical attitudes of the French to race discrimination and the appallingly inadequate response of the state to AIDs in the 1980s. He examines the contrasts between the American and French attitudes to fashion. He ponders on flirtatiousness - how it cannot be avoided in Paris and how it cannot be attempted in New York. He muses upon the creation and endless re-invention of cities, . He writes perceptively about jazz music between the wars, including the danse sauvage of Josephine Baker and its effect upon (amongst others) Marshall Tito, and he struggles (as must we all) with the precise distinction between monarchist and royalist that so exercised the proprietor of his local café. There are many reasons for reading this book. One is that it is beautifully written (it helps). Another is that, without ever losing the objectivity of the foreigner, the author manages to empathise with his subject. When I finished reading it I wanted to start again.

The publishers, Bloomsbury, are to be complimented on producing a first class book. The Flaneur is intended to be the first in a series entitled The Writer in the City. If subsequent volumes match the quality if the first then there is a great deal to look forward to.

An entertaining read about the most difficult genius , 02 Jan 2009
This is a carefully researched and entertaining biography of the vagabond poet Rimbaud's life. Beginning with a moving personal note about what Rimbaud means to the biographer, White goes on to describe the poet's early life, literary maturation and later frustrated drive for financial success with his typically warm and engaging writer's tone of voice. Rimbaud's intelligence and extremely difficult personality are brought alive with stories of his family life, literary associations and tumultuous relationship with the poet Verlaine. The evolution of Rimbaud's poetry which seems to take place in hyper-speed is intelligently explained with examples of the poet's work and how it relates to the poet's experiences and radical artistic vision. White is also careful to disentangle some of the popular myths about this mysterious poet's life.

It is mesmerizing reading about the quickfire creation of Rimbaud's ambitious output before his total withdrawal from art and the artistic community. Passages of the poet's work are sublimely beautiful and one can't help wonder what sort of literary works he would have created in his adult life if he had kept writing. That such a young man made such an enormous impact on his early champions speaks more about the bewitching influence of adolescent gusto, particularly from such a handsome and frustrated youth, rather than the quality of his writing. Nevertheless, the enduring influence the poet had on successive generations of artists is clear.

A lot of washing, less to hang out, 07 Aug 2008
A reviewer of A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White is presented with a number of problems, In the paraphrased words of one of the book's characters, there may be a lot in the wash, but eventually not much to hang out, and this, by the end of the book, largely summed up what it had delivered. Be reassured, however, that the process of reading A Boy's Own Story is a delight from start to finish. Edmund White's style is quite beautiful, full of complex allusions, superb characterisation and, above all, masterful description. Every character springs to life off the page. If only collectively or individually they had more to offer...

A Boy's Own Story is an adolescent's discovery and realisation of his own homosexuality. The book promises a lot of sex and, sure enough, it both begins and ends with explicit encounters. Throughout the remainder, however, the sex seems to be more in the mind than in the experience. It appears that Edmund White's adult recollection of his teenage dilemmas could have been subject to the embellishment of later reflection. Repeatedly the author stretches time to explore the detail of options whenever the boy of the title is presented with a dilemma. These were surely the voices of later years speaking through an ostensibly reconstructed, but surely imagined past. The boy always spoke eloquently about his choices, considered options in detail, but perhaps not convincingly. One of the more engaging aspects of coming of age sagas is how innocence is portrayed and how its conquest is engineered. In A Boy's Own Story one feels that Edmund White wants to deny that he was ever innocent, or at least suggest that he would ever admit it. And so a spark that could have lit up the glowing prose never quite ignited.

When the book first appeared over twenty years ago, the fact that it did appear in its explicit form, apparently denying the guilt that oozes off every page, might itself have been worthy of note. Twenty years on it now reads as merely dated, but still it reads beautifully thanks to the author's supreme skill with words and expression. The issues that might previously have rendered it remarkable have, however, long since cooled, so now the reader must approach the book either as it is, as an autobiography, or alternatively in historical terms. The book, however, cannot sustain the latter approach.

I will now certainly seek out other books by Edmund White, but in the case of A Boy's Own Story I am tempted to conclude that though writers have to be self-obsessed, when that neurosis is turned completely inward, it raises new barriers that can exclude the reader. Hence the gloss. Hence the sheen of the whiter than white washing that proves to be just half a load.


Dull, 04 Jun 2008
The story is readable but doesn't seem to have any point other than taking snapshots of different points in the boy's life. The characters from the overly long chapters are reasonably built but then do not re-appear which was frustrating.

Beautiful writing, 10 Oct 2000
If for nothing else, read this book for the beauty of its writing. The story ought to fall into the coming-of-age category, yet even here it is better than the average. It is told with poignancy, humour and not over the top. But the style takes this book into great modern literature. How often can a damned good read also be so well written.

Some brilliant passages on the conflicts in love, 23 Nov 1999
Edmund White captures the reader's attention early on when the 12-year-old Kevin takes the lead after dark. The physical side of young love is described in detail here with tenderness and realism. Kevin's remoteness (ie no kissing) keeps the relationship one sided and one can imagine that the young Kevin forgets all about it once each session is over whereas our hero gets more and more worried about his deep feelings. As the book progresses, the encounters become random and are kept in the background, yet the soul-searching becomes more open. White captures the confusion of adolescent sexuality well, yet the final betreyal somehow doesn't resolve the dilemma...

an acute observation of gay youth, 05 Sep 1999
a pragmatic yet tender account of a gay boy adapting, succesfully, to adult life

Reads like a hack job done for the money, 11 Jul 2008
This is a very disappointing book. It is subtitled "a stroll through the paradoxes" of Paris but there is very little of the contemporary city in it. Nor is there much strolling. For example, Edmund White starts a chapter on the Marais district but quickly digresses to the Jewish figures who lived near the Bois de Bologne in the 19th century then a long explication of the Dreyfus case. All of this can be read in any French history book and none of it is particularly Parisien. Likewise, his chapter on gay cruising has limited appeal - why do homosexual writers think they have to tell us the details of their sex lives which White himself admits most people will find "pathetic and sordid"? He gives a detailed bibliography at the end which confesses that he has plundered most of this from other people's books which makes it seem very like a hack job done without much care. There is little, if anything, here for anyone wanting to research before a trip to Paris. An up-to-date guidebook would be far more useful.

For all Paris Lovers Everywhere, 07 Oct 2005
Quite simply the wonderful, slightly eccentric and often daring memories of Edmund White's time in Paris.

The art of the Flaneur may be on the wane, but here in this book White jsut makes you want to walk and walk this lovely city.

Lots of great stories, pen pictures of fascinating people and the ultimate explanation of how Americans just can't be flaneurs!

Simply wonderful.

If you like Paris, take this and fall in love!, 14 Aug 2002
Highly recommended. Despite the heading, I did not really like Paris. When I visited Paris first, I lived in Zurich and from the Swiss orderliness to the bohemian French territory was a systemic shock to me. But over time I have read a few books about Paris and am now eagerly waiting for my next trip.

The Flaneur literally means a loiterer but purposeless this book is not. Loitering is also a slower description of the pace of this book. The visually driven descriptions of Paris intersperse beautifully with the history of how Paris came to be like it is. Through centuries of music, art and literature. The author is not just well-researched, he also has the qualification of being in love with Paris. So read it, I say and fall in love with Paris.

Pretty good but too American, 24 Sep 2001
A pretty good introduction to the history of Paris and some of its famous figures. If you're not too familiar with the city, this is a great place to start, since White is an excellent writer. It would have been nice, though, to hear more on what it was like to actually live in Paris as a present-day expatriate. Plus, apparently no one British has ever done anything worth mentioning there (and I'm American, so it's not like I'm partiuclarly biased that way).

An affectionate and telling portrait, 16 Feb 2001
The tone of this lovely book is set from the start. I laughed when I read the first sentence, I smiled at the second, and by the end of the first chapter I was already packing my bags (metaphorically), boarding the train, and longing to be in Paris.

Edmund White is an accomplished writer who lived in Paris for fifteen years, from about 1983, before returning to his native USA. If he was in love with the French (which seems likely) it was never to the extent to being blinded to their flaws. Taking the notion of the Flaneur, the attentive urban ambler, as his inspiration he takes a gentle and informative stroll through some of the lesser known byways of the French capital, and French history, pausing to point out curious features and to cast light along the way.

Somehow, without ever forcing the pace, he manages to explore art, politics, and sex. He discusses the paradoxical attitudes of the French to race discrimination and the appallingly inadequate response of the state to AIDs in the 1980s. He examines the contrasts between the American and French attitudes to fashion. He ponders on flirtatiousness - how it cannot be avoided in Paris and how it cannot be attempted in New York. He muses upon the creation and endless re-invention of cities, . He writes perceptively about jazz music between the wars, including the danse sauvage of Josephine Baker and its effect upon (amongst others) Marshall Tito, and he struggles (as must we all) with the precise distinction between monarchist and royalist that so exercised the proprietor of his local café. There are many reasons for reading this book. One is that it is beautifully written (it helps). Another is that, without ever losing the objectivity of the foreigner, the author manages to empathise with his subject. When I finished reading it I wanted to start again.

The publishers, Bloomsbury, are to be complimented on producing a first class book. The Flaneur is intended to be the first in a series entitled The Writer in the City. If subsequent volumes match the quality if the first then there is a great deal to look forward to.

He does it again, 02 Jan 2008
I only wish I could write this beautifully... Once more Edmund takes you on a journey and you are sat in the room with the protagonist, then in New York with Elliot a century ago. But wherever this book takes you, it is not the room in which you are sat holding a book. My only gripe is that I've already finished the book. Someone wipe it from my memory so I can read it again.

"I will write for one man only and that man is myself", 30 Aug 2007
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was one undoubtedly of the great American novelists with his most famous novel being The Red Badge of Courage, which depicted the American Civil War from the point of view of an ordinary soldier. Crane was noted for his early employment of naturalism, a literary style in which characters were realistically portrayed and often faced bleak circumstances.

However, it is Crane's unconventionality and his sympathy for the downtrodden that forms the core of this truly spectacular novel. Edmund White's intelligent written and beautifully crafted Hotel de Dream indeed focuses on Crane's preoccupation with the oppressed, but it also asks the question of how would such a man have responded to male homosexuality in an era in which gays themselves were considered perverts and deviants, and abominations?

Hotel de Dream begins as the chronically ill Crane, accompanied by Cora Taylor, a former brothel-house proprietor is living in a 14th-century manor house at Brede Place, Sussex. It is the cusp of a new century and Crane, sick with tuberculosis that has been compounded by a recurrent malarial fever that he picked up in Cuba, is planning a trip to a clinic on the edge of the Black Forest in Badenweiler, Germany in order to get out of damp old England with its cold rains and harsh winds.

Lately life in Brede Place has had its ups and downs, and while Cora has certainly been loyal and loving to Stephen, her flighty social and literary pretensions - and her reputation in America - have perhaps contributed to Crane's financial ruin. There's also been far too much entertaining, especially in the form of parties catering to hordes of spongers as well as many of their close literary friends, including Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, and the great Henry James.

Cora is anxious for Stephen to get on and make some money by finishing The O'ruddy so they can pay off some of their most urgent debts and take the trip to Germany. But it is the urge to write his final story about a young boy prostitute called Elliott, that he once met while living in Manhattan that most preoccupies Stephen. Feverish with excitement, Stephen demands that Cora must become the filter for the pages that Stephen will now grind out.

Called The Painted Boy, Stephen once wrote forty pages of his "boy-whore" book, but was advised that if he didn't tear them up, every last word, he'll never have a career. Now, however, he's at the end of his life and have nothing to fear and for sure, the story will undoubtedly prove to be a poignant account of the boy's travails and also wonderful new source about the city and its lower depths, because its not just about another boy, "but somehow a "she-male," a member of the third sex."

So begins Crane's tale of his real life acquaintance with Elliot this "painted boy," as he recounts his final trip with Cora from Brede Place, to Dover, and then onto Badenweiler, while also dictating to Cora the fictional story of Elliot's affair with Theodore Koch, a married and middle-aged New York banker. It is though writing about Elliott and Theodore's tempestious affair that Stephen recollects his own encounter with Elliott, this syphilitic, kohl-eyed and heavily made-up sixteen year-old boy, who calls himself a "flame fairy."

Picture the poor Stephen and Elliott, both ill and wounded, and both looking like sick waifs with Stephen's own hacking cough and this boy whore who wears boys clothes and girls' makeup as they traverse the streets of Manhattan, with Elliott determined to teach Stephen how to decipher the city around him. His young muse drags Stephen to the "penny restaurants" where the newsboys eat every evening, to the fairy saloons, the bordellos and the low theatre, and also to visit a wealthy androgyne by the name of Jennie Jones who fascinates Crane with his "big breasts and wide hips."

Meanwhile, the fictional story of The Painted Boy plays out as Crane fanatically dictates it to Cora, beginning on a New York train station where Elliott cruises older men in bowler hats and good wool overcoats. But it is Theodore's ardent obsession with Elliott that ultimately spins the boy's world out of control. Consumed by jealousy and passion, and proud to sacrifice everything for love, Theodore urges to know more and more about this funhouse world that Elliott has been inducted into, his life gradually obscured by all of the "magic-lantern pictures" in his mind of Elliott.

White certainly writes a vivid account of gay life at the turn of the nineteenth century, in a Manhattan full of vice, and glamour and lowlife, "an intersexual world of such fantastic dimensions." Although Stephen Crane never actually wrote a novel called The Painted Boy, White does a terrific job of presenting what might have been as if the author did indeed have a fascination with this all male Victorian world of men loving men.

Vibrant and flamboyant, and teeming with a lyrical beauty throughout, White writes with a passionate commitment to Stephen Crane's life, and to his death. Meticulously researched and seamlessly infusing fact with fiction, Hotel de Dream, is a grand tribute to Crane's creative spirit as all of these colorful characters, both real and fictional, plays out against a nineteenth century propriety and a little-known sexual underworld. Mike Leonard August 07.

An entertaining read about the most difficult genius , 02 Jan 2009
This is a carefully researched and entertaining biography of the vagabond poet Rimbaud's life. Beginning with a moving personal note about what Rimbaud means to the biographer, White goes on to describe the poet's early life, literary maturation and later frustrated drive for financial success with his typically warm and engaging writer's tone of voice. Rimbaud's intelligence and extremely difficult personality are brought alive with stories of his family life, literary associations and tumultuous relationship with the poet Verlaine. The evolution of Rimbaud's poetry which seems to take place in hyper-speed is intelligently explained with examples of the poet's work and how it relates to the poet's experiences and radical artistic vision. White is also careful to disentangle some of the popular myths about this mysterious poet's life.

It is mesmerizing reading about the quickfire creation of Rimbaud's ambitious output before his total withdrawal from art and the artistic community. Passages of the poet's work are sublimely beautiful and one can't help wonder what sort of literary works he would have created in his adult life if he had kept writing. That such a young man made such an enormous impact on his early champions speaks more about the bewitching influence of adolescent gusto, particularly from such a handsome and frustrated youth, rather than the quality of his writing. Nevertheless, the enduring influence the poet had on successive generations of artists is clear.

A lot of washing, less to hang out, 07 Aug 2008
A reviewer of A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White is presented with a number of problems, In the paraphrased words of one of the book's characters, there may be a lot in the wash, but eventually not much to hang out, and this, by the end of the book, largely summed up what it had delivered. Be reassured, however, that the process of reading A Boy's Own Story is a delight from start to finish. Edmund White's style is quite beautiful, full of complex allusions, superb characterisation and, above all, masterful description. Every character springs to life off the page. If only collectively or individually they had more to offer...

A Boy's Own Story is an adolescent's discovery and realisation of his own homosexuality. The book promises a lot of sex and, sure enough, it both begins and ends with explicit encounters. Throughout the remainder, however, the sex seems to be more in the mind than in the experience. It appears that Edmund White's adult recollection of his teenage dilemmas could have been subject to the embellishment of later reflection. Repeatedly the author stretches time to explore the detail of options whenever the boy of the title is presented with a dilemma. These were surely the voices of later years speaking through an ostensibly reconstructed, but surely imagined past. The boy always spoke eloquently about his choices, considered options in detail, but perhaps not convincingly. One of the more engaging aspects of coming of age sagas is how innocence is portrayed and how its conquest is engineered. In A Boy's Own Story one feels that Edmund White wants to deny that he was ever innocent, or at least suggest that he would ever admit it. And so a spark that could have lit up the glowing prose never quite ignited.

When the book first appeared over twenty years ago, the fact that it did appear in its explicit form, apparently denying the guilt that oozes off every page, might itself have been worthy of note. Twenty years on it now reads as merely dated, but still it reads beautifully thanks to the author's supreme skill with words and expression. The issues that might previously have rendered it remarkable have, however, long since cooled, so now the reader must approach the book either as it is, as an autobiography, or alternatively in historical terms. The book, however, cannot sustain the latter approach.

I will now certainly seek out other books by Edmund White, but in the case of A Boy's Own Story I am tempted to conclude that though writers have to be self-obsessed, when that neurosis is turned completely inward, it raises new barriers that can exclude the reader. Hence the gloss. Hence the sheen of the whiter than white washing that proves to be just half a load.


Dull, 04 Jun 2008
The story is readable but doesn't seem to have any point other than taking snapshots of different points in the boy's life. The characters from the overly long chapters are reasonably built but then do not re-appear which was frustrating.

Beautiful writing, 10 Oct 2000
If for nothing else, read this book for the beauty of its writing. The story ought to fall into the coming-of-age category, yet even here it is better than the average. It is told with poignancy, humour and not over the top. But the style takes this book into great modern literature. How often can a damned good read also be so well written.

Some brilliant passages on the conflicts in love, 23 Nov 1999
Edmund White captures the reader's attention early on when the 12-year-old Kevin takes the lead after dark. The physical side of young love is described in detail here with tenderness and realism. Kevin's remoteness (ie no kissing) keeps the relationship one sided and one can imagine that the young Kevin forgets all about it once each session is over whereas our hero gets more and more worried about his deep feelings. As the book progresses, the encounters become random and are kept in the background, yet the soul-searching becomes more open. White captures the confusion of adolescent sexuality well, yet the final betreyal somehow doesn't resolve the dilemma...

an acute observation of gay youth, 05 Sep 1999
a pragmatic yet tender account of a gay boy adapting, succesfully, to adult life

Reads like a hack job done for the money, 11 Jul 2008
This is a very disappointing book. It is subtitled "a stroll through the paradoxes" of Paris but there is very little of the contemporary city in it. Nor is there much strolling. For example, Edmund White starts a chapter on the Marais district but quickly digresses to the Jewish figures who lived near the Bois de Bologne in the 19th century then a long explication of the Dreyfus case. All of this can be read in any French history book and none of it is particularly Parisien. Likewise, his chapter on gay cruising has limited appeal - why do homosexual writers think they have to tell us the details of their sex lives which White himself admits most people will find "pathetic and sordid"? He gives a detailed bibliography at the end which confesses that he has plundered most of this from other people's books which makes it seem very like a hack job done without much care. There is little, if anything, here for anyone wanting to research before a trip to Paris. An up-to-date guidebook would be far more useful.

For all Paris Lovers Everywhere, 07 Oct 2005
Quite simply the wonderful, slightly eccentric and often daring memories of Edmund White's time in Paris.

The art of the Flaneur may be on the wane, but here in this book White jsut makes you want to walk and walk this lovely city.

Lots of great stories, pen pictures of fascinating people and the ultimate explanation of how Americans just can't be flaneurs!

Simply wonderful.

If you like Paris, take this and fall in love!, 14 Aug 2002
Highly recommended. Despite the heading, I did not really like Paris. When I visited Paris first, I lived in Zurich and from the Swiss orderliness to the bohemian French territory was a systemic shock to me. But over time I have read a few books about Paris and am now eagerly waiting for my next trip.

The Flaneur literally means a loiterer but purposeless this book is not. Loitering is also a slower description of the pace of this book. The visually driven descriptions of Paris intersperse beautifully with the history of how Paris came to be like it is. Through centuries of music, art and literature. The author is not just well-researched, he also has the qualification of being in love with Paris. So read it, I say and fall in love with Paris.

Pretty good but too American, 24 Sep 2001
A pretty good introduction to the history of Paris and some of its famous figures. If you're not too familiar with the city, this is a great place to start, since White is an excellent writer. It would have been nice, though, to hear more on what it was like to actually live in Paris as a present-day expatriate. Plus, apparently no one British has ever done anything worth mentioning there (and I'm American, so it's not like I'm partiuclarly biased that way).

An affectionate and telling portrait, 16 Feb 2001
The tone of this lovely book is set from the start. I laughed when I read the first sentence, I smiled at the second, and by the end of the first chapter I was already packing my bags (metaphorically), boarding the train, and longing to be in Paris.

Edmund White is an accomplished writer who lived in Paris for fifteen years, from about 1983, before returning to his native USA. If he was in love with the French (which seems likely) it was never to the extent to being blinded to their flaws. Taking the notion of the Flaneur, the attentive urban ambler, as his inspiration he takes a gentle and informative stroll through some of the lesser known byways of the French capital, and French history, pausing to point out curious features and to cast light along the way.

Somehow, without ever forcing the pace, he manages to explore art, politics, and sex. He discusses the paradoxical attitudes of the French to race discrimination and the appallingly inadequate response of the state to AIDs in the 1980s. He examines the contrasts between the American and French attitudes to fashion. He ponders on flirtatiousness - how it cannot be avoided in Paris and how it cannot be attempted in New York. He muses upon the creation and endless re-invention of cities, . He writes perceptively about jazz music between the wars, including the danse sauvage of Josephine Baker and its effect upon (amongst others) Marshall Tito, and he struggles (as must we all) with the precise distinction between monarchist and royalist that so exercised the proprietor of his local café. There are many reasons for reading this book. One is that it is beautifully written (it helps). Another is that, without ever losing the objectivity of the foreigner, the author manages to empathise with his subject. When I finished reading it I wanted to start again.

The publishers, Bloomsbury, are to be complimented on producing a first class book. The Flaneur is intended to be the first in a series entitled The Writer in the City. If subsequent volumes match the quality if the first then there is a great deal to look forward to.

He does it again, 02 Jan 2008
I only wish I could write this beautifully... Once more Edmund takes you on a journey and you are sat in the room with the protagonist, then in New York with Elliot a century ago. But wherever this book takes you, it is not the room in which you are sat holding a book. My only gripe is that I've already finished the book. Someone wipe it from my memory so I can read it again.

"I will write for one man only and that man is myself", 30 Aug 2007
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was one undoubtedly of the great American novelists with his most famous novel being The Red Badge of Courage, which depicted the American Civil War from the point of view of an ordinary soldier. Crane was noted for his early employment of naturalism, a literary style in which characters were realistically portrayed and often faced bleak circumstances.

However, it is Crane's unconventionality and his sympathy for the downtrodden that forms the core of this truly spectacular novel. Edmund White's intelligent written and beautifully crafted Hotel de Dream indeed focuses on Crane's preoccupation with the oppressed, but it also asks the question of how would such a man have responded to male homosexuality in an era in which gays themselves were considered perverts and deviants, and abominations?

Hotel de Dream begins as the chronically ill Crane, accompanied by Cora Taylor, a former brothel-house proprietor is living in a 14th-century manor house at Brede Place, Sussex. It is the cusp of a new century and Crane, sick with tuberculosis that has been compounded by a recurrent malarial fever that he picked up in Cuba, is planning a trip to a clinic on the edge of the Black Forest in Badenweiler, Germany in order to get out of damp old England with its cold rains and harsh winds.

Lately life in Brede Place has had its ups and downs, and while Cora has certainly been loyal and loving to Stephen, her flighty social and literary pretensions - and her reputation in America - have perhaps contributed to Crane's financial ruin. There's also been far too much entertaining, especially in the form of parties catering to hordes of spongers as well as many of their close literary friends, including Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, and the great Henry James.

Cora is anxious for Stephen to get on and make some money by finishing The O'ruddy so they can pay off some of their most urgent debts and take the trip to Germany. But it is the urge to write his final story about a young boy prostitute called Elliott, that he once met while living in Manhattan that most preoccupies Stephen. Feverish with excitement, Stephen demands that Cora must become the filter for the pages that Stephen will now grind out.

Called The Painted Boy, Stephen once wrote forty pages of his "boy-whore" book, but was advised that if he didn't tear them up, every last word, he'll never have a career. Now, however, he's at the end of his life and have nothing to fear and for sure, the story will undoubtedly prove to be a poignant account of the boy's travails and also wonderful new source about the city and its lower depths, because its not just about another boy, "but somehow a "she-male," a member of the third sex."

So begins Crane's tale of his real life acquaintance with Elliot this "painted boy," as he recounts his final trip with Cora from Brede Place, to Dover, and then onto Badenweiler, while also dictating to Cora the fictional story of Elliot's affair with Theodore Koch, a married and middle-aged New York banker. It is though writing about Elliott and Theodore's tempestious affair that Stephen recollects his own encounter with Elliott, this syphilitic, kohl-eyed and heavily made-up sixteen year-old boy, who calls himself a "flame fairy."

Picture the poor Stephen and Elliott, both ill and wounded, and both looking like sick waifs with Stephen's own hacking cough and this boy whore who wears boys clothes and girls' makeup as they traverse the streets of Manhattan, with Elliott determined to teach Stephen how to decipher the city around him. His young muse drags Stephen to the "penny restaurants" where the newsboys eat every evening, to the fairy saloons, the bordellos and the low theatre, and also to visit a wealthy androgyne by the name of Jennie Jones who fascinates Crane with his "big breasts and wide hips."

Meanwhile, the fictional story of The Painted Boy plays out as Crane fanatically dictates it to Cora, beginning on a New York train station where Elliott cruises older men in bowler hats and good wool overcoats. But it is Theodore's ardent obsession with Elliott that ultimately spins the boy's world out of control. Consumed by jealousy and passion, and proud to sacrifice everything for love, Theodore urges to know more and more about this funhouse world that Elliott has been inducted into, his life gradually obscured by all of the "magic-lantern pictures" in his mind of Elliott.

White certainly writes a vivid account of gay life at the turn of the nineteenth century, in a Manhattan full of vice, and glamour and lowlife, "an intersexual world of such fantastic dimensions." Although Stephen Crane never actually wrote a novel called The Painted Boy, White does a terrific job of presenting what might have been as if the author did indeed have a fascination with this all male Victorian world of men loving men.

Vibrant and flamboyant, and teeming with a lyrical beauty throughout, White writes with a passionate commitment to Stephen Crane's life, and to his death. Meticulously researched and seamlessly infusing fact with fiction, Hotel de Dream, is a grand tribute to Crane's creative spirit as all of these colorful characters, both real and fictional, plays out against a nineteenth century propriety and a little-known sexual underworld. Mike Leonard August 07.


his extraordinary lives, 25 Jun 2008
I absolutely love Edmund White's books, and this is one of my favourites. It is a very original autobiography, arranged by themes and not chronologically as usual. White's novels have always been semi-autobiographical, and this memoir kind of fills the blanks and clear things up. Always with humour, style, and a candid honesty that is never naïve or ingénue.

Deeply dispiriting, 05 Jul 2007
White's Boy's Own Story was a defining read of my early adult life and The Married Man remains one of the most important and beautifully written novels I have read. So I approached his autobiography with anticipation. As expected it is also wonderfully written prose, however I find the content utterly self-serving and self-indulgent. He himself suggests his friends will ask "is there no detail or EW's sex life we will not be spared" to which the answer is a resounding "No". What is it about my fellow gay men that they insist on ramming the details of their sex lives - in EW's case a pretty extreme one by anyone's standards - down our throats. Why can even he not be more sophisticated than the juvenile "I define myself by my sexuality and reserve the right to spare you no detail" mindset? You do not find straight novelists going in to this level of detail about their sex lives so why must EW let us all down by caricaturing himself and ourselves in this way? This has been the most dispiriting read from someone who should know better. Best avoided.

White Mischief, 06 Dec 2006
Edmund White has/is living a rich life. A Life that may or may not be rich in the monetary sense (though this changes throughout his life) but in the sense of being rich with the exalted currency of true friendship. Time and time again in this latest edition of his autobiography, "My Lives," White writes about men and women with whom he has remained friends over the course of his entire life: people that are compelled to keep in touch, both Gay and Straight. Some are formers Lovers, Some were objects of White's Lust and sometimes Love. The women, though never lovers, are still his friends because White is the consummate comrade: always available emotionally at least and at best available in the flesh to lend a hand.
"My Lives" is divided into nine sections with names like My Mother, My Shrinks, My Hustlers, Mr. Genet, etc. but naturally all the sections bleed together as White excels in the fine art of straying from the topic. Along the way we get some sterling observations:
"In the 1950's people were ashamed that they were inadequate; in the 1960's they were proud to announce that they were victims...Rilke had said, You must change yourself! But now people said: Everyone else must change."
Though some of what he writes about his Mother, Lila Mae makes me wince, a lot of what White writes about her is very funny: "...Lila Mae's baseless optimism, her coquetry, her insistence that she was an old fashioned gal, 100 % feminine made us (White and his sister Margaret) cackle like gargoyles. Adolescents are wretchedly conventional as they tiptoe nervously into the great crowded ballroom of adulthood."
As he does with all facets of his life, White's examination of his sexual obsessions is exhaustive and brutally honest: "...but all of these encounters with hustlers were as much an expression of fear as of desire, and above all they were animated by curiosity. I was swallowing the sperm of strangers and this feast convinced me that I possessed all of these men. I was like one of those nearly insane saints who must take communion several times a day..."
So real, precisely expressed and profoundly learned...so much there to cause any number of people to bleed out the eyes.
Edmund White is nothing if not blunt, honest: sometimes maybe to a fault but "My Lives," as with much of what White has written, is profoundly observant and beautifully composed. Though White is of course a fine writer particularly when it has to do with his own life, I think that in the long run as an observer of life in all its forms and as a commentator of all he sees, White's greatest contribution both personally and cosmically is his remarkable ability to earn the trust and retain the friendship of those with whom he has remained emotionally tied for many, many years. If a man is judged by how many true friends he has then White is a truly great human being.


Beautifully Written, 12 Sep 2006
Unadventurous booksellers often place Edmund White's work in the "gay" section of their stores, which is a pity as White is today one of the most skilled writers of English prose. My Lives, which is structured simply around ten long chapters entitled "My Europe", "My friends", "My Mother" and so on, contains a wonderful series of glimpses into a life lived in appreciation of diversity in art, culture and society in general.

White is by turns humourous, knowledgable and intellectually self effacing. He presents in an accesible manner ideas on psychology and sexuality which more academic but less skilled writers cannot convey to a general readership. His Mid- American take on Europe is fascinating for its freshness of approach, its openness and affection. His description of John, a theatrical friend from the eighties is worth buying the book for.

White is also good on the Mother/son relationship, gay life in Mid America and French Society life.

The key to this "autobiography" is that reading it would be enjoyable even without a grain of interest in Edmund White himself. It is just a wonderfully enjoyable view on one man's life- in this case a life lived as a gay man-although White is excellent on his relationships with women- some of which were consummated.

Straight or Gay at the end of this you will wish you knew Edmund White for the sheer beauty of his prose.

The Real Thing, 04 Nov 2005
For over thirty years, Edmund White has written some of the most insightful fiction and non-fiction about American life. He's successfully blended autobiography and the novel to capture the startling ideological and political changes of the country. The scope of his books range from a time when homosexuality was branded a psychological disease to recent strong campaigns to legalize gay marriage. The vivid experiences he's written about are artistically shaped to allow the reader to see things from an entirely new perspective while also finding common emotional ground. This memoir allows us access to White's own true experiences for the first time. After rewriting his life so thoroughly in his popular novels A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room is Empty, The Farewell Symphony and The Married Man, one would assume there would be nothing left to tell. But, in fact, White has led such a rich and varied life that there are numerous important moments which haven't yet been committed to paper. My Lives allows us intimate access to the real man while still providing thoughtful commentary on affairs beyond his own experience.

Rather than write a straightforward account of his life, White has organized his memoir in sections about particular aspects of his experience such as My Shrinks, My Hustlers, My Friends, etc. At times in this book his pithy summation of a period of American life can be startlingly insightful. In other parts, the intimate details he reveals about his life are so shocking that White humorously guesses at some people's reactions: "'Must we have every detail about these tiresome senile shenanigans?'" However, White's probing exploration of his past has much more value beyond mere gossip. This book is not the great elder artist, purveyor of gay literature and international lover boasting. Rather, he reveals that he is still a fragile and tender individual who is prone to despair, hopeless infatuation and self-doubt. Bravely and with his usual beautifully crafted prose, the author proves that there is still so much more to tell.

If you are a fan of White's fiction and are looking for insight into his real life, this book is a treasure filled with sumptuous and enlightening details. And if you haven't read anything by White before, this memoir makes a great jumping off point.

Austin Smith, 49-year-old American cultural journalist and 18th-century French furniture specialist living in Paris, meets Julien, 29-year-old French architect, at the gym. Although Julien is The Married Man, it's not long before the two are an established couple, attempting to deal with Julien's unexpected illness, his mysterious family past and his conventional bourgeois mores--so distant from those espoused by 1970s gay product Austin--as they flit with "Aids-restlessness" between Paris and the French countryside, Italy, North Africa and the US.

Edmund White's fiction has always drawn on his own experience, from A Boy 's Own Story to The Beautiful Room is Empty to The Farewell Symphony--indeed, The Married Man reworks a final section of that last, monumental elegy. It's impossible to imagine Austin Smith, ageing HIV-positive American expatriate in Paris, without seeing Edmund White, expatriate HIV-positive American author in Paris, exploring his "posthumous, post-diagnosis, foreign days". And, thanks to Stephen Barber's biography, Edmund White: The Burning World, it's an easy enough job for the curious to make the more detailed connections. Yet White 's writing has never been lazily autobiographical and here, writing in the third person, he seems at even greater pains to distance himself from Austin, who is presented with no little comic irony. Partly, that comes with the territory of being an American in Paris: "Austin was a foreigner and what he did and said were thrown into relief." However, his foreignness, in turn, is a useful lens for viewing the US as an alien, a horribly unintellectual culture; some of the book 's finest moments come as Austin starts teaching in Providence, Rhode Island, painfully oblivious to the recent cultural shifts of his homeland, adrift and belligerent in a brave new world of political correctness and homeboys, unable to grasp that the simple fact of being a gay man does not necessarily make him a woman's best friend. The resultant distancing of author from hero makes for a far tauter, less self-indulgent writing--and a love story that is at times banal and irritating but never less than convincing and, at its climax, unbearably moving. White writes of "the tackiness of survival" that leads "inevitably" to forgetting and faithfulness; in The Married Man he has ensured that one great love story cannot be forgotten or betrayed. --Alan Stewart Austin Smith, 49-year-old American cultural journalist and 18th-century French furniture specialist living in Paris, meets Julien, 29-year-old French architect, at the gym. Although Julien is The Married Man, it 's not long before the two are an established couple, attempting to deal with Julien's unexpected illness, his mysterious family past and his conventional bourgeois mores--so distant from those espoused by 1970s gay product Austin--as they flit with "Aids-restlessness" between Paris and the French countryside, Italy, North Africa and the US.

Edmund White's fiction has always drawn on his own experience, from A Boy 's Own Story to The Beautiful Room Is Empty to The Farewell Symphony--indeed, The Married Man reworks a final section of that last, monumental elegy. It's impossible to imagine Austin Smith, ageing HIV-positive American expatriate in Paris, without seeing Edmund White, expatriate HIV-positive American author in Paris, exploring his "posthumous, post-diagnosis, foreign days". And, thanks to Stephen Barber 's recent biography, Edmund White: The Burning World, it's an easy enough job for the curious to make the more detailed connections. Yet White 's writing has never been lazily autobiographical and here, writing in the third person, he seems at even greater pains to distance himself from Austin, who is presented with no little comic irony. Partly, that comes with the territory of being an American in Paris: "Austin was a foreigner and what he did and said were thrown into relief". However, his foreignness, in turn, is a useful lens for viewing the US as an alien, horribly unintellectual, culture; some of the book 's finest moments come as Austin starts teaching in Providence, Rhode Island, painfully oblivious to the recent cultural shifts of his homeland, adrift and belligerent in a brave new world of political correctness and homeboys, unable to grasp that the simple fact of being a gay man does not necessarily make him a woman's best friend. The resultant distancing of author from hero makes for a far tauter, less self-indulgent writing--and a love story that is at times banal and irritating but never less than convincing and, at its climax, unbearably moving. White writes of "the tackiness of survival" that leads "inevitably" to forgetting and faithfulness; in The Married Man he has ensured that one great love story cannot be forgotten or betrayed.--Alan Stewart

An entertaining read about the most difficult genius , 02 Jan 2009
This is a carefully researched and entertaining biography of the vagabond poet Rimbaud's life. Beginning with a moving personal note about what Rimbaud means to the biographer, White goes on to describe the poet's early life, literary maturation and later frustrated drive for financial success with his typically warm and engaging writer's tone of voice. Rimbaud's intelligence and extremely difficult personality are brought alive with stories of his family life, literary associations and tumultuous relationship with the poet Verlaine. The evolution of Rimbaud's poetry which seems to take place in hyper-speed is intelligently explained with examples of the poet's work and how it relates to the poet's experiences and radical artistic vision. White is also careful to disentangle some of the popular myths about this mysterious poet's life.

It is mesmerizing reading about the quickfire creation of Rimbaud's ambitious output before his total withdrawal from art and the artistic community. Passages of the poet's work are sublimely beautiful and one can't help wonder what sort of literary works he would have created in his adult life if he had kept writing. That such a young man made such an enormous impact on his early champions speaks more about the bewitching influence of adolescent gusto, particularly from such a handsome and frustrated youth, rather than the quality of his writing. Nevertheless, the enduring influence the poet had on successive generations of artists is clear.

A lot of washing, less to hang out, 07 Aug 2008
A reviewer of A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White is presented with a number of problems, In the paraphrased words of one of the book's characters, there may be a lot in the wash, but eventually not much to hang out, and this, by the end of the book, largely summed up what it had delivered. Be reassured, however, that the process of reading A Boy's Own Story is a delight from start to finish. Edmund White's style is quite beautiful, full of complex allusions, superb characterisation and, above all, masterful description. Every character springs to life off the page. If only collectively or individually they had more to offer...

A Boy's Own Story is an adolescent's discovery and realisation of his own homosexuality. The book promises a lot of sex and, sure enough, it both begins and ends with explicit encounters. Throughout the remainder, however, the sex seems to be more in the mind than in the experience. It appears that Edmund White's adult recollection of his teenage dilemmas could have been subject to the embellishment of later reflection. Repeatedly the author stretches time to explore the detail of options whenever the boy of the title is presented with a dilemma. These were surely the voices of later years speaking through an ostensibly reconstructed, but surely imagined past. The boy always spoke eloquently about his choices, considered options in detail, but perhaps not convincingly. One of the more engaging aspects of coming of age sagas is how innocence is portrayed and how its conquest is engineered. In A Boy's Own Story one feels that Edmund White wants to deny that he was ever innocent, or at least suggest that he would ever admit it. And so a spark that could have lit up the glowing prose never quite ignited.

When the book first appeared over twenty years ago, the fact that it did appear in its explicit form, apparently denying the guilt that oozes off every page, might itself have been worthy of note. Twenty years on it now reads as merely dated, but still it reads beautifully thanks to the author's supreme skill with words and expression. The issues that might previously have rendered it remarkable have, however, long since cooled, so now the reader must approach the book either as it is, as an autobiography, or alternatively in historical terms. The book, however, cannot sustain the latter approach.

I will now certainly seek out other books by Edmund White, but in the case of A Boy's Own Story I am tempted to conclude that though writers have to be self-obsessed, when that neurosis is turned completely inward, it raises new barriers that can exclude the reader. Hence the gloss. Hence the sheen of the whiter than white washing that proves to be just half a load.


Dull, 04 Jun 2008
The story is readable but doesn't seem to have any point other than taking snapshots of different points in the boy's life. The characters from the overly long chapters are reasonably built but then do not re-appear which was frustrating.

Beautiful writing, 10 Oct 2000
If for nothing else, read this book for the beauty of its writing. The story ought to fall into the coming-of-age category, yet even here it is better than the average. It is told with poignancy, humour and not over the top. But the style takes this book into great modern literature. How often can a damned good read also be so well written.

Some brilliant passages on the conflicts in love, 23 Nov 1999
Edmund White captures the reader's attention early on when the 12-year-old Kevin takes the lead after dark. The physical side of young love is described in detail here with tenderness and realism. Kevin's remoteness (ie no kissing) keeps the relationship one sided and one can imagine that the young Kevin forgets all about it once each session is over whereas our hero gets more and more worried about his deep feelings. As the book progresses, the encounters become random and are kept in the background, yet the soul-searching becomes more open. White captures the confusion of adolescent sexuality well, yet the final betreyal somehow doesn't resolve the dilemma...

an acute observation of gay youth, 05 Sep 1999
a pragmatic yet tender account of a gay boy adapting, succesfully, to adult life

Reads like a hack job done for the money, 11 Jul 2008
This is a very disappointing book. It is subtitled "a stroll through the paradoxes" of Paris but there is very little of the contemporary city in it. Nor is there much strolling. For example, Edmund White starts a chapter on the Marais district but quickly digresses to the Jewish figures who lived near the Bois de Bologne in the 19th century then a long explication of the Dreyfus case. All of this can be read in any French history book and none of it is particularly Parisien. Likewise, his chapter on gay cruising has limited appeal - why do homosexual writers think they have to tell us the details of their sex lives which White himself admits most people will find "pathetic and sordid"? He gives a detailed bibliography at the end which confesses that he has plundered most of this from other people's books which makes it seem very like a hack job done without much care. There is little, if anything, here for anyone wanting to research before a trip to Paris. An up-to-date guidebook would be far more useful.

For all Paris Lovers Everywhere, 07 Oct 2005
Quite simply the wonderful, slightly eccentric and often daring memories of Edmund White's time in Paris.

The art of the Flaneur may be on the wane, but here in this book White jsut makes you want to walk and walk this lovely city.

Lots of great stories, pen pictures of fascinating people and the ultimate explanation of how Americans just can't be flaneurs!

Simply wonderful.

If you like Paris, take this and fall in love!, 14 Aug 2002
Highly recommended. Despite the heading, I did not really like Paris. When I visited Paris first, I lived in Zurich and from the Swiss orderliness to the bohemian French territory was a systemic shock to me. But over time I have read a few books about Paris and am now eagerly waiting for my next trip.

The Flaneur literally means a loiterer but purposeless this book is not. Loitering is also a slower description of the pace of this book. The visually driven descriptions of Paris intersperse beautifully with the history of how Paris came to be like it is. Through centuries of music, art and literature. The author is not just well-researched, he also has the qualification of being in love with Paris. So read it, I say and fall in love with Paris.

Pretty good but too American, 24 Sep 2001
A pretty good introduction to the history of Paris and some of its famous figures. If you're not too familiar with the city, this is a great place to start, since White is an excellent writer. It would have been nice, though, to hear more on what it was like to actually live in Paris as a present-day expatriate. Plus, apparently no one British has ever done anything worth mentioning there (and I'm American, so it's not like I'm partiuclarly biased that way).

An affectionate and telling portrait, 16 Feb 2001
The tone of this lovely book is set from the start. I laughed when I read the first sentence, I smiled at the second, and by the end of the first chapter I was already packing my bags (metaphorically), boarding the train, and longing to be in Paris.

Edmund White is an accomplished writer who lived in Paris for fifteen years, from about 1983, before returning to his native USA. If he was in love with the French (which seems likely) it was never to the extent to being blinded to their flaws. Taking the notion of the Flaneur, the attentive urban ambler, as his inspiration he takes a gentle and informative stroll through some of the lesser known byways of the French capital, and French history, pausing to point out curious features and to cast light along the way.

Somehow, without ever forcing the pace, he manages to explore art, politics, and sex. He discusses the paradoxical attitudes of the French to race discrimination and the appallingly inadequate response of the state to AIDs in the 1980s. He examines the contrasts between the American and French attitudes to fashion. He ponders on flirtatiousness - how it cannot be avoided in Paris and how it cannot be attempted in New York. He muses upon the creation and endless re-invention of cities, . He writes perceptively about jazz music between the wars, including the danse sauvage of Josephine Baker and its effect upon (amongst others) Marshall Tito, and he struggles (as must we all) with the precise distinction between monarchist and royalist that so exercised the proprietor of his local café. There are many reasons for reading this book. One is that it is beautifully written (it helps). Another is that, without ever losing the objectivity of the foreigner, the author manages to empathise with his subject. When I finished reading it I wanted to start again.

The publishers, Bloomsbury, are to be complimented on producing a first class book. The Flaneur is intended to be the first in a series entitled The Writer in the City. If subsequent volumes match the quality if the first then there is a great deal to look forward to.

He does it again, 02 Jan 2008
I only wish I could write this beautifully... Once more Edmund takes you on a journey and you are sat in the room with the protagonist, then in New York with Elliot a century ago. But wherever this book takes you, it is not the room in which you are sat holding a book. My only gripe is that I've already finished the book. Someone wipe it from my memory so I can read it again.

"I will write for one man only and that man is myself", 30 Aug 2007
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was one undoubtedly of the great American novelists with his most famous novel being The Red Badge of Courage, which depicted the American Civil War from the point of view of an ordinary soldier. Crane was noted for his early employment of naturalism, a literary style in which characters were realistically portrayed and often faced bleak circumstances.

However, it is Crane's unconventionality and his sympathy for the downtrodden that forms the core of this truly spectacular novel. Edmund White's intelligent written and beautifully crafted Hotel de Dream indeed focuses on Crane's preoccupation with the oppressed, but it also asks the question of how would such a man have responded to male homosexuality in an era in which gays themselves were considered perverts and deviants, and abominations?

Hotel de Dream begins as the chronically ill Crane, accompanied by Cora Taylor, a former brothel-house proprietor is living in a 14th-century manor house at Brede Place, Sussex. It is the cusp of a new century and Crane, sick with tuberculosis that has been compounded by a recurrent malarial fever that he picked up in Cuba, is planning a trip to a clinic on the edge of the Black Forest in Badenweiler, Germany in order to get out of damp old England with its cold rains and harsh winds.

Lately life in Brede Place has had its ups and downs, and while Cora has certainly been loyal and loving to Stephen, her flighty social and literary pretensions - and her reputation in America - have perhaps contributed to Crane's financial ruin. There's also been far too much entertaining, especially in the form of parties catering to hordes of spongers as well as many of their close literary friends, including Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, and the great Henry James.

Cora is anxious for Stephen to get on and make some money by finishing The O'ruddy so they can pay off some of their most urgent debts and take the trip to Germany. But it is the urge to write his final story about a young boy prostitute called Elliott, that he once met while living in Manhattan that most preoccupies Stephen. Feverish with excitement, Stephen demands that Cora must become the filter for the pages that Stephen will now grind out.

Called The Painted Boy, Stephen once wrote forty pages of his "boy-whore" book, but was advised that if he didn't tear them up, every last word, he'll never have a career. Now, however, he's at the end of his life and have nothing to fear and for sure, the story will undoubtedly prove to be a poignant account of the boy's travails and also wonderful new source about the city and its lower depths, because its not just about another boy, "but somehow a "she-male," a member of the third sex."

So begins Crane's tale of his real life acquaintance with Elliot this "painted boy," as he recounts his final trip with Cora from Brede Place, to Dover, and then onto Badenweiler, while also dictating to Cora the fictional story of Elliot's affair with Theodore Koch, a married and middle-aged New York banker. It is though writing about Elliott and Theodore's tempestious affair that Stephen recollects his own encounter with Elliott, this syphilitic, kohl-eyed and heavily made-up sixteen year-old boy, who calls himself a "flame fairy."

Picture the poor Stephen and Elliott, both ill and wounded, and both looking like sick waifs with Stephen's own hacking cough and this boy whore who wears boys clothes and girls' makeup as they traverse the streets of Manhattan, with Elliott determined to teach Stephen how to decipher the city around him. His young muse drags Stephen to the "penny restaurants" where the newsboys eat every evening, to the fairy saloons, the bordellos and the low theatre, and also to visit a wealthy androgyne by the name of Jennie Jones who fascinates Crane with his "big breasts and wide hips."

Meanwhile, the fictional story of The Painted Boy plays out as Crane fanatically dictates it to Cora, beginning on a New York train station where Elliott cruises older men in bowler hats and good wool overcoats. But it is Theodore's ardent obsession with Elliott that ultimately spins the boy's world out of control. Consumed by jealousy and passion, and proud to sacrifice everything for love, Theodore urges to know more and more about this funhouse world that Elliott has been inducted into, his life gradually obscured by all of the "magic-lantern pictures" in his mind of Elliott.

White certainly writes a vivid account of gay life at the turn of the nineteenth century, in a Manhattan full of vice, and glamour and lowlife, "an intersexual world of such fantastic dimensions." Although Stephen Crane never actually wrote a novel called The Painted Boy, White does a terrific job of presenting what might have been as if the author did indeed have a fascination with this all male Victorian world of men loving men.

Vibrant and flamboyant, and teeming with a lyrical beauty throughout, White writes with a passionate commitment to Stephen Crane's life, and to his death. Meticulously researched and seamlessly infusing fact with fiction, Hotel de Dream, is a grand tribute to Crane's creative spirit as all of these colorful characters, both real and fictional, plays out against a nineteenth century propriety and a little-known sexual underworld. Mike Leonard August 07.


his extraordinary lives, 25 Jun 2008
I absolutely love Edmund White's books, and this is one of my favourites. It is a very original autobiography, arranged by themes and not chronologically as usual. White's novels have always been semi-autobiographical, and this memoir kind of fills the blanks and clear things up. Always with humour, style, and a candid honesty that is never naïve or ingénue.

Deeply dispiriting, 05 Jul 2007
White's Boy's Own Story was a defining read of my early adult life and The Married Man remains one of the most important and beautifully written novels I have read. So I approached his autobiography with anticipation. As expected it is also wonderfully written prose, however I find the content utterly self-serving and self-indulgent. He himself suggests his friends will ask "is there no detail or EW's sex life we will not be spared" to which the answer is a resounding "No". What is it about my fellow gay men that they insist on ramming the details of their sex lives - in EW's case a pretty extreme one by anyone's standards - down our throats. Why can even he not be more sophisticated than the juvenile "I define myself by my sexuality and reserve the right to spare you no detail" mindset? You do not find straight novelists going in to this level of detail about their sex lives so why must EW let us all down by caricaturing himself and ourselves in this way? This has been the most dispiriting read from someone who should know better. Best avoided.

White Mischief, 06 Dec 2006
Edmund White has/is living a rich life. A Life that may or may not be rich in the monetary sense (though this changes throughout his life) but in the sense of being rich with the exalted currency of true friendship. Time and time again in this latest edition of his autobiography, "My Lives," White writes about men and women with whom he has remained friends over the course of his entire life: people that are compelled to keep in touch, both Gay and Straight. Some are formers Lovers, Some were objects of White's Lust and sometimes Love. The women, though never lovers, are still his friends because White is the consummate comrade: always available emotionally at least and at best available in the flesh to lend a hand.
"My Lives" is divided into nine sections with names like My Mother, My Shrinks, My Hustlers, Mr. Genet, etc. but naturally all the sections bleed together as White excels in the fine art of straying from the topic. Along the way we get some sterling observations:
"In the 1950's people were ashamed that they were inadequate; in the 1960's they were proud to announce that they were victims...Rilke had said, You must change yourself! But now people said: Everyone else must change."
Though some of what he writes about his Mother, Lila Mae makes me wince, a lot of what White writes about her is very funny: "...Lila Mae's baseless optimism, her coquetry, her insistence that she was an old fashioned gal, 100 % feminine made us (White and his sister Margaret) cackle like gargoyles. Adolescents are wretchedly conventional as they tiptoe nervously into the great crowded ballroom of adulthood."
As he does with all facets of his life, White's examination of his sexual obsessions is exhaustive and brutally honest: "...but all of these encounters with hustlers were as much an expression of fear as of desire, and above all they were animated by curiosity. I was swallowing the sperm of strangers and this feast convinced me that I possessed all of these men. I was like one of those nearly insane saints who must take communion several times a day..."
So real, precisely expressed and profoundly learned...so much there to cause any number of people to bleed out the eyes.
Edmund White is nothing if not blunt, honest: sometimes maybe to a fault but "My Lives," as with much of what White has written, is profoundly observant and beautifully composed. Though White is of course a fine writer particularly when it has to do with his own life, I think that in the long run as an observer of life in all its forms and as a commentator of all he sees, White's greatest contribution both personally and cosmically is his remarkable ability to earn the trust and retain the friendship of those with whom he has remained emotionally tied for many, many years. If a man is judged by how many true friends he has then White is a truly great human being.


Beautifully Written, 12 Sep 2006
Unadventurous booksellers often place Edmund White's work in the "gay" section of their stores, which is a pity as White is today one of the most skilled writers of English prose. My Lives, which is structured simply around ten long chapters entitled "My Europe", "My friends", "My Mother" and so on, contains a wonderful series of glimpses into a life lived in appreciation of diversity in art, culture and society in general.

White is by turns humourous, knowledgable and intellectually self effacing. He presents in an accesible manner ideas on psychology and sexuality which more academic but less skilled writers cannot convey to a general readership. His Mid- American take on Europe is fascinating for its freshness of approach, its openness and affection. His description of John, a theatrical friend from the eighties is worth buying the book for.

White is also good on the Mother/son relationship, gay life in Mid America and French Society life.

The key to this "autobiography" is that reading it would be enjoyable even without a grain of interest in Edmund White himself. It is just a wonderfully enjoyable view on one man's life- in this case a life lived as a gay man-although White is excellent on his relationships with women- some of which were consummated.

Straight or Gay at the end of this you will wish you knew Edmund White for the sheer beauty of his prose.

The Real Thing, 04 Nov 2005
For over thirty years, Edmund White has written some of the most insightful fiction and non-fiction about American life. He's successfully blended autobiography and the novel to capture the startling ideological and political changes of the country. The scope of his books range from a time when homosexuality was branded a psychological disease to recent strong campaigns to legalize gay marriage. The vivid experiences he's written about are artistically shaped to allow the reader to see things from an entirely new perspective while also finding common emotional ground. This memoir allows us access to White's own true experiences for the first time. After rewriting his life so thoroughly in his popular novels A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room is Empty, The Farewell Symphony and The Married Man, one would assume there would be nothing left to tell. But, in fact, White has led such a rich and varied life that there are numerous important moments which haven't yet been committed to paper. My Lives allows us intimate access to the real man while still providing thoughtful commentary on affairs beyond his own experience.

Rather than write a straightforward account of his life, White has organized his memoir in sections about particular aspects of his experience such as My Shrinks, My Hustlers, My Friends, etc. At times in this book his pithy summation of a period of American life can be startlingly insightful. In other parts, the intimate details he reveals about his life are so shocking that White humorously guesses at some people's reactions: "'Must we have every detail about these tiresome senile shenanigans?'" However, White's probing exploration of his past has much more value beyond mere gossip. This book is not the great elder artist, purveyor of gay literature and international lover boasting. Rather, he reveals that he is still a fragile and tender individual who is prone to despair, hopeless infatuation and self-doubt. Bravely and with his usual beautifully crafted prose, the author proves that there is still so much more to tell.

If you are a fan of White's fiction and are looking for insight into his real life, this book is a treasure filled with sumptuous and enlightening details. And if you haven't read anything by White before, this memoir makes a great jumping off point.

Wolverhampton Libraries LGBT Reading Group Review, 28 Jul 2008
This tragic-romance, set in the early 1990s, centres on Austin, a middle-aged American writer, diagnosed with HIV+ but otherwise healthy. Whilst living in as an ex-pat in Paris, he meets Julien, an aristocratic, twenty-something architect getting a divorce.

Although Austin is our main character, we seem to learn more about Julien - his opinions, his wife, his family, his culture and, eventually, his illness.

White clearly draws on first-hand experience regarding the nightmare of HIV and no details are spared of Julien's rapid demise, with both readers and Austin alike wondering who could be guilty of infecting his lover.

The Group agreed that this book did take a few chapters to get in to, but was definitely worth the effort as the characters came alive... including Ajax the basset hound and Peter, Austin's dependant ex-boyfriend.

Complete with a few truths revealed by the end of the story and a few tears shed, this book was enjoyed by the entire Group.

Moving and beautifully written, 22 Dec 2001
I am normally guilty of 'skim reading' but I savoured every word of this fabulous novel. Edmund White is such a talented man, I found myself reading parts of the book aloud to my husband, in awe. He's reading it next, you should read it too!

another semi-autobiographical gem, 18 May 2001
Those of us who have read White since "A Boy's Own Story" will feel on familiar territory here: the narrator is a thinly-disguised version of White himself, with his insecurities and guilt at surviving AIDS in the US driving him to return to Europe. His account of his affair in France and the US with "the married man" of the title is as good as anything he has written so far, sharpened perhaps by living outside the US and realising the absurdities of the place when he moves back. His description of his lectures on 18th century furniture making being criticised for sexism are a tongue-in-cheek dig at the absurdities of academic political correctness, where even a small provincial college has a "Dean of Gender and Equality Issues" At times, the novel veers into bucolic reverie: the joyous couple of months spent in the French countryside is contrasted with the nastiness of small-town America, but the observation and reflection that made White's other novels so enjoyable are here in abundance, and like them, it is difficult not to devour this whole book in one sitting.

White's astounding prose and clarity, 05 Oct 2000
I want to make this short. White writes the most beautiful, concise and meaningful prose of any living writer I can think of. There is nothing here that is gloss; more painfully there is nothing here that is less than searingly honest. For me the directness of his approach, together with his exquisite craft, make this novel pretty much one of the finest I've read. I adored this book.

Sad Introduction to Gay Fiction, 24 Jul 2000
I bought the book on foot of a very positive review from the New York Times. Anticipating something relevant and enlightening, instead I found near-cheap soft romance with all the unsubtle reflections that I would expect from something written for teenagagers of the opposite sex. Very dissappointed, I cannot believe that this is the level of fiction available to gay males in English. I pray that there are other more sophisticated works than this. Otherwise it is certainly an open market if anybody wants to try.

Marcel Proust documented his existence so lavishly--albeit in fictional form--that many of his biographers have functioned as little more than code-breakers, doggedly translating art back into life. It's a great pleasure, then, to welcome Edmund White's slender, superbly artful account. A novelist himself, White beautifully evokes "the France of heavy, tasteless furniture, of engraved portraits of Prince Eugène, of clocks kept under a glass bell on the mantelpiece, of overstuffed chairs covered with antimacassars and of brass beds warmed by hot-water bottles." And he's no less canny at summoning up Proust's personality, in all its neurotic, contradictory glory. Of course, Proust's life can't truly be separated from his art. Every biography of him is bound to operate in the shadow of Remembrance of Things Past, and White has some shrewd things to say about that mammoth work, whose style he describes as "an ether in which all the characters revolve like well-regulated heavenly bodies". Yet the focus remains on Proust and on his unlikely transformation from mummy's boy to social climber to world-class genius. Like his subject, White often proceeds by anecdote. His book is packed with telling hilarious little nuggets, which find Proust being snubbed by that "powdered, perfumed, puffy Irish giant" Oscar Wilde or luring back his lover Alfred Agostinelli by buying him an aeroplane.

At the same time, White conveys the considerable pain that Proust endured as an invalid, an artist and (more to the point) a closeted homosexual. No d