Edmund White Books

We are so accustomed to saying love and hate in the same breath that we believe they are opposites or contraries, but this is not actually the case. The opposite of love is indifference. With love comes compassion and various forms of altruism. With indifference comes cruelty and unkindness. The German soldiers of the Second World War did not hate the Greek peasants whose country they occupied. They were mostly indifferent to them. That is one of the reasons they developed the tactic (or was it a strategy?) of wiping out entire villages and massaccring the inhabitants whenever one, just one, of their own was killed by the resistance. This book is about finding out, long after the fact, who was responsible for giving the order for one such massacre in 1944. It zeroes in on a well known Austrian politician, a "distinguished gentleman" running for a high office who just happened to be an intelligence chief in Greece at the time of the massacre. We all know how that story played out in real life, and even while this book has an incontestable historical background, it does not claim to be anything more than fiction. It is excellent fiction. Much of it is narrated by some of the protagonists in the form of a diary, a deposition, and written responses to a list of questions. The deadly power of human indifference flows from these documents. This is an excellent novel even if it is not quite so beautifully written as some of Edmund Keeley's other works. After all, it must be hard to squeak beauty out of a massacre in which 146 farmers are burnt to death in a bakery.

Keeley has written a novel of masterful suspense, baring the human emotions that tore apart Greece in WWII and afterwards. His cynical narrator is soon drawn into the maelstrom: finding a secret Nazi killer who massacred countless Greek Jews and organized atrocities that wiped out whole villages of simple farmers. Keeley calls this fiction, but he was there, the people are real, and the worst one of all is still with us! Read it and learn!

Behold! The definitive book of the movie of the book of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, number one in publishing order, number two in chronological order, by Scout Driggs, the number one adaptationist in our hearts for all time! This is the finest illustrated adaptation of this short section of the book and film that this reviewer has ever had the visual and brainiacical pleasure of celebrating with my mind! Scout Driggs' formidable pen, or keyboard is put to the test, and the test is aced with remarkable confidence and deft linguistic mastery! There is no lingering in the unessential prettiness of Lewis's drudging prose, Driggs carves images tersely like butter busts of past and present Dairy Princesses on glorious display in the refrigerated arena at the State Fair! Scout Driggs if only I had a butter bust of your unmatchable intellect locked safe in my fridge, good conversation would be no further away than a piece of dry toast.

I saw this on Amazon and wondered what it was like, so I picked it up.

This is an excellent book for the kids. Adapted from the movie, the book takes the reader through The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe from Edmund's point of view and interjects what he may have been thinking along the way.

It also has black and white photos from the movie.

This small volume published by Reaktion Books is a really decent biography on the great writer Jean Genet. Edmund White's masterful biography of course is wonderful, but this little book is something I couldn't put down. It is extremely well organized - and Barber gets Genet down on paper in a very straight forward matter. Not an easy job!

It seems Reaktion's Books series 'Critical Lives' is on a great start. I am looking forward to reading the other titles in this series.

"The Selected Writings of Jean Genet" by Edmund White is arguably the best book to read if you are not familiar with Genet's writing. White is a biographer of Genet, but more importantly he is a great fan. The book includes his brief comments at the beginning of all the excerpts, which include portions of novels, plays, short stories, essays, and an interview. The comments lay out some background information which a first-time Genet reader will find useful. After reading this book, I read many of Genet's works and each time found myself referring to "Selected Writings" for added help in understanding and analysis

From book's back cover:

"Sketches from Memory is a light hearted and gently satirical look at the people who live in the heart of Paris. The enchanting and witty drawings by the French artist Hubert Sorin, and the text by Edmund White, the author of Genet and A Boy's Own Story, celebrate the foibles and eccentricities of their neighbors and friends. Here are not only the celebrated writers, dress designers, publishers and art dealers, but also the local tarts, concierges and shopkeepers.

The result is a moving and wonderfully entertaining portrait of a world, with a tragic undercurrent just beneath the sparkling surface comedy. Hubert Sorin did these drawings in the last few months of his struggle with AIDS - he died in March 1994 - and they are a tribute to the gallantry of spirit which led him to exclude everything somber from his drawings and to focus on the amusing swirl of life that was continuing in the streets under his window."

"This is a delightful book about a Secret Service man who served from Wilson through FDR. He puts a human face on all the Presidents. You see through Starlings' eyes the Presidents as they were in private. You get to see their families and their activities. This book puts a very human face on some Presidents one never gets to see as very human such as Calvin Coolidge. There are several great chapters on Coolidge and you will at times laugh out loud at Coolidge's antics. At times you will be surprised to see the inner Coolidge come out. Starling and Coolidge were fond of each other and their practical jokes played on each other are fun to read about. A excellent book if you want to see the Presidents as they truly were as ppl.

"This is a delightful book about a Secret Service man who served from Wilson through FDR. He puts a human face on all the Presidents. You see through Starlings' eyes the Presidents as they were in private. You get to see their families and their activities. This book puts a very human face on some Presidents one never gets to see as very human such as Calvin Coolidge. There are several great chapters on Coolidge and you will at times laugh out loud at Coolidge's antics. At times you will be surprised to see the inner Coolidge come out. Starling and Coolidge were fond of each other and their practical jokes played on each other are fun to read about. A excellent book if you want to see the Presidents as they truly were as ppl.

I read novels related to the gay male experience pretty voraciously. I think Edmund White is my single favorite writer. His prose is so perfectly executed that the books fly by too quickly.

He really made me laugh with this novella (the other stories are nice, but not quite the same). I share many of his foibles and obsessions, although what he considers economic stress would feel stable to me.

The clearly autobiographically-based writing continues in this novella, and he's very funny in this one about failing memories and repeating elements of stories, more or less shrugging them off.

His writing is like good ballet - only through his years of reading and study of the art of literary writing can he make it look so easy. I almost wish it were harder to read and I'm tempted to reread all his autobiographical "fiction" just for the pleasure. I would argue he is one of our relatively few real "men of letters."

Edmund White remains one of the reigning masters of committing the English language into models of communication in his intelligent, witty, wise, and compassionate novels. While some critics and admirers tend to place CHAOS: A NOVELLA AND STORIES in a lesser important ring of his work, for this reader this book works on every level. Yes, some of the ideas on which the stories are based have been the nidus for other of his more famous works, the current work (especially CHAOS) has polished the atmosphere of the plight of the aging gay man to a jewel-like presence. Reading Edmund White is as much a pleasure of the joy of reading superb prose, as it is an entry into the fascinating lives of his created characters.

In 'Chaos' we meet Jack, a man whose once successful life as a writer afforded him the luxuries of satisfying his physical needs at will. Now, his career careening down toward desperation, Jack finds his gratification in hiring men for sex. His 'employees' include a strangely assembled ex-Mormon lad named Seth and an Italian club dancer Giuseppe, both of whom, while fond of Jack's kindness and patronage, always demand cash on the line, no matter the frequency of their daily episodes with Jack. Jack's cultural needs are played out in fascinating asides, moments when the intellect must emerge and steal the podium from sensuality. And it is precisely in these moments that White exercises his facility with the language. 'Both statements were more or less true, but these half-shades became startlingly emphatic colors only because it was easier to write declarations than nuances - and sentences, once awakened on the page, began to rattle and writhe in their own direction, dangerous and hissing and no longer submissive to meaning'.

Each of the four stories carry the theme of aging, of recollection, of longing for the unattainable made out of grasp because of the erosion of time. 'Time was speeding up just as it was running out, like the last of the water draining form the sink'. But the manner in which Edmund White carves these tales is not one of desperation, of nihilism. His characters retain the sensual longing yet the inherent dignity of the Marschallin of 'Der Rosenkavalier'. And the stories are just about that operatic. Reading Edmund White is a feast, beautifully prepared. Grady Harp, October 07

I've been a fan of Edmund White ever since States of Desire which I received as a gift at a surprise birthday party when I was much younger and starting to come out. As is sometimes the case, Chaos is not an easy read, not only because of Edmund White's superior command of language, but also because he captures the truth of middle-aged gay men of my generation so well. I found myself wondering how much of what I was reading was reflective of the author and those he has known in his life and how much was from his imagination. Regardless, the book felt honest and accurate, even though fiction.

Though the title work is a little long, this is a wonderful collection of stories from a writer in his prime. White parades a succession of head-turning hunks before us, but it his aging protagonists and lonely midwest aesthete who have us turning the page.

White, Edmund. "Chaos: A Novella and Stories", Carroll and Graf, 2007.



When Life Implodes



Amos Lassen and Literary Pride



Edmund White is one of the deans of gay literature as well as a highly respected author in his own right. He is the author of over 20 books and has won numerous awards. Three of his novels are autobiographical and in his new book "Chaos" A Novella and Stories", he takes a look at what happens when gay men age.

Before he wrote "Chaos", White published "My Lives: An Autobiography" and it and the new book cover roughly the same material.

In the novella "Chaos", we meet Jack, a 66 year old university faulty member whose claim to fame is the blurbs that he writes for other's books. He worries a great deal about sex and money. And like other older gay men, he lusts after those who are younger than himself. He is not above paying for sexual favors and spends a lot of time cruising "Craig's List". When he meets Seth, a young blonde Mormon, he is quick to take out his wallet and pay him every time they have sex. In fact even when they become friends, Jack continues to pay. But Seth is only the first of many. What Jack wants in his life is culture as well as good food and men, men, men. But we also learn that Jack is not just a sexual animal, he is also a good friend--we learn this when we read of how he reacts when he learns that a good female friend is diagnosed with cancer.

One of the stories "Give It Up for Billy", looks at aging from a different aspect as does "A Good Sport". Aging has always been an important idea in gay culture and White looks at it deeply and personally. White, as usual, is iconoclastic ad he writes about maturity in much the same way he wrote about youth. White looks at growing older not as a bane but rather as a fact of life--it happens to all of us and it is something we must accept. There is a certain guilt felt as one grows more mature and this is evident in White.

I found it hard to sympathize with White's characters. I am a middle aged gay man and I am not lonely nor do I wallow in self pity or escape through opium or by paying prostitutes. However, the beauty of White's language males the plots of his stories seem unimportant.

All in all, this is a satisfying read and unfortunately it is very true. I have read some really bad reviews and I think this is because facing maturity is ever a pretty thought. Yet the world is not always pretty and Edmund White succeeds in telling a story that is not pretty in the most beautiful of ways.

This is not an easy book. It is striking and memorable. If you read it more for the immediate effect of the imagery rather than try to figure out a plot or the characters, it is much more rewarding. I'm not knowledgeable about the model of Fire Island society but that is secondary anyway. If you are looking for a real page-turner, this book is not for you. If you read slowly and visualize what the author describes, you will be amply rewarded.This book may be about life on a beach but it is not a "beach book."

Two readings straight through, back to back, and I still couldn't figure out what anyone sees in this overwrought piffle.

This is a classic novel, and one that works on several levels. A satire of Fire Island gay culture? Yes, but it works even if you have no idea that this is what the book is supposed to be "about," as I didn't when I first read it years ago. The prose is seamlessly perfect, and the device of the amnesiac narrator, which shouldn't work, actually does.

A vanished gay culture and setting (recognizably The Pines in the 1960s) transformed into an icy fantasy, with details borrowed from the ceremonial court life of ancient Japan and Java. An amnesiac narrator finds himself in an imaginary island society, at once funny and horrific, where refined, ever-changing rules govern the slightest action. He must somehow deduce his own identity from the enigmatic offhand remarks of others around him while not giving himself away.

Though infused with a gay sensibility, this is not a "gay book". In it, obsessive aestheticism and obsessive love face each other, gradually becoming deadly enemies.

White's first novel is a fascinating study of an obsessive mind in action. The narrator, who lives on an island that in some ways resembles Fire Island, is a compulsive amnesiac who is apparently terrified to admit to anyone that he doesn't know who he is or what his relationship is to the people around him. It is clear he would feel embarassed if anyone found out. But as he attempts to determine his status in this highly stratified society, it is clear that its values are very much a part of his subconscious.

Truly a book in which form reflects content, the style of the writing is self-conscious and always exquisitely phrased. This book is not for everyone. For me, however, this novel is one of the masterpieces of 20th-century literature. It is simultaneously a mystery, a comedy of manners and a haunting love story.