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My Lives: A Memoir

Name: My Lives: A Memoir
Author: Edmund White
ISBN: 9780060937966

by Edmund White

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Overview

No one has been more frank, lucid, and entertaining about growing up gay in Middle America than Edmund White. Best known for his autobiographical novels, starting with A Boy's Own Story, White here takes fiction out of his story and delivers the facts of his life in all their shocking and absorbing verity. In My Lives, White shares his enthusiasms and his passions, and he introduces us to his lovers and predilections.

Synopsis

No one has been more frank, lucid, and entertaining about growing up gay in Middle America than Edmund White. Best known for his autobiographical novels, starting with A Boy's Own Story, White here takes fiction out of his story and delivers the facts of his life in all their shocking and absorbing verity. In My Lives, White shares his enthusiasms and his passions, and he introduces us to his lovers and predilections.

Publishers Weekly

White-a prolific essayist, novelist, biographer (of Proust and Genet), travel writer, critic and all-around man of letters-has mined the events and circumstances of his own life frequently and vividly, and has been the subject of two biographies. Wisely, he has not attempted a straightforward autobiography, but instead a collection of essays or meditations, beginning, tellingly, with "My Shrinks," an introduction to his early struggles with homosexuality and later with other problems; the psychoanalytic process led him to "the conviction that everyone is worth years and years of intense scrutiny-not a bad credo for a novelist." Essays on White's divorced parents-his conservative Republican father and hard-working, indulgent mother-are followed by "My Hustlers," which features the kind of candid writing about sex and relationships that has made White a gay icon. His close women friends aren't neglected, nor is the expatriate life he has often described before, including his friendship with French philosopher Michel Foucault. White delivers more on sex than any other subject (which will please many of his fans), but there's plenty more in these gracefully written pieces to engage the intellect, the emotions and even that part of us that responds to name-dropping. For a Princeton professor, White gets around. Photos. (Apr. 1) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

About the Author, Edmund White

Edmund White is the author of the novels Fanny: A Fiction, A Boy's Own Story, The Farewell Symphony, and The Married Man; a biography of Jean Genet; a study of Marcel Proust; and, most recently, a memoir, My Lives. Having lived in Paris for many years, he has now settled in New York, and he teaches at Princeton University.

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Editorials

Patrick McGrath

"One of the most brilliant and distinguished authors at work in America today."

Associated Press Staff

"It is White’s astounding use of language and structure that makes My Lives a scintillating read."

Rocky Mountain News

"My Lives is a brave book because White lets it all hang out."

Harper's Magazine

"Edmund White gave up drinking, smoking, and Paris, too, despite which he’s writing better than ever."

Boston Sunday Globe

"Delicious reading...the story of White’s life is fully engrossing."

Associated Press

“It is White’s astounding use of language and structure that makes My Lives a scintillating read.”

The Oregonian (Portland)

"White the humane observer and eloquent stylist can make you stand up and cheer."

San Francisco Chronicle

"The great strength of My Lives is its ruthless honesty."

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

The prolific novelist, memoirist and biographer (The Married Man, 2000, etc.) journeys through a lifetime of family, friends, lovers, work and play-at home and abroad. Whether in fiction or nonfiction, White has essentially been writing about his life for years; he even identifies here the real-life inspirations for some of his fictional characters. But now he directly addresses his own story, inviting readers in a friendly, deceptively casual voice to follow him on a ramble through 65 years of life. White divides the book into fundamental subjects (My Mother, My Father, My Europe, My Friends, etc.), and his text moves in broad swoops. A consideration of Paris, for example, covers not only the years White spent there, writing and knowing the city's writers, but embraces as well topics including French lessons at a Midwestern prep school and American notions of Parisians. His discourses inevitably come to rest, as his life apparently has, on the matter of love, which he searches out in many guises, finds, loses, then finds again. He recalls the absence of love from a cold, dullish father and the love of a misguided mother that made him wince. Throughout, he muses on his love of men: high-school friends, blond boyfriends and hustlers, a subculture that's fascinated, excited and satisfied him since he was a young man. Prudes and homophobes beware: The descriptions of his sexual relationships, especially in a section titled "My Master," are vivid and explicit. White can be viewed here and in his other works, no matter what their subjects, as a quintessential travel-writer: His cultural, historic and artistic perceptions, as well as his sensory descriptions, are sharp and deeply perceptive,creating a rich sense of time and place.