The first gay book that I ever read was in the early 1990s and it was A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White. I nervously ordered it through the Barnes & Noble mail order catalog since there were no stores anywhere near me in rural Georgia. Ordering it through the mail also saved me the embarrassment of buying it in person in a store in Atlanta. The coming of age story was all too familiar to my own experience and it helped connect me to a larger gay world that I knew existed, but was too shy to join. My relationship to that book was likely the same as many other young gay men of Generation X and the Baby Boomer generation.
Edmund White became an inspiration to me and a personal favorite among gay writers. I went on to fall in love with The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Farewell Symphony which were also based on his life. That trilogy of novels were the model on which I based my own novels about my life as a young gay boy to early adulthood. I owe a debt to Edmund White and so do many other gay writers of my generation.
Edmund White died last week at age eighty-five in Manhattan. The obituaries and tributes spilled across the internet from across the literary spectrum and from fans in praise of his work. He was a gay literary legend and everyone in that world knew him, met him or he knew them; he was often a notorious name dropper in some of his books and interviews. White left behind a husband, a legacy of over thirty books and a rich life. He lived in Rome, New York, San Francisco and Paris during the sexual freedom of the 1970s, the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, more widespread acceptance of gay life in the 2000s and he had been living with HIV since 1984. He was still writing and publishing into 2025 with his last memoir, The Loves of My Life.
A 2014 interview of Edmund by Dennis Cooper in Interview Magazine.
A 1983 interview of Edmund in The Paris Review. He discusses his writing and teaching.
In 1980, Edmund White appeared on the Studs Terkel show for an extended interview. He was promoting his latest book, a travel book, called States of Desire.
From a local perspective, Atlanta is in the book and some of his observations still have some merit today. The gay scene can be racially segregated, but much of what remains is self segregation and not enforced by discriminatory door policies. The scene, as I knew it later on, was diverse in bars such as Blake's, Heretic, Ten, Burkhart's, WETbar, Jungle and other places. Gay men were far more likely to segregate along their desires for twinks, bears, leather queens or other factors.
It is interesting Edmund, who was very open about his sexual voraciousness and desire for much younger partners, comes across as a bit of a priss and hypocrite on sexuality and ageism in this interview. There is also discussion about the 1980 gay murder movie, Cruising, which was at the time despised by gay activists because it dared show sex cruising in clubs and in the Ramble in Central Park. Activists did not like what they considered a negative portrayal of gay men even though it was accurate to some degree. I love the movie and think the activists were wrong. Pacino was fantastic in it. The film was the second gay movie by director William Friedkin, The Boys In The Band from 1970, and is a classic too.
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