Arts and Letters

by Edmund White

Overview

A dazzling collection of profiles and interviews by the preeminent American cultural essayist of our time.

In these 39 lively essays and profiles, best-selling novelist and biographer Edmund White draws on his wide reading and his sly good humor to illuminate some of the most influential writers, artists, and cultural icons of the past century: among them, Marcel Proust, Catherine Deneuve, George Eliot, Andy Warhol, André Gide, David Geffen, and Robert Mapplethorpe. Whether he’s praising Nabokov’s sensuality, or critiquing Elton John’s walk (“as though he’s a wind-up doll that’s been overwound and sent heading for the top of the stairs”), or describing serendipitous moments in his seven-year-long research into the life of Genet, White is unfailingly observant, erudite, and entertaining.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781573445733
Publisher:	Start Publishing Llc
Publication date:	10/01/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	380
File size:	687 KB

About the Author

Edmund White is the author of 20 books, including The Married Man, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, The Farewell Symphony, and A Boy's Own Story. He lived in Paris for many years and wrote The Flâneur and Our Paris about his time there. A regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and Vanity Fair, White is the director of the creative writing program at Princeton University and lives in New York City. Arts and Letters “Edmund White tells such a good story that I’m ready to listen to anything he wants to talk about.” — The New York Times “As a writer, White possesses the rare combination of a poetic sense of language and an ironic sense of humor.” —Newsweek
Author Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on January 13, 1940. He majored in Chinese at the University of Michigan. Before spending a year in Rome, he worked for Time-Life Books from 1962 until 1970. Upon his return, he became an editor for The Saturday Review and Horizon. He lived in France from 1983 until 1990. His works have chronicled gay life with such books as A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	Letters
	Writing Gay	3
	The New Historical Novel	21
	George Eliot	35
	Ivan Bunin	50
	Knut Hamsun	55
	Marcel Proust	62
	Andre Gide	65
	Oscar Wilde	76
	Joe Orton	87
	Paul Bowles	91
	Allen Ginsberg	100
	Djuna Barnes	108
	Marjorie Garber	116
	Bruce Chatwin	123
	Edwin Denby	128
	Coleman Dowell	133
	Grace Paley	137
	Jean Genet	142
	Michel Foucault	155
	Alain Robbe-Grillet	160
	James Merrill	167
	Christopher Isherwood	176
	Ned Rorem	184
	James Baldwin	196
	Vladimir Nabokov	200
	Arts
	Marcel Duchamp	221
	Andy Warhol	226
	Gilbert and George	229
	Joe Brainard	234
	Steve Wolfe	242
	Rebecca Horn	249
	Cy Twombly	255
	Jasper Johns	267
	Herbert List	277
	Robert Mapplethorpe	291
	Personalities
	Yves Saint Laurent	307
	Catherine Deneuve	321
	David Geffen	333
	Elton John	349
	About the Author	363

Editorial Reviews

As a writer, White possesses the rare combination of a poetic sense of language and an ironic sense of humor.

Newsweek

Edmund White tells such a good story that I'm ready to listen to anything he wants to talk about.

The New York Times

Novelist and biographer White has gathered together a collection of his reviews, essays, lectures, and profiles on authors and artists, written from 1979 to 2003 for various journals, books, web sites, and symposium presentations. Rewritten or revised to seem more up to date, the pieces are organized into three sections: "Letters" (the longest), "Arts," and "Personalities" (e.g., Elton John). White, a gay writer, is mostly concerned with other homosexual artists. There are also three general essays on writing gay literature, the new historical novel, and bisexuality. White picks subjects he admires (e.g., Proust, Oscar Wilde) but also writes about those writers and artists he has befriended over the years. As in all compilations, there are highs and lows, but even the less successful pieces are enlivened by White's interest in his subjects. Recommended for most larger public and academic libraries, and for fans of White's writing.-Morris Hounion, Ursula C. Schwerin Lib., New York City Coll. of Tech., CUNY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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