macbethundead's review against another edition
4.0
Touchant et grv intéressant. Recommendé à tous ceux qui s'intéressent à l'histoire des milieux intellectuels gays new-yorkais des années 60/70
moodswinger's review against another edition
4.0
This one is a tough book to rate. Edmund White devotes much of the book to namedropping and gossip, which can be a complete delight if you know which famous figure he's talking about (oh, those 10 pages about Vladimir Nabokov--I could've read a whole book like that!) or mind-numbing if you don't. The sections about his stays in Venice and The People to Know in Venice were hard to get through.
City Boy is my first White book. I came to him through Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On, as White was a GMHC founder. I wasn't aware just what a social climber White is! He owes much of his career to his friends, so it's a bit of a mystery (even to himself, by his own admission) that he pulled such a dick move on Susan Sontag and her son by trashing them in Caracole.
On the other hand, it makes sense for Larry Kramer (another GMHC founder) to invite White and ensure that he was a member. Edmund White was invited because he was a big name among gay writers, but outside of those circles as well. How many writers can say that Nabokov called their first novel a "marvelous book", that Sontag pulled strings to get him awards, and that he was friends, or at least friendly, with James Merrill, Michel Foucault, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peggy Guggenheim, and Jasper Johns? All of this is information I learned from this book, so you can guess just what amount of gossip and namedropping was involved.
But I would say that Edmund White is a striking writer. City Boy can get tiring, but it also contains a lot of laugh out loud moments, evocative descriptions of his friends, and complex philosophical ideas made simple enough to understand all at once. White has a vast vocabulary, and you're bound to learn at least one new word.
One strike against this memoir is that White meanders seemingly pointlessly for about 95%, to pull the whole thing together beautifully in the last few pages. I choked back tears, heartbroken, while reading that last section; a section that went over all of the friends who died from AIDS, that loss of a generation which was replaced by a sleeker, safer New York. The New York that Edmund White describes in the book is unsafe and dirty, but it also enabled a Midwestern nobody like Edmund White to more or less support himself until he started publishing reliably.
It's this last section which pushed the book to a 4-star rating, when I was almost certain it would be three. This is a book that deserves a re-read, it deserves a project to go through all the names, link them to their work, to pictures and to their literary, academic or historical importance. It also invites comparisons between Kramer and White. Undoubtedly, Kramer would've loved to have half the friends and influence that White does--although I'm sure he doesn't care much anymore. I guess the difference is that while Kramer is an off-putting, self-righteous man who demands to be listened (and I love him for it!), White must have a much more pleasant personality. Or so, I figure, Sontag must've thought until Caracole.
City Boy is my first White book. I came to him through Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On, as White was a GMHC founder. I wasn't aware just what a social climber White is! He owes much of his career to his friends, so it's a bit of a mystery (even to himself, by his own admission) that he pulled such a dick move on Susan Sontag and her son by trashing them in Caracole.
On the other hand, it makes sense for Larry Kramer (another GMHC founder) to invite White and ensure that he was a member. Edmund White was invited because he was a big name among gay writers, but outside of those circles as well. How many writers can say that Nabokov called their first novel a "marvelous book", that Sontag pulled strings to get him awards, and that he was friends, or at least friendly, with James Merrill, Michel Foucault, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peggy Guggenheim, and Jasper Johns? All of this is information I learned from this book, so you can guess just what amount of gossip and namedropping was involved.
But I would say that Edmund White is a striking writer. City Boy can get tiring, but it also contains a lot of laugh out loud moments, evocative descriptions of his friends, and complex philosophical ideas made simple enough to understand all at once. White has a vast vocabulary, and you're bound to learn at least one new word.
One strike against this memoir is that White meanders seemingly pointlessly for about 95%, to pull the whole thing together beautifully in the last few pages. I choked back tears, heartbroken, while reading that last section; a section that went over all of the friends who died from AIDS, that loss of a generation which was replaced by a sleeker, safer New York. The New York that Edmund White describes in the book is unsafe and dirty, but it also enabled a Midwestern nobody like Edmund White to more or less support himself until he started publishing reliably.
It's this last section which pushed the book to a 4-star rating, when I was almost certain it would be three. This is a book that deserves a re-read, it deserves a project to go through all the names, link them to their work, to pictures and to their literary, academic or historical importance. It also invites comparisons between Kramer and White. Undoubtedly, Kramer would've loved to have half the friends and influence that White does--although I'm sure he doesn't care much anymore. I guess the difference is that while Kramer is an off-putting, self-righteous man who demands to be listened (and I love him for it!), White must have a much more pleasant personality. Or so, I figure, Sontag must've thought until Caracole.
bucket's review
3.0
Ed White describes life in New York City in the 60s and 70s. His status as both gay man and writer are key to his experiences and how he describes them.
The book is more about other people - his friends, lovers, etc - than it is about him. Many famous people feature, including Susan Sontag, William Burroughs, and James Merrill among many other. The book is also more about the signs of the times than it is about him - he describes how the influx of gay men and writers into New York turned it into a place where promiscuity was part of life and where free love and separating friends from lovers from fuck buddies was the order of the day. This turned into the beginnings of the gay rights movement and beginning to see being gay as natural and part of your identity rather than as a disease or psychological issue. He then describes how AIDS changed all this in 1981, and how many of the people he'd known began to die of the disease. He and virtually all of his contemporaries who were living the same lifestyle are HIV positive and a large number of them have already died.
I expected more about Ed White, but in some ways his discussions of the gay/writer culture in New York is probably more interesting. However, this isn't an overly personal story, though White does indicate his particular involvement with each person he mentions (sexual, professional, friendship, etc) in a factual sort of way.
That said, there are some nice passages throughout that give a good sense of White's feelings about this period of his life:
"Love is a source of anxiety until it is a source of boredom; only friendship feeds the spirit."
"Because fiction depended on telling details and an exact and lifelike sequencing of emotions, and on representative if not slavishly mimetic dialogue, and on convincing actions, it required heightened and calculating powers of observation...for a writer even the dreariest, most featureless evening among dullards became a subject for sastire, a source of "notes" on the new bourgeoisie, a challenge to one's powers to discriminate among almost interchangeable shades of gray."
Themes: New York City, 1960s, 1970s, writer culture, gay culture, AIDS, literature, art, friendship, sex, autobiography
The book is more about other people - his friends, lovers, etc - than it is about him. Many famous people feature, including Susan Sontag, William Burroughs, and James Merrill among many other. The book is also more about the signs of the times than it is about him - he describes how the influx of gay men and writers into New York turned it into a place where promiscuity was part of life and where free love and separating friends from lovers from fuck buddies was the order of the day. This turned into the beginnings of the gay rights movement and beginning to see being gay as natural and part of your identity rather than as a disease or psychological issue. He then describes how AIDS changed all this in 1981, and how many of the people he'd known began to die of the disease. He and virtually all of his contemporaries who were living the same lifestyle are HIV positive and a large number of them have already died.
I expected more about Ed White, but in some ways his discussions of the gay/writer culture in New York is probably more interesting. However, this isn't an overly personal story, though White does indicate his particular involvement with each person he mentions (sexual, professional, friendship, etc) in a factual sort of way.
That said, there are some nice passages throughout that give a good sense of White's feelings about this period of his life:
"Love is a source of anxiety until it is a source of boredom; only friendship feeds the spirit."
"Because fiction depended on telling details and an exact and lifelike sequencing of emotions, and on representative if not slavishly mimetic dialogue, and on convincing actions, it required heightened and calculating powers of observation...for a writer even the dreariest, most featureless evening among dullards became a subject for sastire, a source of "notes" on the new bourgeoisie, a challenge to one's powers to discriminate among almost interchangeable shades of gray."
Themes: New York City, 1960s, 1970s, writer culture, gay culture, AIDS, literature, art, friendship, sex, autobiography
neiljung78's review
3.0
Not quite what I was expecting, more literary and less rock n roll (despite the blurb promising Dylan and Mama Cass) but probably all the better for that.
pogue's review
1.0
If I had picked this book up on my own I would have never finished it. This is a book for a reading group. I thought it would be a good book, I thought it would talk about thy history of New York City and what it was like to be gay back then. After the first few pages it was all name dropping, and 90% of the people I have never heard of. I had to google most of them, and then I was still not impressed.
The only other part of the book that I found intersting and human was when the author talked about the death of his father. I wish I could get the hours back in my life that I waisted reading this.
The only other part of the book that I found intersting and human was when the author talked about the death of his father. I wish I could get the hours back in my life that I waisted reading this.
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