Synopses & Reviews
Review
Praise for Edmund White
"Sexy and amazingly knowledgeable. You'll feel like stampeding to a bookstore once Edmund White gets through with you."--John Waters
[The Burning Library] reveals what a fine essayist [White] is. White's descriptions of gay male life of the past 30 years and the changes in attitude that have occurred among gay men toward themselves and their sexuality are clear, forceful, intelligent, and thought-provoking
White offers other essays and reviews of the work of contemporary writers, American and European, gay and nongay, such as James Merrill, Christina Stead, Darryl Pinckney, and Marguerite Yourcenar. This material, together with White's discussions of his own fiction, provides valuable insights into the reading and writing of literature.”Library Journal
The doyen of his now middle-aged generation of gay novelists, White writes seductively well. He is facile, amusing, chatty, convivial, accessibly intellectual--in short, he possesses just the qualities that make his cultural journalism, of which this book affords a generous sampling spanning 25 years, delightful
”Booklist
"By marrying biography and criticism [Arts and Letters] achieves a grand social critique.”Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon, winner of the National Book Award
"Edmund White's 39 reviews, interviews and essays...are a shocking display of friendliness, optimism, openness and tact.”Los Angeles Times Book Review
Synopsis
Edmund White is one of our most celebrated novelists. He is also a brilliant journalist and cultural commentator on the arts, contributing to publications as varied The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Washington Post, House and Garden, and the New York Review of Books. In Sacred Monsters, White collects more than twenty of his most recent writings on artists and authors, including John Cheever, Patti Smith, Henry James, Mary Cassatt, Paul Bowles, Andy Warhol, John Singer Sargent, Vladimir Nabokov, Auguste Rodin, Edith Wharton, Christopher Isherwood, Martin Amis, Allen Ginsberg, Marguerite Duras, John Rechy, Ford Maddox Ford, David Hockney, Reynolds Price, E.M. Forster, James Abbott McNeil Whistler, and Marcel Proust, among others.
About the Author
Edmund White is a 2010 National Book Critics Circle finalist for his memoir City Boy. He is also the author of many works, including the autobiographical novel A Boy's Own Story and a popular travel book titled Le Flaneur. He was a recipient of the Lambda Literary Foundation's 2009 Pioneer Award in recognition of his tremendous contributions to LGBT literature. White lives in New York City and chairs the creative writing department at Princeton University.