Synopses & Reviews
States of Desire Revisited looks back from the twenty-first century at a pivotal moment in the late 1970s: Gay Liberation was a new and flourishing movement of creative culture, political activism, and sexual freedom, just before the 1980s devastation of AIDS. Edmund White traveled America, recording impressions of gay individuals and communities that remain perceptive and captivating today. He noted politicos in D.C. working the system, in-fighting radicals in New York and San Francisco, butch guys in Houston and self-loathing but courteous gentlemen in Memphis, the "Fifties in Deep Freeze" in Kansas City, progressive thinkers with conservative style in Minneapolis and Portland, wealth and beauty in Los Angeles, and, in Santa Fe, a desert retreat for older gays and lesbians since the 1920s.
White frames those past travels with a brief, bracing review of gay America since the 1970s ("now we were all supposed to settle down with a partner in the suburbs and adopt a Korean daughter"), and a reflection on how Internet culture has diminished unique gay places and scenes but brought isolated individuals into a global GLBTQ community.
Review
"Edmund White is one of the few living writers who has the capacity to turn me into a good listener. States of Desire is consistently smart and funny."Fran Lebowitz
Review
"Commands attention and respect. . . . Mr. White doesn't so much evoke the people he talks to as he dismantles them down to their cogs and springs."New York Times
Synopsis
Edmund White looks back at the varied cultures of the 1970s Gay Liberation era across the United States just before the 1980s devastation of AIDS, and in an afterword reflects on the internets role today in creating a new global GLBTQ community.
Synopsis
"Lusty . . . strenuous comedy . . . Amado is Brazil's most illustrious and venerable novelist."
New York Times
About the Author
Edmund White is the author of more than twenty books, including
A Boy's Own Story,
The Beautiful Room Is Empty,
The Farewell Symphony,
My Lives,
City Boy, and
Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris. He lives in New York City and teaches creative writing at Princeton University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Portland and Seattle
Santa Fe, Salt Lake City, and Denver
Texas
The Midwest
Florida and the South
New York City
Boston and Washington, D.C.
Epilogue: Self-Criticism
Afterword