Edmund White, noted author, cultural critic, and playwright, continues to make his mark on the world of literature. Growing up in an era when homosexuality was socially unacceptable, he spent his teenage years searching for images of affirmation. Finding none, White would go on to build his literary career around describing and validating gay community.

With a career spanning four decades, White has provided the world with a smart, unapologetic look into the lives of gay men. Many of his novels take place in Paris, mirroring his own period of living in France from 1983 to 1990. Many of his later works focus on the difficulties of living and loving in the time of AIDS, of dealing with losses he has described as “far more painful than cathartic. ”White’s long career has produced a total of seventeen books, and he has written plays, novels, short stories, travelogues, essays, autobiographies, and biographies, including the award-winning Genet: A Biography. He has been equally influential as a cultural critic, writing scores of reviews and articles, and editing three anthologies, including Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS. His most recent book is Fanny: A Fiction, an imaginary portrayal of Fanny Wright, a controversial figure in the 1820s and 1830s first as the young mistress of General Lafayette, then as one of America’s earliest feminists and the founder of a utopian community. White’s novel takes the form of a “mock-biography” supposedly written by Frances Trollope – mother of novelist Anthony – a conservative Englishwoman whose rivalry with the radical Wright unmistakably colors her recollections of their experiences together in America. Filled with Nabokovian wit and grace, White’s first historical fiction is a comic and complex masterpiece.

Edmund White’s Website

Excerpt from Fanny: A Fiction

Interview

Questions for Edmund White

(Interview bySherri Smith)

Q1. Do you imagine an ideal audience for your work? Who?

A1. Of course every writer wants the broadest possible audience. One that is always renewing itself by attracting young readers, that is spreading through translations and that reaches across special interest groups (from gays to straights, for instance). I used to say my ideal reader was a European woman who knew English perfectly but did not live in America. Such a reader represented a sort of "screen" for me, someone who wouldn't catch allusions to American politics and brand names or current jokes unless they were explained or rendered. Later, after AIDS appeared, I wanted to communicate with other gay men about the loneliness and crisis in self-esteem that accompanied the disease. Most recently, with Fanny, I've tried to extend a hand to women readers, and I'm happy to say that every woman who has reviewed the book has liked it.

Q2. Much of your fiction is autobiographical. What have been some of the challenges, and rewards, of writing about your private life?

A2. The greatest problem about autobiographical fiction is how to make it entertaining, shapely, and fast-paced. The writer of "autofiction" as the French call it must answer the demands of truth and the exigencies of beauty. That is she or he must try to put together something that works as a story, that has momentum and suspense and a strong sense of an ending, while respecting what is sometimes painfully true and honest and sincere. I'm somewhat reserved, especially with people I don't know, but in my writing I dare myself to put down on the page secrets about myself I've never confessed, not even to a friend or lover. Exhibitionism? I wouldn't say so, since nothing about it excites me. No, it feels more like a quasi-scientific experiment, a record of a particular consciousness functioning right now.

Q3. Did living in Paris influence your writing in English? If so, how?

Q3. Before I ever lived in France I was always introducing French words and expressions into my prose. Once I lived there I wrote my least French, my most purely American novel, The Beautiful Room is Empty. I no longer was daydreaming about France; now I was feeling nostalgic about America. More significantly, when I was learning French I became so impatient with French-speakers who couldn't express their ideas clearly and simply that I began in my own writing (and conversation) to strip away distracting remarks and unnecessary qualifications. I think I'm writing a more forceful English now.

Q4. Who are the writers you currently admire?

There are so many young and not so young writers whom I admire these days. Nell Freudenberger wrote a great book with her first collection of stories, Lucky Girls. Anthony Doerr is a sort of genius in his first volume of stories, The Shell Collector. Gabe Hudson made a great impact on me with his stories about the first Gulf War, Dear Mister President. Among older writers I admire Oscar Hijuelos, I was blown away by Colm Toibin's new book about Henry James called The Master and there's a new novel by Alan Hollinghurst about to come out about the Thatcher years called The Line of Beauty . I won't even bother to list all the established writers I love, from Joyce Carol Oates to Michael Cunningham to Don DeLillo....

Biography

Edmund White won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Genet: A Biography and has received the Award for Literature from the National Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1993 was made a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He is noted for writing successfully in several genres, including cultural criticism, fiction, travelogue, biography, drama, and autobiography. His ambitious autobiographical tetralogy includes A Boy's Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988), The Farewell Symphony (1997), and The Married Man (2000). His most recent book is his first historical novel, Fanny: A Fiction. White has taught at many universities, and currently directs the Creative Writing program at Princeton University.