Letters to the Editor
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Imprinted on my youth
I read "Nocturne for the King of Naples" when it first appeared on the shelves of Lambda Rising Book Store, in Washington, D.C. I still have the first edition.
That book, in its reveries of prose, enchanted me beyond imagination. When I later collected a few poems into a slim volume, I boldly sent one off to Edmund White, since I had used a quote from "Nocturnes" as an epigraph. To my astonishment, he became a gentle correspondent and even something of an occasional mentor. Excitements have been his stock-in-trade, for many years.
"Forgetting Elena" still haunts me in ways that I will never reconcile. It's fantasy has, more than once, taken over my dreams and so thoroughly gulled me that I came near to losing myself in its speculations. No other book has ever had that effect on me.
We are not really a culture of letters or liberal arts, anymore, if we ever were. Nabokov shrewdly held up the mirror to our cultural vacuity. White refracts our world still further, and in the most delightfully adept prose imaginable.
Ah, to be a young man, again, and have the luck to stumble onto such excitements, once more.
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...missed it by THAT much...
Why is it that whenever a straight male author reviews work by a gay author, he inevitably feels compelled to point out to his readers that he isn't gay, no siree bob?
Barra came oh so close to simply letting his piece be about White's work, but then, in the very last sentence, there it is -- that reflexive, defensive assertion of heterosexuality, serving as a not-so-gentle reassurance to the reader: "See, it's OK. I know he's gay, but I'm straight, and I promise you there's nothing to be afraid of."
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my lives
Allen Barra has written one of the most thoughtful pieces I've ever received. Sometimes in our hasty careless country a writer feels he's not reaching anyone. I'm so pleased and proud that My Lives was able to reach this discerning, intelligent critic. Edmund White
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White is overrated.
I think White is another product of American pop-culture. He's only famous because he's gay and writing scandalous/exciting stories. He is not "literary" and what he writes could easily be on the grocery store aisle with Fabio on the cover if it were straight stories. Yet, being a pop culture addict--i have seen him read every time he's come to Minneapolis and have read 4 of his books. Sad, I know. The reason writing is somewhat dead (there are some rare gems out there) is because of this mass merchandising, glam up a story to make a buck culture.