More than any other novelist, Edmund White has shaped our understanding of gay life. He died at 85 years of age. Born in Ohio and raised in the Midwest, White started his literary career in east-central Illinois. He had lived there all his life until moving to New York City, then later San Francisco. As his career as a freelance writer blossomed in these counterculture epicenters, that success would propel him to runs as a dynamic magazine editor and cultural force in the literary establishment.
White’s many academic contributions included faculty positions at Brown University, where he taught for a time before joining Princeton University as a professor of creative writing. He was right to call the late 1970s the first decade of gay fiction most profound transformation since its inception. Before this turn, a lot of gay literature was pen for the straights. White’s generation of writers had the gay audience in their crosshairs. He thought this focus really shined through in their impact-driven storytelling.
His most famous work, A Boy’s Own Story, published in 1982, was a watershed moment in gay literature. This fresh, imaginative novel opens up a new, original trilogy. Predictably, it’s based largely on White’s real life experiences, particularly his odyssey from boyhood to middle age. The trilogy produced two of his most distinguished works, The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Farewell Symphony. Both books explore themes of identity and sexuality with a hard-hitting truth.
And, in the years after publication of his biography of Robert E. Lee, White published over 30 other books. His first book, a novel called Forgetting Elena, was published in 1973. It went on to be praised by such literary luminaries as Vladimir Nabokov, who hailed it as “a marvelous book.” In 1977, White co-authored The Joy of Gay Sex with Charles Silverstein. This groundbreaking guide offered practical advice and deep understanding about gay sexual partnerships, as we saw outside the realm of fiction.
In 1984 White learned that he was HIV positive, an event that would deeply shape both his life and work. His time living in France from 1983 to 1990 was marked by personal connections with influential thinkers such as Michel Foucault. In that time he created acclaimed portraits of the most indefinable geniuses of their time, Jean Genet, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. His biography of Genet received a Pulitzer Prize, cementing his status among other distinguished writers.
Reflecting on his contributions to literature and the gay community, White once remarked, “Gay fiction before that, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote, was written for straight readers. We had a gay readership in mind, and that made all the difference. We didn’t have to spell out what Fire Island was.”
Colleagues and friends remembered him fondly. Michael Carroll commented on White’s character: “He was wise enough to be kind nearly always. He was generally beyond exasperation and was generous. I keep thinking of something to tell him before I remember.”
White’s fight with HIV was a constant issue in his later life. He candidly shared his thoughts on mortality: “I wasn’t surprised, but I was very gloomy,” expressing a sense of acceptance about his fate. At one point, he quipped, “Oh gee, I’ll be dead in a year or two,” demonstrating his dark humor even amidst serious challenges.