Edmund Valentine White III (born January 13, 1940) is a gay American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and essayist. He is the recipient ofLambda Literary's Visionary Award, theNational Book Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award,[1] and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.[2] France made himChevalier (and laterOfficier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993.
White is known as a groundbreaking writer ofgay literature and a major influence on gay American literature and has been called "the first major queer novelist to champion a new generation of writers."[3]
Edmund White grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and attended the exclusive Cranbrook School in Michigan as a boy. As he recounts in his novelThe Beautiful Room is Empty, White was accepted to Harvard, but chose to stay near his therapist at home, who had assured White he could "cure" his homosexuality. He majored in Chinese at the University of Michigan.[4]
White declined admission toHarvard University's Chinesedoctoral program in favor of following a lover to New York. There he freelanced forNewsweek and spent seven years working as a staffer atTime-Life Books.[5] After briefly relocating toRome, San Francisco, and then returning to New York, he was briefly employed as an editor for theSaturday Review when the magazine was based in San Francisco in the early 1970s; after the magazine folded in 1973, White returned to New York to editHorizon (a quarterly cultural journal) and freelance as a writer and editor for entities such as Time-Life andThe New Republic.[5]
White wrote books and plays while a youth, including one unpublished novel titledMrs Morrigan.[6]
White's debut novel,Forgetting Elena (1973), set on an island, can be read as commenting on gay culture in a coded manner.[7][8] TheRussian-American novelistVladimir Nabokov called it "a marvelous book".[9] Written with his psychotherapist[10]Charles Silverstein,The Joy of Gay Sex (1977) made him known to a wider readership.[11] It is celebrated for its sex-positive tone.[12] His next novel,Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978) was explicitly gay-themed and drew on his own life.[13]
From 1980 to 1981, White was a member of a gay writers' group,The Violet Quill, which met briefly during that period, and includedAndrew Holleran andFelice Picano.[14] White's autobiographic works are frank and unapologetic about his promiscuity and his HIV-positive status.[15]
In 1980, White brought outStates of Desire, a survey of some aspects of gay life in America. In 1982, he helped found the groupGay Men's Health Crisis in New York City.[16][17] In the same year appeared White's best-known work,A Boy's Own Story — the first volume of an autobiographic-fiction series, continuing withThe Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) andThe Farewell Symphony (1997), describing stages in the life of a gay man from boyhood to middle age. Several characters in the latter novel are recognizably based on well-known people from White's New York-centered literary and artistic milieu.[18]
From 1983 to 1990 White lived in France. He moved there initially for one year in 1983 via theGuggenheim Fellowship for writing he had received, but took such a liking to Paris "with its drizzle, as cool, grey and luxurious as chinchilla," (as he described it in his autobiographical novelThe Farewell Symphony) that he stayed there for longer.[16] French philosopherMichel Foucault invited him for dinner on several occasions, though he dismissed White's concerns aboutHIV/AIDS (Foucault would die of the illness shortly afterward).[16] In 1984 in Paris, shortly after discovering he was HIV-positive, White joined the French HIV/AIDS organization,AIDES.[16] During this period, he brought out his novel,Caracole (1985), which centers on heterosexual relationships.[19] But he also maintained an interest in France and French literature, writing biographies ofJean Genet,Marcel Proust andArthur Rimbaud.[20] He publishedGenet: a biography (1993),Our Paris: sketches from memory (1995),Marcel Proust (1998),The Flaneur: a stroll through the paradoxes of Paris (2000) andRimbaud (2008). He spent seven years writing the biography of Genet.[16]
White came back to the United States in 1997.[6]The Married Man, a novel published in 2000, is gay-themed and draws on White's life.[21]Fanny: A Fiction (2003) is a historical novel about novelistFrances Trollope and social reformerFrances Wright in early 19th-century America.[6] White's 2006 playTerre Haute (produced in New York City in 2009) portrays discussions that take place when a prisoner, based on terrorist bomberTimothy McVeigh, is visited by a writer based onGore Vidal. (In real life McVeigh and Vidal corresponded but did not meet.)[22]
In 2005 White published his autobiography,My Lives — organized by theme rather than chronology – and in 2009 his memoir of New York life in the 1960s and 1970s,City Boy.[23][20]
White taught at Brown University in the early 90s, and in 1999 became professor of creative writing inPrinceton University's Lewis Center for the Arts.[16][24]
In 2025, well into his 80s, White published a sex memoir,The Loves of My Life, to acclaim.[25]
White has received numerous awards and distinctions. Recipient of the inaugural Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 1989,[26] he is also the namesake of the organization'sEdmund White Award for Debut Fiction.[27]
In 2014, Edmund White was presented with the Bonham Centre Award from the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies,University of Toronto, for his contributions to the advancement and education of issues around sexual identification.[28]
White is frequently noted as a major influence on gay American writers and literature. ThePublishing Triangle named their award for Debut LGBT Fiction theEdmund White Award.
French writerEdouard Louis has said, "In France, White's books are not just considered important on a literary level — they're also a fundamental step in the construction of the gay self."[3] Other writers of note who have cited his influence includeGarth Greenwell,Garrard Conley, andAlexander Chee.[3]
In his 2005 memoirMy Lives, White citesJean Genet,Marcel Proust andAndré Gide as influences, writing: "they convinced me that homosexuality was crucial to the development of the modern novel because it led to a resurrection of love, a profound skepticism about the naturalness of gender roles and a revival of the classical tradition of same-sex love that dominated Western poetry and prose until the birth of Christ".[23]
White was present at theStonewall Inn in 1969 when theStonewall uprising began.[44] He later wrote, "Ours may have been the firstfunny revolution."[45] "When someone shouted 'Gay is good' in imitation of 'Black is beautiful', we all laughed... Then I caught myself foolishly imagining that gays might someday constitute a community rather than a diagnosis".[46]
White identifies as gay and is also anatheist, though he was reared as aChristian Scientist.[6][16] He discovered he was HIV-positive in 1985.[16] However, he is a "non-progressor", one of the small percentage of cases that have not led to AIDS.[6] He is in a long-termopen relationship with the American writerMichael Carroll,[6] living with him from 1995 onward.[16] They married in November 2013.[47]
In June 2012, Carroll reported that White was making a "remarkable" recovery after suffering two strokes in previous months.[48] He has also had a heart attack.[49]
^abWhite, Edmund (2009)."How did one edit Nabokov?".City Boy. Archived fromthe original on September 26, 2015.Gerald Clarke...had gone to Montreux to do an interview with Nabokov forEsquire, and followed the usual drill...On his last evening in Switzerland he confronted Nabokov over drinks: 'So whom do you like?' he asked—since the great man had so far only listed his dislikes and aversions. 'Edmund White' Nabokov responded. 'He wroteForgetting Elena. It's a marvelous book." He'd then gone on to list titles byJohn Updike andDelmore Schwartz (particularly the short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities"), as well as Robbe-Grillet'sJealousy among a few others.
^Altmann, Jennifer (July–August 2021)."Trailblazer in Gay Lit"(PDF).Princeton Alumni Weekly. RetrievedSeptember 18, 2021.
^abParini, Jay (January 16, 2010)."City Boy by Edmund White, and Chaos by Edmund White".The Guardian. RetrievedSeptember 28, 2022.In My Lives: An Autobiography (2005), White dug into his primary material with clinical savagery, examining his life not in chronological terms but by subjects, such as 'My Shrinks', 'My Hustlers' and so on.
^Aletti, Vince (May 23, 2000)."Amour No More".The Village Voice. New York. RetrievedSeptember 28, 2022.
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