Loading...
9th out of 18 books
—
17 voters
My rating:
add to my books
My Lives
by
Edmund White
No one has been more frank, lucid, rueful and entertaining about growing up gay in Middle America than Edmund White. Best known for his autobiographical novels, starting with A Boy's Own Story, White here takes fiction out of his story and delivers the facts of his life in all their shocking and absorbing verity.
From an adolescence in the 1950s, an era that tried to "
...moreHardcover, 356 pages
Published
April 1st 2006
by Ecco Press
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
269)
At a certain juncture in My Lives, Edmund White jokes that the reader must certainly be saying to himself, “TMI! Too much information!” White is, at that point, talking in extravagant detail about his sex life—but then it’s something of a challenge to find a moment in My Lives when he isn’t talking about his sex life, or other people’s, or describing his partners’ physical endowments with the appraising eye of the steer judge at the county fair. When the book is done, the feeling one is left wit...more
view all 3 comments
This is an exceptionally well written book and is easy to read. I liked the way the chapters were arranged with a chapter on important groups and individuals. There is a chapter on mother and father, but the first chapter is entitled My Shrinks! There are other chapters on hustlers, women, blondes, Genet and son on. It is a remarkable chronicle of gay history pre and post AIDS.
However, there are a lot of very graphic sexual descriptions in this book and at times, as White says himself, th...more
However, there are a lot of very graphic sexual descriptions in this book and at times, as White says himself, th...more
The author's willingness to share his most intimate feelings is present in every section of this impressive biography. The stories of his lives, whether as a boy trying to deal with a distant father or a man sharing his body and mind with other men, contain and contrast emotions that become palpable for the reader. Can the unique experiences of a boy from the Midwest become universal for his readers whether gay or straight? Do his lives in Paris or in leather seem fantasies or real stories to...more
Autobiography has the inherent danger of self-indulgence, and to my mind, White has hit the wall. This most remarkable writer, who helped shape modern gay literature, here spools endless tales of his family, his blondes, his hustlers, and a few other less than riveting topics. His elegance as a writer cannot really mask the shallow narcissism of this endless introspection. Writers I admire, such as Britain's Alan Hollinghurst,raved about this volume, so I may simply have missed the boat. ...more
Reading Edmund White, perhaps one of the most heralded gay American writers today, can be a jarring experience. Full of lurid sexual exploits, endless name-dropping of intellectuals with whom he was acquainted, and just for good measure, countless vignettes from the history of French literature, this volume of his autobiography makes for vertiginous reading. In fact, this mixture of a highly personal life with the reflections and insights of an academic make it very much like some of his later f...more
I've always considered autobiographies to be the most difficult genre one can write. Because to write an autobiography you have to become a viewer to your own life - an outsider. You have to have an objective outlook, but, at the same time, you have to be as subjective as possible because a simple biographer can be objective, whereas an autobiographer is not allowed to do that.
My partner read this book before I did, and read passages to me from it. When he finished reading it, I star...more
My partner read this book before I did, and read passages to me from it. When he finished reading it, I star...more
I couldn't get past the first few chapters of this. I've enjoyed his other work - much of it based on his own life, I understand - so thought this would be good too, but this one was just too much self-indulgence.
This is an accusation I've never leveled at any of his work prior to now, and there's little I was reading in this that wasn't at least briefly covered in his semi-autobiographical fiction - I felt like I knew these people already from what I've read of his work previously ...more
This is an accusation I've never leveled at any of his work prior to now, and there's little I was reading in this that wasn't at least briefly covered in his semi-autobiographical fiction - I felt like I knew these people already from what I've read of his work previously ...more
I picked this up mid-way through White's trilogy of novels and much of the material about his parents and his many psychotherapists (how can anyone resist an autobiography that starts with a chapter entitled, My Shrinks?) was familiar having been very thinly veiled in A Boy's Own Life. Turns out I prefer the fictionalized version of these childhood events. As far as the voyeuristic thrill of White's recounting of his budding sexuality in his novels, in the chapter, My Hustlers, the shenanig...more
i'm stuck between two and three stars for the book.
some parts were beautifully written and captivating. i think that white has captured an element regarding gay sexual relationships that no other author has been able to put into words. he's also got great insight into certain other elements: i.e. cultural, gender, sociopolitical.
that being said . . .
some parts could have been taken out of the book completely. i found myself reading some chapters and was wonde...more
some parts were beautifully written and captivating. i think that white has captured an element regarding gay sexual relationships that no other author has been able to put into words. he's also got great insight into certain other elements: i.e. cultural, gender, sociopolitical.
that being said . . .
some parts could have been taken out of the book completely. i found myself reading some chapters and was wonde...more
In many ways I found this book to be flawed. This had to do with the structure of the text which did not really fully allow for any clear total picture of White's life to develop, because the way in which each of the chapters that focused on a particular subject, sometimes minuscule and sometimes too broad. This text oscillated between his parents, psychoanalysis, gratuitous detail about his sex life (in a particularly uninteresting fashion), but in such a way that it avoided the intrusion of th...more
I picked this book up at a used book sale. I had heard of Edmund White as the author of "A Boy's Life" but knew nothing about him. He has been very prolific and must now be in his late 60's or early 70's. He has lived in London, Paris and Italy as well as in New York. His gay identity is the main topic of his memoir. Without doubt, he is a lucid and elegant writer. This memoir is a no-holds barred, graphic portrayal of his sexual experiences--both emotional and physical. He has known m...more
This book is fascinating because Edmund White is so frank and confessional, and he is far from your stereotypical homosexual. I mean, you're not going to find an example of him on prime time TV. I suppose you could think of him as a younger, neurotic, middle-class Gore Vidal. So nothing like Gore Vidal. Well, they're both gay intellectuals.
I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on his mother. It amazes me that he is able to draw a portrait of such a monstrous, miserable person, who is his...more
I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on his mother. It amazes me that he is able to draw a portrait of such a monstrous, miserable person, who is his...more
Typical White.
Witty, worldly and full of sex. Though the sex never really felt pornographic or anything....I think....
But maybe that's the wonderful thing about memoir and looking back: You get a real sense of the love, pain, maturity – and in the end – folks who are flawed, not necessariy loveable, but all pretty human.
And all that slave/master stuff was great. I couldn't put it down.
I loved lines like this description of a leather shop White and T Visite...more
Witty, worldly and full of sex. Though the sex never really felt pornographic or anything....I think....
But maybe that's the wonderful thing about memoir and looking back: You get a real sense of the love, pain, maturity – and in the end – folks who are flawed, not necessariy loveable, but all pretty human.
And all that slave/master stuff was great. I couldn't put it down.
I loved lines like this description of a leather shop White and T Visite...more
The consuming readability of this autobiography, coming as it does after a trilogy of some of the most revealing autobiographical fiction in American literature, is a testament to White's skill as a storyteller. We've heard most of these stories before, but they're still fascinating, and White tells them in a new way: the slower, more dramatized pace of the novels is replaced here with a fast, breezy, talky narrative, gossipy sketches and summaries, swiftly branching yarns. I just re-read the ch...more
I read this quickly. It's very raunchy and prurient. Lots of slave/master stuff going on here; even some water sports. Edmund White has had a fascinating life and, as usual, his descriptions are superb. He can be cynical and self-deprecatory by turns, but he compensates for this with frequent surprising insights. Every gay men should read him, but every one else can spice up their sex lives and learn some gay history by reading this.
What I learned from this book is that if a 60-something year old man falls in love with his sadomasochistic prostitute and/or paid boyfriend he should keep it to himself.
B+ Very interesting and captivating story about growing up and trying to cure himself of being gay, but later enjoying it; great sex stories; sometimes things can go on too long
I thoroughly enjoyed Edmund White's brutally candid account of his life, loves, missteps and conquests in New York, Paris, Venice and London.
When I'm Edmund's age, I hope I'm still as active; mentally and sexually as he is.
I tried; I didn't even make it to much of the raunch.
This is hands down the best book I read in 2006.
Abeck01
marked it as to-read
Brian Kennedy
marked it as to-read
Annemarie
added it
Brad Craft
marked it as to-read
Christopher Morrison
marked it as to-read
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Edmund White's novels include Fanny: A Fiction, A Boy's Own Story, The Farewell Symphony, and A Married Man. He is also the author of a biography of Jean Genet, a study of Marcel Proust, The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, and, most recently, his memoir, My Lives. Having lived in Paris for many years, he is now a New Yorker and teaches at Princeton University.
More about Edmund White...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
