An irresistible literary treat: a memoir of the social and sexual lives of New York City’s cultural and intellectual in-crowd in the tumultuous ...
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Jan 29, 2012
I haven't read this yet, but I've read the first sentence and I love it:
"In the 1970's in New York everyone slept till noon."
Albeit for different reasons to Edmund White, this describes my weekends in the 1980's.
I went out every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night in search of live bands, for the love of it, but also so that I could write about them.
I was rarely in bed before 3am.
If I was, I hadn't got home yet.
However, the next day, I woul More...
"In the 1970's in New York everyone slept till noon."
Albeit for different reasons to Edmund White, this describes my weekends in the 1980's.
I went out every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night in search of live bands, for the love of it, but also so that I could write about them.
I was rarely in bed before 3am.
If I was, I hadn't got home yet.
However, the next day, I woul More...
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Apr 30, 2011
Tosh
rated it: 
i never read his fiction, but pretty much read his non-fiction - and for whatever reason I just haven't picked up any of his novels. Saying that about my eccentricity about his work, White is a superb writer. I am a big fan of memoir writing, and White has that classic quality regarding that genre. New York City was a different type of place as of now. And White captures the gay subculture around that world, yet he ignores certain aspects of "general" or popular pop culture that was
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Apr 30, 2011
Rod
rated it: 
City Boy, My life in New York during the 1960’s and ‘70s by Edmund White 2009; read in Feb 2010
I appreciated Edmund Whites clean concise writing. His objective observations about self, situations, and politics sometimes challenged my own preconceptions, but were enlightening. And I came to admire his conclusions. The name dropping was sometimes trying but more because I didn’t know these famous people and their works as well as he. Overall I came to a better understanding of a history a More...
I appreciated Edmund Whites clean concise writing. His objective observations about self, situations, and politics sometimes challenged my own preconceptions, but were enlightening. And I came to admire his conclusions. The name dropping was sometimes trying but more because I didn’t know these famous people and their works as well as he. Overall I came to a better understanding of a history a More...
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Apr 30, 2011
K.M.
rated it:
Fans of Edmund White will savor this memoir of the 1970s in New York, when the city was decrepit but artists and writers thrived. The author fills in some of the gaps of his career -- the publication of his earliest novel, Forgetting Elena (have you ever wondered how it came to be hailed by Vladimir Nabokov?), the way in which he came to write The Joy of Gay Sex, which, it turns out, everyone warned him about.
Sex, gossip, the strivings of artists on the make -- it all blends togeth More...
Sex, gossip, the strivings of artists on the make -- it all blends togeth More...
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Apr 30, 2011
Nina
rated it: 
Edmund White's City Boy is an earthy yet elegant memoir of a gay man in New York City during the 1960s and 70s. His exuberant descriptions of gay bars and baths capture the pre HIV/AIDS scene. With fluid prose, White also invites the reader into the literary and art world of those decades. He is a gifted storyteller, generous in sharing his tales of legendary writers and artists. While White's book contains the sexual candor associated with his previous work, it also reveals a young writer's asp
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Dec 30, 2011
Sequelguerrier
rated it:
Well, I finally managed to wrest time from the holiday schedule to read the last few pages. I tend to like White's writing even when he is fictionalising his own story. Here he is in outright auto-biography mode and his voice is both very personal and unfailingly kind even when he is truthful about people's foibles and flaws. As Irving says in the blurb, this is a book for anyone interested in the nature of friendship and it is a fabulous glimpse of the New York of the sixeventies <g> and
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Jan 19, 2012
Jeff
rated it:
Wildly uneven and curious in its structure, despite White's engaging voice providing some forward (if roundabout) motion. As a gay man, I very much enjoyed White's first-person narrative of NYC's Gay Sex in the 70s. Perhaps like those tricks in the trucks and on the piers, the book feels very episodic; it doesn't really follow a linear chronology. As a result it's difficult to keep some of the roommates and friends and lovers clearly identified from one another--but in some respects, that's h
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Apr 30, 2011
Lauren
rated it:
slow start, but god damn i love when new york was still cool.
"When the Saturday Review went under and I returned to New York after less than a year, I felt that I'd missed out on the best parts of California by not driving out of town on the weekends to camp under the redwoods, or beside the hot sulfur-water pools near the Russian River, or in the Zen monastery an hour away. I'd wasted my time smoking in bars and complaining because San Francisco didn't enjoy exactly the same adva More...
"When the Saturday Review went under and I returned to New York after less than a year, I felt that I'd missed out on the best parts of California by not driving out of town on the weekends to camp under the redwoods, or beside the hot sulfur-water pools near the Russian River, or in the Zen monastery an hour away. I'd wasted my time smoking in bars and complaining because San Francisco didn't enjoy exactly the same adva More...
Apr 30, 2011
Grady
rated it:
A Commentary on a Period Becomes a Novel
For openers to readers who opt to add another book by Edmund White to their library comes this quotation from John Irving: 'Edmund White, a master of the erotic confession, is our most accomplished triathlete of prose - a novelist, biographer, and memoirist. Truly, no other American writer of my generation manages to be all three with such personal passion and veracity.' Strong praise from one of the country's finest writers, but in this reader More...
For openers to readers who opt to add another book by Edmund White to their library comes this quotation from John Irving: 'Edmund White, a master of the erotic confession, is our most accomplished triathlete of prose - a novelist, biographer, and memoirist. Truly, no other American writer of my generation manages to be all three with such personal passion and veracity.' Strong praise from one of the country's finest writers, but in this reader More...
Sep 10, 2011
Blake
rated it: 
In Alan Bennett's play The History Boys, when the dimmest of the students is asked to define history, he replies, "It's just one [expletive] thing after another." Reductive? Perhaps. Funny? Certainly. But also, quite true.
And it happens to be the reason I tend to avoid non-fiction...memoirs in particular. At least when one is writing a biography (particularly about someone who is already dead) or writing about history, the author has enough distance to give the story some s More...
And it happens to be the reason I tend to avoid non-fiction...memoirs in particular. At least when one is writing a biography (particularly about someone who is already dead) or writing about history, the author has enough distance to give the story some s More...
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Apr 30, 2011
David
rated it:
City Boy is about Edmund White's life in New York City from the early 1960's through the early 1980's. The main themes are:
1. Writing and publishing. This was the most interesting. Some writers are supportive of others. Some are bitchy.
2. Gay life, before and after Stonewall. White is more than candid. He is HIV positive, and a founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
3. Gossip. He must have known damn near everyone in the arts. The name-dropping doesn’t stop wi More...
1. Writing and publishing. This was the most interesting. Some writers are supportive of others. Some are bitchy.
2. Gay life, before and after Stonewall. White is more than candid. He is HIV positive, and a founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
3. Gossip. He must have known damn near everyone in the arts. The name-dropping doesn’t stop wi More...
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Apr 30, 2011
Audra
rated it:
White's memoir begins when he he arrives in New York City from the Midwest where he followed his lover instead of going on to Harvard. He is is not a writer yet and these two decades are a formative time in his literary career.
As a gay man, White was still hoping to be "cured" as he regularly (like many other gay men at the time) saw a therapist. In 1969, as the gay movement began with Stonewall, White began to embrace his own identity--and he had little choice when, More...
As a gay man, White was still hoping to be "cured" as he regularly (like many other gay men at the time) saw a therapist. In 1969, as the gay movement began with Stonewall, White began to embrace his own identity--and he had little choice when, More...
Jul 04, 2011
Freyja
rated it:
I wanted to read this book because it was supposedly about White's adventures in the gay world of the 1970s. There is a little of that, but mostly this book full of name-dropping, his unsuccessful attempts to get published, his vapid, pretentious friends and the conversations they'd have while thinking they were "important", and his falling-out with Susan Sontag. At best, he's a minor author who almost no one outside of the gay community has even heard of. At worst, he's a weak, tim
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Oct 14, 2011
Jonathan
rated it:
Edmund White spends more time naming names then telling the story. It becomes a bit unbearable more than 50% into the book where noun specificity drives you near the brink of insanity. There's bits of life to the story here and there, with clever gay rhetoric, but it wasn't enough to keep me going.
Oct 11, 2011
Phlip
rated it:
Starts out well enough but about half way through it turns into a plodding, name-droppy, chronicle. Interesting as a primary source of the cultural history he narrates, however. And well written with insight into particular personae as well as personae types of the age.
Sep 02, 2011
I especially liked this because the New York City I first discovered was Mr. White's grungy, unsafe one. Also, he writes about David Kalstone, whose "Beginning With Poems" I devoured in college, and Richard Poirier, who taught English at Rutgers when I was there.
Apr 30, 2011
Emily
rated it:
gossip gossip gossip -- yeah.
*-*
Update
*-*
So I've read about 3/4ths of this book, and I think I'm done. The gossip intermingled with promiscuity is starting to wane, and now it's getting a little lit-crit for my taste.
I got quite a few ideas for future reading. His name-dropping does have a benefit beyond feeding my desire for the salacious.
For instance, memoirs and novels by James Merrill, and maybe another book that's slipping my mi More...
*-*
Update
*-*
So I've read about 3/4ths of this book, and I think I'm done. The gossip intermingled with promiscuity is starting to wane, and now it's getting a little lit-crit for my taste.
I got quite a few ideas for future reading. His name-dropping does have a benefit beyond feeding my desire for the salacious.
For instance, memoirs and novels by James Merrill, and maybe another book that's slipping my mi More...
Jul 27, 2011
Andrew
rated it:
A few good moments when he gets into describing the time and the place which, given the subtitle, one would think would happen a lot more. But the pages and pages about his craft the the people he knew... I couldn't care less. Do I try reading his fiction? I can't decide.
Apr 30, 2011
Rachel
rated it: 
This book just did not hold my interest at all. I wouldn't have finished it but I received it through the First Reads program so I felt like I had to. City Boy is author Edmund White's account of his years in New York as a struggling author. I didn't feel any emotion coming out of him. It felt like he was just writing a laundry list account of his activities and so it was hard to connect with him. Also, he name dropped a lot and it was clear that I was supposed to be impressed but I only recogni
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Jan 22, 2012
Ed
rated it:
I've never been a huge fan of Edmund White, isn't his stuff autobiographical anyway? Why not just read the full disclosure?
Apr 30, 2011
Shawn
rated it:
Well, of course name dropping is much of what we expect in literary memoirs and part of the enjoyment of them, but here there's really too much of it and too little about Edmund White. When an old man (he's 8 years older than I am, so he definitely qualifies) writes a memoir, I hope for more mature reflection on the events chronicled -- very little of that here. I suppose that I'd also hoped for some return to the more elaborate style of his earlier work (Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the Ki
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Apr 30, 2011
Ashley
rated it:
I was really excited to win this book as a First Read; it's not something I would typically read on my own, so I was looking forward to reading something different.
That said, I had such a hard time relating to this book and the author/narrator. It took me almost a month to finish "City Boy" which is an amazingly long time for me.
The book had a meandering feel to it, and the name dropping fell on deaf ears as I have no clue who 99% of the people were/are. White More...
That said, I had such a hard time relating to this book and the author/narrator. It took me almost a month to finish "City Boy" which is an amazingly long time for me.
The book had a meandering feel to it, and the name dropping fell on deaf ears as I have no clue who 99% of the people were/are. White More...
May 18, 2011
Lynn
rated it:
A terrific account of living the gay life in 1970's Manhattan.He's a wonderful writer.
Apr 30, 2011
Jas
rated it:
This book was o.k. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it talked more about his experiences in regular life. There were a couple of hopeful moments, like talking about staying at the YMCA or living abroad but they were far and few between.
Mostly he talked about all his jobs and the writers he knew and/or admired. I did not know most of the people he was talking about so I wasn't able to connect with anyone.
I think if I was an aspiring write this book would have been a lot More...
Mostly he talked about all his jobs and the writers he knew and/or admired. I did not know most of the people he was talking about so I wasn't able to connect with anyone.
I think if I was an aspiring write this book would have been a lot More...
Dec 30, 2011
Nancy
rated it:
I look for a memoir to immerse me in the life of the author so that I can really see things from his point of view. Admittedly Edmund White's life is very different from mine. He is a gay man who really enjoys city life. I'm a straight woman who has gravitated to a very rural area. Still, there should have been a human hook but there wasn't. I simply could not slog through several hundred pages of picking up tricks, shallow party descriptions and name dropping. I finally gave up at page 158 so i
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Apr 30, 2011
Janet
rated it:
Even though part of me viewed this simply as a vehicle for the author to namedrop and detail his sexual exploits, I couldn't put it down. He is describing a time and a place and a subculture--gay NYC in the 60s and 70s--that he brings to life vividly and shamelessly. His desire to becoming a respected author brings the whole tale to a respectable level and even though he's now writing from the perspective of "pudgy" elder, you feel his youthful desire for it and celebrate that he did i
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Nov 02, 2011
Joseph
rated it:
City Boy, by Edmund White was a wonderful look at gay life in NYC during the 60s-70s. It was a very different world, and White capture the look and feel of a more bohemian time.
I enjoyed his candor of a time before AIDS, and "free love" was the norm. He knew many celebrities in the literary and entertainment world and it was fascinating to read the personal side to iconic figures!
It's worth a read to any interested parties who want to learn about gay history.
I enjoyed his candor of a time before AIDS, and "free love" was the norm. He knew many celebrities in the literary and entertainment world and it was fascinating to read the personal side to iconic figures!
It's worth a read to any interested parties who want to learn about gay history.
Aug 02, 2011
Can we talk? The author of FORGETTING ELENA apparently didn't forget much....
Apr 30, 2011
Much admired book by one of the first openly gay writers of NYC. He survived the bad years of the 60s and 70s when it was dirty, dangerous and corrupt. There is an awful lot in here about his many relationships- too much in fact. Good portraits of Harold Brodkey who had a short bubble as the world's greatest writer before it popped and also of Robert Mapplethorpe and Susan Sontag who he is quite scathing about. White is not the most trustworthy sort of guy I'm guessing.
