Edmund White: The Burning World

by Stephen Barber

Book Overview

In his work Edmund White has explored sex and the human body and the city and its sensations and primarily the mercurial evanescence of life and the connection between dying and creativity. Barber... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312199740
• ISBN13: 9780312199746
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Exceptionally Well-Pitched Critical Biography of White

Edmund White: The Burning World, by Stephen Barber Edmund White's iconic status within a gay ethos extends far beyond those defined boundaries to his acceptance by the literary world as one of the major writers of our times. White's elegantly stylised novels, each employing a language particular to a time and place, as well as his non-fiction preoccupations as biographer to Genet and Proust, have led to the creation of an integral body of work. White's writings are as individual as they are vital to our reading of mortality in the late 20th century. Stephen Barber's exceptionally well-pitched critical biography of White is both a work of literary merit and the ideal companion to its subject's life and achievements. Barber has for several years been one of our best critical writers on the nature of the modern city. The Burning World is creative criticism at its best, and Barber's understanding of the city and its sensations as determining creative language is central to his thesis on White's fiction. During his formative writing years in a 1960's New York, White wrote five unpublished novels before Forgetting Elena was accepted for publication in 1972. Barber interestingly points to Fire Island being the inspirational site to this work, and to White's obsession with islands in general as representing the precinct in which to set a novel. Two more of his books, Nocturnes For The King of Naples, and Caracole, were to be less specifically identified with place, but to occupy undisclosed insular settings. Barber rightly sees White's first four novels, with their rich textured poetic prose, as 'a unique document of the imagination in its compulsive interaction with the human body.' It was the third of these books, A Boy's Own Story 1982, which won White not only critical acclaim but a confirmed gay readership. Crucial to Barber in the development of White as a person and writer was his move to Paris in 1983, the city in which he continues to live and write for half of each year. White, who was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1985, for a while considered his death to be imminent. Yet he found Paris sufficiently psychologically regenerative to encourage him to form new relationships, and to write new books. One of these was the elegiac The Beautiful Room Is Empty, a novel in which White first employed the medium of stripped down communicative prose which he continues to use today. Another legacy of White's Paris years, begun in 1986 and completed seven years later was his monumental 700 page study of the French writer and criminal Jean Genet. Barber is profoundly insightful on White's grand Genet biography, and provides an illuminating commentary on the interactive chemistry triggered by one great writer overhauling the other's complex and elusive life. Barber sensitively highlights White's most enduring relationships, including the one with Hubert Sorin, whose death from AIDS in 1993 was to leave White devastated. White's ability to keep on endlessly re

An excellent companion to the work of a great gay writer

This is a great literary biography. It combines solid research into the life and work of Edmund White, one of the most imaginative and passionate gay writers of the last half century, with the kind of human touches that bring biography alive. Stephen Barber moves effortlessly from White's life to his work and back again, painting a fascinating portrait not only of White's own adventures and career, but providing the reader with profound insights into the bigger picture of gay life and culture in America and Paris, from Stonewall to AIDS and beyond. The discussion of White's writing stays fresh and relevant to his literary ideals and the context of his life - it makes you want to go back and read his books all over again. The book is also fairly balanced - it avoids taking sides in the bitter debates that have raged over what gay male culture and identity should be, and instead tries to present a range of different perspectives and possibilities. Readable, entertaining, informative and thought-provoking - I highly recommend this book.

Informative survey of White's life

My first impression, upon picking up this biography of Edmund White, was that the Stephen Barber's writing is terribly over-wrought -- the introduction of the book, in which Barber tries to explain White's importance to contemporary literature, is some of the purplest prose I've read in a long time.But Barber's writing improves markedly when he begins telling the story of White's life. The most interesting aspect of the book, to me, is Barber's descriptions of White's early fictional efforts, and his writing habits; you'll read about the novel White wrote in high school; you'll learn that White was often drunk or stoned when he wrote his early novels, and that even to this day White generally limits himself to writing a few pages per day in the expensive blank books he purchases from a Paris stationer. You'll read about White's encounters with writers as diverse as Michel Foucault, Vladimir Nabokov (who named White as one of his favorite young novelists, much to White's surprise), and Michael Ondaatje (whose own writing habits are similar to White's). Your impression, gleaned from White's novels, that he is an extremely decent person who is quite fallible but gifted with an immense talent, will be confirmed by Barber's account. Also surprising is Barber's description of how sexually voracious White was from a very early age. Apparently White felt the need to tone down his self-depiction in "A Boy's Own Story," to make his character seem more representative of typical adolescents.In summary, this is a worthy biography of White, once you get past the somewhat amateurish writing style (which is why I'm giving it only four stars). But you shouldn't order it unless you're very interested in White -- otherwise, you will learn enough about White from his own novels.

A name to the narrator.

I have read the White "Trilogy" of the nameless narrator navigating us through the second half of the American 20th century (A Boy's Own Story, Beautiful Room, and Farewell). White's books peeked my curiosity and kept me riveted with their metaphors, honesty, and detailed attention to those peculiar specifics that either comply with our self image (bringing us to tomorrow) or shatter our ego (enflaming our insecurity). We wonder just how close White's actual life is to the narrator's as we are jealously appalled by his freedom, and tragically hopeful about what will happen to him next. This biography, if not as beautifully weaved and metaphoric as White's own writing, does reconcile the life of the "I" in his novels, the complexity of the language and the author (speaking in a Barthesian sense), and White's own experiences as we finally align the tragic hero and his real life companions. This book is not a way to be introduced to White, but if you know him and his writings then it is illuminating and resourceful and a pleasure to read with the sheer quanitity of it's detail and thoroughness.