Interview with American gay novelist, biographer, memoirist and author Edmund White on the publication of his memoir City Bo

Canning, Richard

English

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New York City Boy: a conversation with Edmund White

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This work has been submitted to NECTAR, the Northampton ElectronicCollection of Theses and Research.ArticleTitle: New York City Boy: a conversation with Edmund WhiteCreators: Canning, R.Example citation: Canning, R. (2009) New York City Boy: a conversation withEdmund White. Chroma Online.Version: Published versionOfficial URL: http://chromajournal.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/exclusive-interview-with-edmund-white.htmlhttp://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/5071/NECTARSaturday, October 17, 2009Exclusive Interview with Edmund White by RichardCanningNew York City Boy: AConversation withEdmund White, onthe US publication ofCity Boy, 9th October2009By Richard CanningPhoto of EdmundWhite in Venice in1974, with Alfred Corn(left) and DavidKalstone (right)RC: You open with adescription of 70sNew York: 'grungy,dangerous, bankrupt'but artistically in itszenith. That's prettyevidently meant tocontrast with present-day Manhattan. Arethere any major citiestoday which feel especially creative?EW: I've just spent two months in Madrid, which seems vibrant andalive, full of young people who inhabit the center and who stay up allnight, a gay life that is flourishing... New York seems to have lost itsedge.RC: By page two, you're hanging around, hoping to bump into SusanSontag or Paul Goodman, author of the journal Five Years, a big deal in itsday for its openness about his bisexuality and erotic adventures. Thecontrast in subsequent reputations of this pair is rather poignant, isn't it?As you point out, Goodman is scarcely recalled today, and almost neverread. I wondered if, in the seventies, when the "newness" of gay art andculture and writing was so obvious, you remember having some sense ofthe people and works that would last? And, in the thirty years that havefollowed, have those instincts clarified or changed much?EW: I think I thought that Sontag's reputation would last because shechromahad so much integrity, was so high-minded and so uncompromising -and because every line she wrote contained a unit of thought. I think Iwas right. Though people might gibe about those very qualities now,nevertheless she remains a beacon of high culture and seriousness. Ialso felt that John Ashbery and Elizabeth Bishop and James Merrillwere all making lasting contributions, though to my surprise Bishophas nosed her way to the front, and Merrill is now in third position. So Iguess I'd say I could spot a winner but couldn't predict the order ofcelebrity they would eventually assume.RC: One of your first lovers then, Stan, you describe as having a 'classic'look of beauty which was 'generally acknowledged.' Rather cleverly, Ithought, you don't describe him in too much physical detail; the reader canthen supply his or her own version of that classical beauty. Do you acceptthat these things are culturally specific, even as they feel universal, eternalor classic?EW: I guess we all prize virility, even a joli-laideur now, more than wedid back then. Stan had a John Barrymore kind of classicalhandsomeness that would still be appropriate to a marble statue.RC: You confess in the book to having been politically apathetic: You alsoimply that this apathy was widely shared; that nobody thought of therebeing a gay community or society. Would you say that artists in particularshied away from political engagement? And how much do you think AIDSwould change all of this? (After all, you co-founded GMHC).EW: I felt generally alienated from the culture and its ideals. I wasterribly cynical and astounded that people got so worked up over a"little thing" like Watergate or Chappaquidick, or even cheating overTwenty Questions. I assumed everyone was cheating all the time. Thiscynicism and a complete sense of disaffection and disabuse kept meaway from politics in any form. Larry Kramer sort of shamed me intojoining (and eventually heading) GMHC, but I was happy to duck out assoon as possible. Partly I had an artist's fear of unnecessary and time-consuming entanglements that other people could do just as well orbetter.RC: One of the best things about the book is its tender, consideredaccount of long-term friendships, which 'feed the spirit' - in particular,through the examples of Marilyn Schaefer, still with us, and DavidKalstone, who died. Perhaps this is a topic which fits uneasily in fiction,since its very constancy risks being undramatic; it's easier to think offiction bringing to life dramatically the experience, say, of the betrayal offriendship. Were you aware of this book offering the chance to documentsuch friendships, finally?EW: It seems to me that many people count relatives and mates astheir best friends. Some people are extremely attached to childhoodfriends. I suppose the chance of meeting people later in life andcultivating an intense friendship with them is rare - and perhaps gays,with their (previous) lack of interest in family life and marriage, werebest suited for developing these intense friendships later in life (even if"later" is defined as occurring in one’s twenties or thirties).RC: You describe escaping to Puerto Rico with Stan for holidays, andsexual release there. I suppose it goes without saying that racial politicsin gay culture has changed a lot, in the last thirty years. Would youcomment? And do you worry about how you represent the racially other inyour writings?EW: Of course there is rather a "colonial" sound to my Puerto Ricanadventures, but I think most Blacks and Puerto Ricans, for instance,would rather be loved and admired for the wrong reasons than ignoredaltogether. Anyway, City Boy is quite clear about the moment it isconcentrating on. It would be ahistorical to attribute to my narratorattitudes that didn't come into being till much later.RC: I loved the comment that gay "intellectuals" in the seventies found that,through their learning, they simply had more evidence arguing againsttheir own existence - they could 'torment' themselves 'with extra zeal' withFreudian ideas. On the other hand, extensive reading in literature hasoften been described as liberating, particularly at this time, for its offeringof role models in fiction and so on, if not always positive ones. Did youencounter, let's say, untutored gay men whose self-understandingseemed more positive and mature than others', in Manhattan in theseventies? And were the books with gay themes that people devouredappreciated, would you say, for featuring gay content at all, or (especially)for featuring positive gay storylines?EW: I think I was thinking of "non-intellectuals" who weren't aware ofFreud's prejudices against homosexuality as a form of characterdisorder or infantilism. They were the lucky ones because they didn'tdwell on all the ways in which they were "sick." I wasn't (as yousuggest) thinking about those who were versed or unversed in gayliterature written by gays. It's true that if all you'd read was Giovanni'sRoom or Death in Venice or even Proust, you'd come away with astrange view of gay experience. On the other hand, Andre Gide'sjournals were nourishing because he seemed a self-respecting manwith far-flung interests.RC: You mention revering writers such as Elizabeth Bowen and GrahamGreene, considered to have rather unelevated prose styles; 'readable'authors, as well as Henry Green, whose prose is somewhat morechallenging, surely. Your own fiction has often been viewed as split intotwo camps – the ‘readable' autofictional works, and the more baroque,stylised novels such as Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes and Caracole. Wouldit be fair, by now, after Fanny and Hotel de Dream, to argue that the'readability' has won out in your case?EW: I suppose I lost interest in the degree to which prose seemed"experimental." What interested me in Graham Greene was theextremely subtle use of figurative language (he's really the best in thebusiness for similes and metaphors). With Bowen it was the easy wayin which she could embed apothems in her running narrative,something I've carefully emulated, though it gives a "moralistic" andslightly old-fashioned tone to the writing. Henry Green is a comic geniusand his seemingly rattle-brain (but actually very scheming) women arehilarious, and his idiosyncratic use of dialogue is dazzling. I also like hisway of letting a sinister subplot slowly emerge. I agree with IanMcEwan that these are writers who've been upstaged in literary historyby more obvious experimentalists such as James Joyce and VirginiaWoolf, though Bowen and Green are better than Woolf.RC: You make a true, and rather comic observation: that gay men alwaysfeel too old, wherever they are, whatever they are doing. It's poignant,because at first that sounds like a terrible curse or imposition. But onceyou've appreciated the truth of it, it could become liberating, no?Particularly for... a relatively senior gay man... (Coughs).EW: Yes, it is liberating to put all that worrying behind one. Now I have aSpanish boyfriend who appreciates me because I have white hair andI'm chubby - I'm his type! I never would have guessed that when I wasyoung. When I look at the photo Alfred Corn just sent of me when I wasthirty-four, I remember I hated my looks then, and thought I was ugly,though in fact I was quite presentable.RC: I wanted to ask if there's anywhere in the US you could imagine livingtoday, outside Manhattan? City Boy seems to suggest not. You spent aperiod in San Francisco, and even that didn’t work out...EW: I always get this lonely forlorn feeling in other American cities,though I do like to spend a month a year in Key West, and could easilyspend more time if I had the money or opportunity. It might be fun toteach for a semester in New Orleans or Austin, but otherwise I'm nottoo tempted by other cities, especially since I don't drive.RC: There's a provocative moment, where you describe the 'three greatgeniuses of the twentieth century' as 'Stravinsky, Nabokov andBalanchine.' I laughed, because it follows a comment about New Yorkersat that time being 'still obsessed with a hierarchy of the arts and the ideaof the Pure.' So, here's another hierarchy! I don't expect you to back down.But it's intriguing that you linked these three because of their imperialRussian ancestry, their time in France and their later careers in America...Could you say something more about what you mean here by 'genius', orabout the way this succession of transplants may have informed it?EW: All three of these geniuses are Romantics, or at least are addictsof beauty and a certain dreamy vision of beauty. But at the same timeall three are witty and crisp and decidedly "modern." Balanchine, in hisbig white ballets like Symphony in C, or Nabokov in the love passages inLolita and Stravinsky in the romantic grandeur of The Fire Bird... Inthese works, we feel the grandeur and scope of Imperial Russia. But allthree could be very angular and witty as well - Stravinsky in Jeu deCartes, Balanchine in Agon, Nabokov in Pale Fire. And all three arealways renewing themselves - Nabokov in his very late Look at theHarlequins! (which is a delicious parody of autofiction and its coarsestpreconceptions), Balanchine in a big story-telling ballet such as DonQuixote (precisely the opposite of everything he'd otherwise stood for)and Stravinsky in his late, twelve-tone scores such as DumbartonOaks. I think all three were "light" and flexible and unsentimental,though very romantic because of their years of contact with Frenchculture.RC: I can't have been the only person waiting for your take on SusanSontag, which turns out to be very balanced, and nuanced. You've spacefor her good qualities ('protective and generous', etc.). On the other hand, Iwondered about some of the apparently neutral observations: 'Susan wasalso like a queen in that she had a full life, largely ceremonious'; 'Hergenius was in saying the obvious in a strong and dramatic manner.' Thisone, though, took the biscuit for humour: 'She should have been given theNobel Prize. That would have made her nicer.' Ouch! Could you reflect onthe uses of humour in the memoir form? Have you erred, ever, or beenmisinterpreted in the way you've laughed about people from your past, oryour interactions with them?EW: Of course the people I write about and their friends are neverhappy. James Grauerholz just wrote a pretty wounded e-mail to meabout my treatment of him and William Burroughs. He thinks I failed tosee their love for each other. He also thinks I didn't really "get"Burroughs. Craig Seligmann, who wrote a book about Sontag andPauline Kael, said I was trashing Sontag, which shocked him since I'dalready attacked her in Caracole. So I guess we should ask the victimsof my humor what they think. I, of course, think I was pretty even-handed. I was determined to be objective or at least fair about Sontag...RC: The book ends with AIDS, which, once again, introduces the essentialnature of human friendship. It's a logical close, and leads to yourdeparting for Paris, which you've sketched a little already (in Sketchesfrom Memory, also published as Our Paris). It also brings us to thepresent, in that we know that the author of City Boy is now ensconced inChelsea. Where do you go from here? It feels as if this may have drainedthe pool of material for memoir, at least for now. Do you have a fictionalproject in mind?EW: I'm a hundred pages into a novel about a straight man and a gayman who are best friends. I'll follow them through three decades. ThenI'd like to do a memoir about Paris in the 1980s. And eventually amemoir about my nephew, Keith Fleming, who committed suicide lastspring, and his mother, my sister, whom I've almost never writtenabout.RC: So much to look forward to. Thanks so much for your time.City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and 1970s appears fromBloomsbury in the UK on 4th January 2010. Richard Canning has knownEdmund White for over fifteen years. He interviewed White for his firstbook, Gay Fiction Speaks (Columbia University Press, 2000), andincluded his story ‘The Painted Boy’ in the anthology of gay fiction BetweenMen, as well as the story ‘An Oracle’ in an anthology of fiction about AIDS,Vital Signs (both Carroll and Graf, 2007). White has also contributed anessay on Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memories of Hadrian to Canning’s latestcollection, 50 Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read (Alyson,2009). In the same book, White’s novel A Boy’s Own Story is discussed bySan Franciscan author Robert Gluck. This year, Canning has also seenposted by Eric Anderson @ 7:47 AMthe publication of a second gay fiction anthology, Between Men 2 (Alyson),and a brief biography of E. M. Forster (Hesperus, November), following hisfirst, on Oscar Wilde (Hesperus, 2008). He can be contacted atr.canning68@googlemail.com.Labels: Author Interview0  c o m m e n t s :Post a Commentl in k s  t o  t h is  p o s t :Create a Link<< Home 

New York City Boy: a conversation with Edmund White

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