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quinndm's review against another edition
3.0
Edmund White has lived an incredible life and written some beautiful works… but I had no idea how extreme that life truly was.
paull9115's review against another edition
slow-paced
2.75
I liked the first half but soon got very bored and not caring about his judgemental OTT story telling. I just found it all a bit dull.
dkrane's review against another edition
4.0
A dishy read that’s extremely literate and fun. Good picture of bohemian pre-AIDS gay life in NYC, with a LOT of name dropping and memories of hookups. Bit overlong and sometimes feels like there’s a bit of an axe to grind, or an urge to name every famous relationship he had as opposed to a shaped narrative? Still, interesting.
jackieeh's review against another edition
3.0
Oh Edmund, Edmund, Edmund.
What I like is writers writing about when they couldn't write.
I mean, come on, this stuff is ten times more useful than all that make-a-schedule-get-plenty-of-sleep-don't-force-it advice. And, as in Isherwood, there are those friends who tell it like it is:
I haven't mentioned the name-dropping or the sex-having because obviously that happens, and happens a lot. It's fun to read about, but after a while all the proper nouns made my eyes glaze over a little bit. Sometimes (sometimes!) White admits when he's mistaken about something or someone. Other times...not so much. And I wouldn't have him any other way.
A good line, possibly the best line, that has nothing to do with writing or gossip:
You tell 'em.
Can't wait to read about his adventures in Paris. That might just break the four star barrier.
But my sense of personal identity required that I write fiction.
What I like is writers writing about when they couldn't write.
In switching back to realism I'd somehow lost my ability to write.
I mean, come on, this stuff is ten times more useful than all that make-a-schedule-get-plenty-of-sleep-don't-force-it advice. And, as in Isherwood, there are those friends who tell it like it is:
I felt that in choosing literature as a career I'd placed all my money on a single number and it had lost.
When I made this melodramatic declaration to a friend, he said, "What else were you planning to do with your life? Be an accountant? Civil engineer?"
I haven't mentioned the name-dropping or the sex-having because obviously that happens, and happens a lot. It's fun to read about, but after a while all the proper nouns made my eyes glaze over a little bit. Sometimes (sometimes!) White admits when he's mistaken about something or someone. Other times...not so much. And I wouldn't have him any other way.
A good line, possibly the best line, that has nothing to do with writing or gossip:
The idea that we'd erred somehow in not foreseeing an unprecedented disease no scientist in the world had predicted strikes me as bizarre and unfair.
You tell 'em.
Can't wait to read about his adventures in Paris. That might just break the four star barrier.
alenaski's review against another edition
2.0
I haven't read any of Edmund White's other books, so I imagine that I was not the target audience for this book. Instead, I was reading this as one in a series of books on life in New York City in the 1970s. This definitely did present a great view of life in the city in the 60s and 70s, however, I really struggled with White as a narrator. I found his tone constantly grating. At one point, he casually refers to how he negatively wrote about someone he viewed as a mentor under a very thin fictional veneer in one of his books. He then seemed surprised that the mentor had been offended by it, as was typical for many of his stories in the book. For me, the whole thing felt very narcissistic and pedantic and I was very happy when I finally reached the end.
macbethundead's review against another edition
4.0
Touchant et grv intéressant. Recommendé à tous ceux qui s'intéressent à l'histoire des milieux intellectuels gays new-yorkais des années 60/70
moodswinger's review against another edition
4.0
This one is a tough book to rate. Edmund White devotes much of the book to namedropping and gossip, which can be a complete delight if you know which famous figure he's talking about (oh, those 10 pages about Vladimir Nabokov--I could've read a whole book like that!) or mind-numbing if you don't. The sections about his stays in Venice and The People to Know in Venice were hard to get through.
City Boy is my first White book. I came to him through Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On, as White was a GMHC founder. I wasn't aware just what a social climber White is! He owes much of his career to his friends, so it's a bit of a mystery (even to himself, by his own admission) that he pulled such a dick move on Susan Sontag and her son by trashing them in Caracole.
On the other hand, it makes sense for Larry Kramer (another GMHC founder) to invite White and ensure that he was a member. Edmund White was invited because he was a big name among gay writers, but outside of those circles as well. How many writers can say that Nabokov called their first novel a "marvelous book", that Sontag pulled strings to get him awards, and that he was friends, or at least friendly, with James Merrill, Michel Foucault, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peggy Guggenheim, and Jasper Johns? All of this is information I learned from this book, so you can guess just what amount of gossip and namedropping was involved.
But I would say that Edmund White is a striking writer. City Boy can get tiring, but it also contains a lot of laugh out loud moments, evocative descriptions of his friends, and complex philosophical ideas made simple enough to understand all at once. White has a vast vocabulary, and you're bound to learn at least one new word.
One strike against this memoir is that White meanders seemingly pointlessly for about 95%, to pull the whole thing together beautifully in the last few pages. I choked back tears, heartbroken, while reading that last section; a section that went over all of the friends who died from AIDS, that loss of a generation which was replaced by a sleeker, safer New York. The New York that Edmund White describes in the book is unsafe and dirty, but it also enabled a Midwestern nobody like Edmund White to more or less support himself until he started publishing reliably.
It's this last section which pushed the book to a 4-star rating, when I was almost certain it would be three. This is a book that deserves a re-read, it deserves a project to go through all the names, link them to their work, to pictures and to their literary, academic or historical importance. It also invites comparisons between Kramer and White. Undoubtedly, Kramer would've loved to have half the friends and influence that White does--although I'm sure he doesn't care much anymore. I guess the difference is that while Kramer is an off-putting, self-righteous man who demands to be listened (and I love him for it!), White must have a much more pleasant personality. Or so, I figure, Sontag must've thought until Caracole.
City Boy is my first White book. I came to him through Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On, as White was a GMHC founder. I wasn't aware just what a social climber White is! He owes much of his career to his friends, so it's a bit of a mystery (even to himself, by his own admission) that he pulled such a dick move on Susan Sontag and her son by trashing them in Caracole.
On the other hand, it makes sense for Larry Kramer (another GMHC founder) to invite White and ensure that he was a member. Edmund White was invited because he was a big name among gay writers, but outside of those circles as well. How many writers can say that Nabokov called their first novel a "marvelous book", that Sontag pulled strings to get him awards, and that he was friends, or at least friendly, with James Merrill, Michel Foucault, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peggy Guggenheim, and Jasper Johns? All of this is information I learned from this book, so you can guess just what amount of gossip and namedropping was involved.
But I would say that Edmund White is a striking writer. City Boy can get tiring, but it also contains a lot of laugh out loud moments, evocative descriptions of his friends, and complex philosophical ideas made simple enough to understand all at once. White has a vast vocabulary, and you're bound to learn at least one new word.
One strike against this memoir is that White meanders seemingly pointlessly for about 95%, to pull the whole thing together beautifully in the last few pages. I choked back tears, heartbroken, while reading that last section; a section that went over all of the friends who died from AIDS, that loss of a generation which was replaced by a sleeker, safer New York. The New York that Edmund White describes in the book is unsafe and dirty, but it also enabled a Midwestern nobody like Edmund White to more or less support himself until he started publishing reliably.
It's this last section which pushed the book to a 4-star rating, when I was almost certain it would be three. This is a book that deserves a re-read, it deserves a project to go through all the names, link them to their work, to pictures and to their literary, academic or historical importance. It also invites comparisons between Kramer and White. Undoubtedly, Kramer would've loved to have half the friends and influence that White does--although I'm sure he doesn't care much anymore. I guess the difference is that while Kramer is an off-putting, self-righteous man who demands to be listened (and I love him for it!), White must have a much more pleasant personality. Or so, I figure, Sontag must've thought until Caracole.