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A review by trin
A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
2.0
Judging by this book, the average young boy can, before the age of 15, look forward to being approached for sex by:
*A 12-year-old "straight" baby jock who's really into anal
*Not one, but two separate camp counselors
*A "special" student who wanders around with a constant erection, which everyone just accepts, like, "Oh hey, it's whatshisname with his perma-boner"
*A teacher and his wife looking for a three-way
*A totally different teacher
*A female black prostitute
*A guy in a park who's actually just trying to con you out of $200
I think I'm forgetting someone, but hey, you can always fill your downtime with sexual fantasies about your own father!
Look, I get that my experience does not in any way equal the universal experience, least of all that of a young gay man from half a century ago. Still, the sexual content of this book is so over the top that I started to feel like, instead of one of the Classics of Gay Literature, I had accidentally acquired an A/B/O fic* in book form.
A Boy's Own Story is supposed to be an autobiographical novel, but it has very little narrative: mostly it's a series of incidents, loosely tied together. (The novel's notes reveal that several of the chapters were originally written and published separately, and it shows.) This format only serves to make the narrator's adventures seem more crazed and unlikely -- you reach a point in almost every chapter where you start to distantly hear the bow-chicka-bow-wow music playing. ("Dear Playgirl, all I did was order a pizza, but you'll never believe what happened!")
All that said: White can be a beautiful and descriptive writer. I read this because I loved [b:The Flaneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris|109724|The Flaneur A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris|Edmund White|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1369505859s/109724.jpg|16186642], a work of nonfiction about wandering around Paris and the history of several marginalized groups there. There are flashes of what made me respond to that book in A Boy's Own Story -- descriptions of the hotel the narrator lives in with his mother and sister, of summer at his father's lake house, of a woman who runs a bookstore. These passages are filled with brilliant, vivid observation. I will definitely be seeking out more of White's nonfiction work.
But I eyerolled throughout all of this novel's sexual shenanigans. I must be getting old.
(Elderly and cantankerous as I am, I have one last bone to pick, although not with White. Staring out at me from the front of my edition was this blurb from the Chicago Sun-Times: "The best American narrative of sexual awakening since [b:The Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398034300s/5107.jpg|3036731]." Um. Did you read The Catcher in the Rye, anonymous Chicago Sun-Times critic from 1982? Or did you just catch the A/B/O AU on AO3? Just checking.)
*If you don't know what this is, bask in your innocence
*A 12-year-old "straight" baby jock who's really into anal
*Not one, but two separate camp counselors
*A "special" student who wanders around with a constant erection, which everyone just accepts, like, "Oh hey, it's whatshisname with his perma-boner"
*A teacher and his wife looking for a three-way
*A totally different teacher
*A female black prostitute
*A guy in a park who's actually just trying to con you out of $200
I think I'm forgetting someone, but hey, you can always fill your downtime with sexual fantasies about your own father!
Look, I get that my experience does not in any way equal the universal experience, least of all that of a young gay man from half a century ago. Still, the sexual content of this book is so over the top that I started to feel like, instead of one of the Classics of Gay Literature, I had accidentally acquired an A/B/O fic* in book form.
A Boy's Own Story is supposed to be an autobiographical novel, but it has very little narrative: mostly it's a series of incidents, loosely tied together. (The novel's notes reveal that several of the chapters were originally written and published separately, and it shows.) This format only serves to make the narrator's adventures seem more crazed and unlikely -- you reach a point in almost every chapter where you start to distantly hear the bow-chicka-bow-wow music playing. ("Dear Playgirl, all I did was order a pizza, but you'll never believe what happened!")
All that said: White can be a beautiful and descriptive writer. I read this because I loved [b:The Flaneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris|109724|The Flaneur A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris|Edmund White|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1369505859s/109724.jpg|16186642], a work of nonfiction about wandering around Paris and the history of several marginalized groups there. There are flashes of what made me respond to that book in A Boy's Own Story -- descriptions of the hotel the narrator lives in with his mother and sister, of summer at his father's lake house, of a woman who runs a bookstore. These passages are filled with brilliant, vivid observation. I will definitely be seeking out more of White's nonfiction work.
But I eyerolled throughout all of this novel's sexual shenanigans. I must be getting old.
(Elderly and cantankerous as I am, I have one last bone to pick, although not with White. Staring out at me from the front of my edition was this blurb from the Chicago Sun-Times: "The best American narrative of sexual awakening since [b:The Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398034300s/5107.jpg|3036731]." Um. Did you read The Catcher in the Rye, anonymous Chicago Sun-Times critic from 1982? Or did you just catch the A/B/O AU on AO3? Just checking.)
*If you don't know what this is, bask in your innocence