What happens when a life implodes? When a respected older man, a product of the liberated 1970s, is incapable of cleaning up his act for the twenty-first century? When he pursues sex with a rabidity his body and his reputation can no longer sustain? In this collection, which features two new, previously unpublished stories, Edmund White explores different aspects of ageing, romance and sex. Taking an unsparing look at gay midlife, these stories are not fiction devoted to the dim splendours and miseries of the past but rather to the unsettling, irresistible claims of the present. Age remains one of the great taboos of gay culture, but Edmund White, as iconoclastic as ever, writes about maturity with the same precision and insight he brought to adolescence in A Boy's Own Story. Edmund White has always been the ideal travelling companion, as he demonstrated in The Flaneur; here, he invites the reader to accompany him to Florida, the Greek Isles, and Turkey - and into the chaotic gay demimonde of contemporary New York.
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'Edmund White is one of the best writers of my generation; he's certainly the contemporary American writer I reread more than any other, and the one whose next book I look forward to reading most' - John Irving 'Edmund White is one of the three or four most virtuosic living writers of sentences in the English language' - Dave Eggers Praise for My Lives: 'A vital and engrossing book. He has a luxuriantly observant memory, and his past is evoked with keen feeling as well as a pervasive self-deprecating wit His account of himself is clear, humorous, never coy' - Allan Hollinghurst, Guardian
About the Author
An esteemed novelist and cultural critic, Edmund White is the author of many books including the autobiographical A Boy's Own Story; a previous memoir, My Lives; and most recently a biography of poet Arthur Rimbaud. Edmund White lives in New York City and teaches writing at Princeton University. He is an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a recipient of the Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts of Letters.
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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Edmund White has long written fiction is semi-autobiographical vein and the principal story of this collection (Chaos) is about the issues of growing older, undoubtedly drawn on his own experience as a man in hismid sixties: forgetting people's names, friends who start to die (though that is not a new experience for those who lived through the advent of AIDS, giving sexual pleasure more than directly receiving it, paying for sex, using Viagra. There are love stories within these stories which take the reader from New York to Paris, Greece, Florida and Turkey. Edmund White has an ability to write in a pitilessly candid way that is also tender and moving. His characters play out their sexual fantasies with unembarassed candour. They are aware of their sagging everything as they recall thier past triumphs or their irresistibile bodies, and the accompanying conquests, of forty years before. White's evocation of places, moods and relationships is unrivalled and this is another book to return to like any other work of art that only reveals itself bit by bit.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By bagoas
Format:Paperback
This is a collection of texts: a novel, that gives it's title to the volume, and five stories, two of them fairly short. Common to all or nearly all the texts, the theme of old age, in addition to the usual White's topics.
The novel, Chaos, is where we find the usual characteristics of EW's writing, including his autobiographical tone. I mean, I do not know if what is there exactly matches the author's biography, but one of his talents is precisely this, to write with a voice so likely that we are led to believe or accept that in fact it corresponds to the writer's life. There is this kind of tone that is usual in White, an almost total identification between author and narrator. As I said, I do not know if it is pure fiction masquerading as biography, but this is not important, what matters is that the quality of the literary artifice, and, of course, what it provides to readers.
Chaos is sometimes a poignant story about the aging process, on how we will gradually adapt to the limitations of old age, but especially the way one resists (or not) psychologically to all changes that come with age and the fact that we have to deal with the physical decline and with the prospect of death. All this done with a kind of honesty and rawness that is usual with White, particularly in what regards to sex.
The remaining texts in this edition are there to prove that EW is an author of many and diverse talents. I particularly liked the story The Good Sports, which tells the story of a couple of friends, an English woman and an American man, who decide to spend their retirement in a Greek island. Much of the story focuses on a visit to Turkey when all sorts of misunderstandings did happen. This is a beautiful story about friendship, or rather the love without sex, and its limits.
The novel, Chaos, is where we find the usual characteristics of EW's writing, including his autobiographical tone. I mean, I do not know if what is there exactly matches the author's biography, but one of his talents is precisely this, to write with a voice so likely that we are led to believe or accept that in fact it corresponds to the writer's life. There is this kind of tone that is usual in White, an almost total identification between author and narrator. As I said, I do not know if it is pure fiction masquerading as biography, but this is not important, what matters is that the quality of the literary artifice, and, of course, what it provides to readers.
Chaos is sometimes a poignant story about the aging process, on how we will gradually adapt to the limitations of old age, but especially the way one resists (or not) psychologically to all changes that come with age and the fact that we have to deal with the physical decline and with the prospect of death. All this done with a kind of honesty and rawness that is usual with White, particularly in what regards to sex.
The remaining texts in this edition are there to prove that EW is an author of many and diverse talents. I particularly liked the story The Good Sports, which tells the story of a couple of friends, an English woman and an American man, who decide to spend their retirement in a Greek island. Much of the story focuses on a visit to Turkey when all sorts of misunderstandings did happen. This is a beautiful story about friendship, or rather the love without sex, and its limits.
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