In his 2005 autobiographical book, My Lives, Edmund White recalls being shamed as an adolescent by a psychologist and family friend, writing, “Foolishly, I had imagined I could transform the dross of homosexuality into the gold of art, but now I saw I could never be a great artist.” Starting in 1973 with Forgetting Elena, to his relief and that of a world in which he is today known as the “the pioneer of gay literature in America”, he repeatedly proved himself wrong.
White, who died on Tuesday at the age of 85, belonged to a generation of “gay writers” who were not writing for a straight readership. He came to prominence at a time when homosexuality was illegal and publishing houses would routinely get sued for pornography over a “kiss between two men”. White’s visceral writing style and autobiographical works forced readers to get up close and personal with the grief of being “different” in a cold and cruel world. White’s father was ashamed of his son’s sexuality, and his mother, a psychologist, saw him, as a “guinea pig”. From trying to “cure himself” to becoming one of the leading voices responsible for the explosion of queer writing in the mainstream was a long journey. White’s The Edmund Trilogy — a coming-of-age tale of a gay man’s life from childhood to middle age — tells this story. The first in the series, A Boy’s Own Story, became an instant classic.
