Inside a Pearl

October 14, 2013
In this third memoir, acclaimed novelist, essayist, and biographer White (A Boy’s Own Story) reflects on his sexual conquests, his self-discoveries, and his observations about the differences between the French and Americans in the city of Proust, Genet, and Foucault. White arrives in Paris in the summer of 1983, takes up residence in the apartment of an N.Y.U. professor who sometimes also used it, and stays there for the next 15 years. In what becomes a tedious memoir, he chronicles his one-night stands (“What men like about anonymity is that it allows free rein to any fantasy whatsoever”) and his longer-term relationships (Hubert “loved me, and since I already thought I was impossibly old for the gay life, I felt grateful and happy,” he writes, adding, “Gratitude is my chief erotic emotion”). In flat prose, White recalls his acquaintances and friendships with Ned Rorem, Michel Foucault, and his longtime companion, Marie-Claude. He admits that during his sojourn in the City of Light, his “sex life had come down from the paradise of promiscuity it had been in the 1970s.” White does provide insightful glimpses of Paris in the late 20th century and relays his own ambivalence toward the city after all these years.

December 15, 2013
A memoir that engages on a number of levels, as a pivotal literary figure recounts his productive Parisian years. When White (Jack Holmes and His Friend, 2012, etc.) began his 16-year Parisian residence in 1983, he was flush from the success of both his breakthrough novel, A Boy's Own Story (1982), and a Guggenheim fellowship, and he was well on his way to establishing himself as the pre-eminent gay American writer of the era. "A Boy's Own Story was presented to the world as a novel rather than as a memoir, but not out of a sense of discretion or modesty," he writes. "It was just that back then only people who were already famous wrote their memoirs." He continued to publish autobiographical novels but extended his literary reach to encompass biography and memoir (this is his third). The anecdotes and observations of the writer as social butterfly sustain plenty of interest, whether he's overhearing Tina Turner tell Julian Barnes how much she loves his novels or describing being in the "historic, if tedious, company" of heiress and art patron Peggy Guggenheim. Some revelations are considerably more shocking, such as the story about the French actor and American writer who had sex "in an oven at Dachau while they were both tripping." However, the broader cultural context elevates the memoir above gossip, as he writes of the onslaught of AIDS, then considered an American curiosity from which one could find refuge in Europe, and of the different attitudes and temperaments of the French, British and Americans. He ruminates on growing older and corpulent in a culture that prizes fitness and youth and of losing so many lovers and others to the scourge of AIDS. He also writes of his development as a literary stylist, one who "became simpler and more direct because of living in two languages." Some of White's observations on rape, feminism and promiscuity continue to shock, but the writer refuses to sentimentalize or pull punches, even (or especially) when the subject is himself.

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January 1, 2014

As a major destination for artists and writers over the years, Paris never ceases to capture the imagination. White (Princeton Univ.; A Boy's Own Story; Genet: A Biography; Marcel Proust: A Life) follows in this vein, presenting the City of Light as a serene haven in sharp contrast to the bustling New York City, where he previously resided. In Paris, he managed to learn the French language as well as master the culture with the help of his friend Marie-Claude de Brunhoff, the one person constant in his peripatetic social life. Leaving New York in 1983 at the height of the AIDS epidemic, White recounts the sad stories of his many gay friends and lovers claimed by the disease. VERDICT This book succeeds as a gossipy and enlightening account of living as a gay man among the French intelligentsia, although it is marred by excessive celebrity name dropping. White's skillful writing rescues the book from being just another account of an American in Paris. Of particular interest is the penetrating look at how the French view themselves as the cultural elite of the world. Recommended for memoir enthusiasts and lovers of Paris. [See Prepub Alert, 8/5/13.]--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

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December 1, 2013
White is an acclaimed novelist, essayist, biographer of Genet and Proust, and a self-described archaeologist of gossip. In his third memoir, he recounts the 15 years he spent in France, cataloging the famous people he met, interviewed, befriended, and slept with. In fact, the circles White moved in were so tight and overlapping, it appears that the only people he knew who were not prominent were the men he picked up. White is renowned for the purity of his style and for his frank depictions of sex, and he is in peak form here. For White, identity is sexual identity. He records the tastes and appetites of dear friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers. For him, sexwhether they have it, whom they have it with, how they have itis their defining characteristic. He is wise in his portrayal of the French, and there are tender moments, notably his recollections of his old friend Marie-Claude (MC), who did so much to introduce him to Paris and its peculiarities. But his principal concerns are fame, money, and, yes, sex.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)