Chaos

Description

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 In this collection, which features two new, previously unpublished stories, Edmund White explores different aspects of ageing, romance and sex.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.

Promotion info

Published to coincide with the original publication of Edmund White's new memoir New York Boy which is due to receive press attention on both sides of the Atlantic This new collection of short stories includes a novella and two previously unpublished works 'Edmund White is one of the best writers of my generation; he's certainly the contemporary American writer I reread more than any other, and the one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

Reviews

'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

Author description

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.