Edmund White is one of the few literary giants of the gay world. "A Boy's Own Tale," his autobiographical novel about a closeted boyhood, was one of the pioneering works of gay literature, and he's also the author of "States of Desire," a seminal travelogue across pre-AIDS gay America, the co-author of "The Joy of Gay Sex," and, most recently,"City Boy," a memoir of his time in New York City during the 1960s and 70s.
White's book offers a fascinating look into New York's burgeoning gay cultural life in the years before AIDS, and the insidery world of its literary elite. During the two decades covered by the book, White encountered many of the best-known figures in American culture -- including Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag and Robert Mapplethorpe. White has also recently been the subject of a surprise denunciation by Gore Vidal -- who took offense to White's play "Terre Haute," which fictionalizes an encounter between Vidal and Oklahoma City-bomber Tim McVeigh -- in the British Times.
Thomas Rogers spoke to White in his New York apartment --about Vidal's work, the politics of same-sex marriage, and how blogs are changing literature.
With the progress that's been made on gay rights, I think that in some ways as people's lives become less defined by their sexuality, they also prefer narratives that are less defined by sexuality. Do you think there’s still a need for gay literature?
We're in this post-gay period where you can announce to everybody that you yourself are gay, and you can write books in which there are gay characters but you don't need to write exclusively about that. Your characters don't need to inhabit a ghetto anymore than you do, need to. A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people. Michael Cunningham is a good example of someone who is out himself and has written things about gay people but he doesn't feel the need to write exclusively about gays. I mean there are tons like him among the younger writers.
If you were starting your writing career now, do you think you’d be less inclined to write about gay things?
I've written lots of things that aren't gay. Though I'm writing a novel now about a gay man and a straight man who are best friends and I follow them over three decades. That's a subject that is so obvious, and almost every gay male I know has a close straight male friend, but no one's ever written about it as far as I know. It’s amazing to me that such an obvious subject has never been treated and I think there are tons of subjects like that. I still find gay life, or the suburbs of gay life, still very interesting to write about, I mean, where are the sinister destructive gay characters?
Early on after gay liberation there was an almost Stalinist pressure on the part of gay critics and even gay readers, to write about positive role models. We were never supposed to write negative things about gays or else we were seen as collaborating with the enemy. Now I think we've gotten to the point where we could write about that ... there are a lot of subjects that I think are crying out to be touched.
A lot of your rise to literary fame in the sixties and seventies involved networking – and sometimes sleeping with – important figures in the literary world. Do you think the internet has changed the importance of that for young writers?
I think the more ways there are into literature, whether its being published in book form or in any other form, the better. There is always the danger in any society that only insiders who are privileged will have access to publication. I think whenever that system breaks down there is this sudden flourishing of talent. Maybe we’re witnessing that with the blog era.
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