A Boy's Own Story | Edmund White | Eloquent, Elegant, Incisive, Provocative

A Boy's Own Story | Edmund White | So beautiful and so important

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A Boy's Own Story

	A Boy's Own Story Edmund White Vintage, 2000 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An instant classic upon its original publication, A Boy's Own Story is the first of Edmund White's highly acclaimed trilogy of autobiographical novels that brilliantly evoke a young man's coming of age and document American gay life through the last forty years.

The nameless narrator in this deeply affecting work reminisces about growing up in the 1950s with emotionally aloof, divorced parents, an unrelenting sister, and the schoolmates who taunt him. He finds consolation in literature and his fantastic imagination. Eager to cultivate intimate, enduring friendships, he becomes aware of his yearning to be loved by men, and struggles with the guilt and shame of accepting who he is. Written with lyrical delicacy and extraordinary power, A Boy's Own Story is a triumph.

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Eloquent, Elegant, Incisive, Provocative

What exquisite and marvelous prose! White has mastered the English language in an artful, florid, and elegant manner exceeding the great Nabokov himself. This novel, my first, but by no means last, to read, is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about an upper-crust, well-educated, youth in the years of his gay discovery. Common to many a gay youth, a distant, unapproving father, a surrogate, unengaged step-mother, and a self-absorbed, fickle mother are found emotionally wanting. Coming of age with hormones raging, sexual exploration searches for an outlet of its expression. Attracted to his own gender, he finds satisfaction, but remains conflicted. White soughs the seeds and watches the growth of almost every gay man's deepest yearnings. It's a soft, yet vibrant tale. Poetic, yet visceral. Masterful writing. Highly recommended.

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So beautiful and so important

We have been partners/lovers for 14 years, and we found this book to be so important for young gay men everywhere. It was our story. White's new autobiography is also seminal reading. Thank you, Edmund!

A touchstone for millions of young gay men

This novel has been read by millions and is worth your time if you are young and gay. I read it many years ago, and remember little, other than it was an enjoyable and enlightening experience, that helped me realize I was not alone.

As to whether Baldwin's book, "Giovanni's Room," is better, I don't know. I tried Baldwin, but it seems he never got over being black. It was difficult for me to relate to him--not saying others can't. I am not going to apologize, like a dumba**, for prefering a white writer, at least when it comes to issues of sexuality. If that strikes some people the wrong way, then they will just have to be struck.

Edmund White is one of the elder statesmen of white gay writers, and deservedly so. He was open (maybe too open) in times when open wasn't rewarded, an early pioneer, and thereby gained a cult status, the reward of early pioneers.

I don't like everything about his writing, and can agree with some of the criticisms posted here, but in general I can relate with his world and his feelings, and I think he is all right. His heart is in the right place. I am not so sure about some of the neg reviewers, though.

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Lots of washing, less to hang out

A reviewer of A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White is presented with a number of problems, In the paraphrased words of one of the book's characters, there may be a lot in the wash, but eventually not much to hang out, and this, by the end of the book, largely summed up what it had delivered. Be reassured, however, that the process of reading A Boy's Own Story is a delight from start to finish. Edmund White's style is quite beautiful, full of complex allusions, superb characterisation and, above all, masterful description. Every character springs to life off the page. If only collectively or individually they had more to offer...

A Boy's Own Story is an adolescent's discovery and realisation of his own homosexuality. The book promises a lot of sex and, sure enough, it both begins and ends with explicit encounters. Throughout the remainder, however, the sex seems to be more in the mind than in the experience. It appears that Edmund White's adult recollection of his teenage dilemmas could have been subject to the embellishment of later reflection. Repeatedly the author stretches time to explore the detail of options whenever the boy of the title is presented with a dilemma. These were surely the voices of later years speaking through an ostensibly reconstructed, but surely imagined past. The boy always spoke eloquently about his choices, considered options in detail, but perhaps not convincingly. One of the more engaging aspects of coming of age sagas is how innocence is portrayed and how its conquest is engineered. In A Boy's Own Story one feels that Edmund White wants to deny that he was ever innocent, or at least suggest that he would ever admit it. And so a spark that could have lit up the glowing prose never quite ignited.

When the book first appeared over twenty years ago, the fact that it did appear in its explicit form, apparently denying the guilt that oozes off every page, might itself have been worthy of note. Twenty years on it now reads as merely dated, but still it reads beautifully thanks to the author's supreme skill with words and expression. The issues that might previously have rendered it remarkable have, however, long since cooled, so now the reader must approach the book either as it is, as an autobiography, or alternatively in historical terms. The book, however, cannot sustain the latter approach.

I will now certainly seek out other books by Edmund White, but in the case of A Boy's Own Story I am tempted to conclude that though writers have to be self-obsessed, when that neurosis is turned completely inward, it raises new barriers that can exclude the reader. Hence the gloss. Hence the sheen of the whiter than white washing that proves to be just half a load.

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A Boy's Somewhat Tedious Story

Yeah, I'm aware of all of the comparisons to J. D. Salinger and Oscar Wilde but this book doesn't get me to put author Edmund White in those leagues. Sure, the writing is high-falutin' - "ectoplasmic", "extravagant mendicancy", "colloidal" - but that doesn't necessarily make for a better story. One creative approach is that the narrator is never named. Whoever he is is a deeply disturbed individual who, at fifteen, seems to have more baggage than a fully-loaded 747. The scenes with the shrink he finally turns to are among the most unsatisfying in the 218 pages. Here's the central issue: instead of moving along the story, White meanders into long, long, confusing, boring soloquies citing obscure literary references (see above). For someone so talented, perhaps he could write a less esoterical and more interesting book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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