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Description
From the legendary author Edmund White, a stunning, revelatory memoir of a lifetime of gay love and sex.
“In his panoply of sexual encounters, Edmund White's love of sex makes us proud to be human. And the story of his sex life reads like a beautifully crafted, very moving (and very funny!) novel.” -John Irving
"A raw, frightening, funny, and beautiful testimony, brimming with transgressive wisdom." -Robert Jones, Jr.
I'm at an age when writers are supposed to say finally what mattered most to them-for me it would be thousands of sex partners.
The 85-year-old “paterfamilias of queer literature” (New York Times) recounts the sixty-plus years of sexual escapades that have inspired his many masterpieces. He explores the sex he had with other closeted boys of the 50s Midwest, with women as a young man trying to be straight, the sex he's paid for and been paid for, sex during the Stonewall and HIV eras, and in the age of the apps. Through tales of transactional sex, mutual admiration, open relationships, domination, submission, love, and loss, he paints an indelible portrait of queer history in America and abroad in a way only someone who has lived through it can.
Written with White's signature honesty, irreverence, and wit, The Loves of My Life is the culmination of a legend's life and work, a delightful and moving tour of over seventy years of being unabashedly gay and in love with love in all its forms.
Product details
Published | 28 Jan 2025 |
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Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 256 |
ISBN | 9781639733736 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Textured and variegated … A writer's memoir and a rumination on craft … White is so clearly in complete control of his powers, switching between coquetry and high seriousness, weaving a rich tapestry of cultural references (Jean Genet to Hello Kitty, Stendhal to Sontag) while carefully deploying his unique ability, as Alan Hollinghurst put it, to “translate libido into style” through metaphor … The book's push against prudishness also contains a subtle call for understanding and compassion – reminders that what has been gained in terms of LGBTQ rights is fragile, and a conviction that a better, bolder future is possible. Anyone can make such an optimistic vision sound appealing; only Edmund White could make it truly seductive
Ralf Webb, Guardian
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Exhaustively wonderful. An unflinching, romantic and generous climax by a bright star in our literary constellation. The gayest book ever written
Henry Hoke, author of Open Throat
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Intelligent, stylish, entertaining and funny
TLS
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Melancholy, erratic, wise and often ravishingly beautiful, this is just what you want from a book about sex. It's as messy, risky and emotional as the act itself – an old-age testament that bears witness not just to Ed's legendary frankness, but also to his life-long commitment to finding new ways of writing who we might be, have been and are
Neil Bartlett, author of Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall
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Ecstatic, so funny, tender, very hot - a scintillating romp with a literary lion. Daddy's diary fully delivers, pungent and real, teeming with gasp-worthy disclosures, as illuminating as it is filthy.
Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar
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The itch of lust, in most of these encounters, soon turns into swooning poetic ardour . . . the writing in The Loves of My Life is as juicy, ebullient and ecstatic as in his best novels
Observer