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NEW YORK -- Andrew Sean Greer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, remembers the archetypal clip helium work Edmund White. It was the summertime of 1989, helium was opening his 2nd twelvemonth astatine Brown University and helium had conscionable travel out.
Having learned that White would beryllium teaching astatine Brown, helium recovered a transcript of White's celebrated coming-of-age novel, “A Boy's Own Story.”
“I’d ne'er work thing similar it — cipher had — and what strikes maine looking backmost is the deficiency of shame oregon self-hatred oregon misery that imbued truthful galore different cheery antheral works of fabrication of that time,” says Greer, whose “Less” won the Pulitzer for fabrication successful 2018. "I, of course, did not cognize past I was speechmaking a genuinely important literate work. All I knew is I wanted to work more.
“Reading was each we had successful those days — the private, unshared acquisition that could assistance you research your backstage life," helium said. "Ed invented truthful galore of us."
White, a pioneer of modern cheery literature, died this week astatine property 85. He near down specified wide work works arsenic “A Boy’s Own Story” and “The Beautiful Room Is Empty” and a acquisition to countless younger writers: Validation of their lives, the find of themselves done the stories of others.
Greer and different authors talk of White's enactment arsenic much than conscionable an influence, but arsenic a rite of passage: "How a queer antheral mightiness statesman to question each of the profoundly held, profoundly religious, profoundly American assumptions astir desire, love, and enactment — who is entitled to person it, however it indispensable beryllium had, what it looks like,” says Robert Jones Jr., whose caller supra emotion betwixt 2 enslaved men, “ The Prophets,” was a National Book Award finalist successful 2021.
Jones remembers being a teen successful the 1980s erstwhile helium work ”A Boy's Own Story." He recovered the publication astatine a store successful a cheery vicinity successful Manhattan's Greenwich Village, “the safest spot for a idiosyncratic to beryllium openly queer successful New York City,” helium said.
“It was a scary clip for maine due to the fact that each the quality stories astir queer men revolved astir AIDS and dying, and however the illness was the Christian god’s vengeance against the 'sin of homosexuality,'” Jones added.
“It was the archetypal clip that I had travel crossed immoderate lit that confirmed that queer men person a childhood; that my ain desires were not, successful fact, immoderate aberration, but were natural; and that immoderate suffering and loneliness I was experiencing wasn’t divine retribution, but was the volition of a human-made bigotry that could be, if I had the courageousness and the community, confronted and possibly defeated," helium said.
Starting successful the 1970s, White published much than 25 books, including novels, memoirs, plays, biographies and “The Joy of Gay Sex,” a effect to the 1970s bestseller “The Joy of Sex." He held the uncommon stature for a surviving writer of having a prize named for him, the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, arsenic presented by the Publishing Triangle.
“White was precise supportive of young writers, encouraging them to research and grow caller and idiosyncratic visions,” said Carol Rosenfeld, seat of the Triangle. The grant was “one mode of honoring that support.”
Winners specified the prize was founded, successful 2006, person included “The Prophets,” Myriam Gurba 's “Dahlia Season” and Joe Okonkwo's “Jazz Moon.” Earlier this year, the grant was fixed to Jiaming Tang's “ Cinema Love,” a communicative of cheery men successful agrarian China.
Tang remembered speechmaking “A Boy's Own Story” successful his aboriginal 20s, and said that some the publication and White were “essential touchpoints successful my cheery coming-of-age.”
“He writes with intimate specificity and humor, and nary different writer has captured the electrical excitement and crushing loneliness that cheery men acquisition arsenic they travel of age,” Tang said. "He’s a towering figure. There’d beryllium nary cheery lit successful America without Edmund White.”
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