A Boy's Own Story (Modern Library) Book

For more than two decades, Edmund White has been widely recognized as Americaâ??s preeminent gay writer. â??He has a novelistâ??s eye for the telling detail or the remarkable phrase and, like Proust himself, concentrates upon the minutiae of the past so that it might live again,â? wrote The New York Times Book Review. â??White possesses the rare combination of a po-etic sense of language and an ironic sense of humor,â? declared Newsweek. â??[He] is unquestionably the foremost American gay novelist.â? Commemorating the twentieth anni-versary of A Boyâ??s Own Story, this Modern Library edition presents Whiteâ??s autobiographical novel together with an Introduction by prizewinning novelist Allan Gurganus and a new Afterword by the author himself.A Boyâ??s Own Story, with equal parts stunning lyricism and unabashed humor, traces a nameless narratorâ??s coming-of-age in the 1950s. Struggling with his homosexuality, the narrator seeks the consolations of a fantastic imagination and fills his head with romantic expectations (â??I believed without a doubt in a better world, which was adulthood or New York or Paris or love.â?) His distant, divorced parents exacerbate his hunger for emotional connection, and he endures the unhelpful attentions of a priest and a psychoanalyst. In time, he recognizes the need to be loved by the men in his life and, in the surprising conclusion, escapes his childhood forever with one unforgettable act.â??With A Boyâ??s Own Story, American literature is larger by one classic novel,â? wrote The Washington Post Book World. â??No reader, straight or gay . . . can fail to experience shock after shock of recognition in these pages, and few, I would bet, will be able to withhold a one-to-one sympathy from the unnamed narrator, even when he is being, by the standards of only yesterday, â??shocking.â??â?Read More