3.5
The Beautiful Room Is Empty
By Edmund WhitePublisher Description
When the narrator of White's poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men. Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay uprising--and populated by eloquent queens, butch poseurs, and a fearfully incompetent shrink--The Beautiful Room is Empty conflates the acts of coming out and coming of age.
"With intelligence, candor, humor--and anger--White explores the most insidious aspects of oppression.... An impressive novel."--Washington Post book World
"With intelligence, candor, humor--and anger--White explores the most insidious aspects of oppression.... An impressive novel."--Washington Post book World
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities8 Reviews
3.5
Edoardo
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“3.5/5”
Stephen Beck
Created about 2 years agoShare
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Stephanie Tenerowicz
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cosmicdrip
Created about 3 years agoShare
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Charlie
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““I caught myself foolishly imagining that gays might someday constitute a community rather than a diagnosis.””
About Edmund White
Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1940. His fiction includes the autobiographical trilogy A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony, as well as Caracole, Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, and Skinned Alive, a collection of short stories. He is also the author of a highly acclaimed biography of Jean Genet, a short study of Proust, a travel book about gay America—States of Desire—and Our Paris. He is an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and teaches at Princeton University. He lives in New York City.
Other books by Edmund White
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