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Edmund White’s latest a cornucopia of desire, adventure, wit

‘A Previous Life’ offers meta take on polyamory, bisexuality

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(Book cover image courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing)

‘A Previous Life: Another Posthumous Novel’
By Edmund White
c.2022, Bloomsbury Publishing
$26/270 pages

If you’re jonesing for sex, polyamory, and gossipy confessions, don’t rush toward the bright young things.

You’ll find as much, likely more, lust, beauty, and love – spiced with fab gab, if you turn to Edmund White, the queer, 82-year-old, acclaimed novelist, essayist, biographer and memoirist.

In “A Previous Life,” his latest novel, White gives us enough passion to rouse even the stoniest heart. The novel, a work of metafiction set in 2050, features a polyamorous, bisexual married couple – Ruggero Castelnuovo, a 70-year-old, Sicilian, renowned harpsichordist, and Constance, 30, a wannabe American writer. One day, after he breaks his leg skiing, Ruggero is stuck in the chalet where he and Constance live. Constance cares for him as he recovers.

Ruggero and Constance have had quite a past. They have agreed not to talk to each other about their past sexual adventures and affairs. Too much honesty can only cause trouble, they believe. They agreed “soon after they met never to talk about their past lives;” White writes, “transparency had destroyed their earlier marriages.”

But, as Ruggero convalesces, the couple changes their views. They decide that transparency would be good, and agree to write and read to each other their “confessions” about their past – from one-night hook-ups to short, hot romances to long-term liaisons.

“A Previous Life” is a glorious, galloping romp through their sexual adventures. Gender fluidity and bisexuality are the norm for them. And for many others in their time (three decades from now – at mid 21st century).

Ruggero, whose parents died young, was raised in Sicily by his grandfather. Early on, he knew that he liked music and boys. He begins having sex as a teen with his hetero cousin Giuseppe. He adored showering with Giuseppe and gazing at Giuseppe’s butt. His cousin’s ass, Ruggero tells Constance, was “soccer round, luminously white, the cracks beckoning and furry and unsuspecting.”

Ruggero grows up to be a critically acclaimed musician and a bisexual, adventurous lover. Among Ruggero’s many affairs, was his romance with the deceased, perhaps passe, but historically important writer Edmund White. Before wedding Constance, Ruggero was married twice.

Constance, whose parents also die when she is a child, is raised by family friends in Bowling Green, Ohio. Her first experience with sex – when her “uncle,” her legal guardian, sexually abuses her – is traumatic. She gets herself away from this situation by getting a scholarship to Princeton. After college, she lives through two terrible marriages. One husband robs her of all the money she’s earned. Another husband, a pompous, closet-case writer, humiliates her. Like Ruggero, Constance has had male and female lovers.

White, a co-founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and of the 1980s queer writers group The Violet Quill, grew up in the Midwest in the 1940s and 1950s when you weren’t out if you were gay and knew no openly queer people.

When White began to write in the 1960s and 1970s, he was one of the first queer writers to write novels with gay protagonists — let alone queer characters who didn’t die or go to prison for their queerness. In that homophobic time, White was one of a very few queer authors who were brave enough to come out in their work.

White is best-known for his autobiographical fiction – especially, for his semi-autobiographical trilogy: “A Boy’s Own Story” (1982), “The Beautiful Room is Empty” (1988) and “The Farewell Symphony” (1997).

White is the main character of “A Previous Life.” Yet, the novel is meta. In it, White, the author, seems to grapple with his legacy. Because it’s set 30 years in the future, White’s able to imagine, from a distance of three decades, what his place in literary history will be. He wonders if the only people who will remember his work are a few “old queens.” There’s a biography out about his life but “scholars have worked more on [David] Sedaris.”

There’s little likelihood of White’s legacy ever being diminished. His work is too important to LGBTQ and literary history to be erased.

“A Previous Life” is a cornucopia of desire, adventure and wit.

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Books

Examining importance of queer places in history of arts and culture

‘Nothing Ever Just Disappears’ shines with grace and lyrical prose

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(Book cover image courtesy of Pegasus Books)

‘Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Queer Histories’ 
By Diarmuid Hester
c.2024, Pegasus Books
$29.95/358 pages

Go to your spot.

Where that is comes to mind immediately: a palatial home with soaring windows, or a humble cabin in a glen, a ramshackle treehouse, a window seat, a coffeehouse table, or just a bed with a special blanket. It’s the place where your mind unspools and creativity surges, where you relax, process, and think. It’s the spot where, as in the new book “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” by Diarmuid Hester, you belong.

Clinging “to a spit of land on the south-east coast of England” is Prospect Cottage, where artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman lived until he died of AIDS in 1994. It’s a simple four-room place, but it was important to him. Not long ago, Hester visited Prospect Cottage to “examine the importance of queer places in the history of arts and culture.”

So many “queer spaces” are disappearing. Still, we can talk about those that aren’t.

In his classic book, “Maurice,” writer E.M. Forster imagined the lives of two men who loved one another but could never be together, and their romantic meeting near a second-floor window. The novel, when finished, “proved too radical even for Forster himself.” He didn’t “allow” its publication until after he was dead.

“Patriarchal power,” says Hester, largely controlled who was able to occupy certain spots in London at the turn of the last century. Still, “queer suffragettes” there managed to leave their mark: women like Vera Holme, chauffeur to suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst; writer Virginia Woolf; newspaperwoman Edith Craig, and others who “made enormous contributions to the cause.”

Josephine Baker grew up in poverty, learning to dance to keep warm, but she had Paris, the city that “made her into a star.” Artist and “transgender icon” Claude Cahun loved Jersey, the place where she worked to “show just how much gender is masquerade.” Writer James Baldwin felt most at home in a small town in France. B-filmmaker Jack Smith embraced New York – and vice versa. And on a personal journey, Hester mourns his friend, artist Kevin Killian, who lived and died in his beloved San Francisco.

Juxtaposing place and person, “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” features an interesting way of presenting the idea that both are intertwined deeper than it may seem at first glance. The point is made with grace and lyrical prose, in a storyteller’s manner that offers back story and history as author Diarmuid Hester bemoans the loss of “queer spaces.” This is really a lovely, meaningful book – though readers may argue the points made as they pass through the places included here. Landscapes change with history all the time; don’t modern “queer spaces” count?

That’s a fair question to ask, one that could bring these “hidden” histories full-circle: We often preserve important monuments from history. In memorializing the actions of the queer artists who’ve worked for the future, the places that inspired them are worth enshrining, too.

Reading this book may be the most relaxing, soothing thing you’ll do this month. Try “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” because it really hits the spot.

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Books

Upcoming books offer something for every reader

From a history of the gay right to a look at queer women’s spaces

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(Book cover images courtesy of the publishers)

Daylight Savings Time has arrived, giving you more sunlight in the evening and more time to read. So why not look for these great books this spring?

If your taste runs to historical novels, you’re in luck. When Yorick spots his name on the list of the missing after the Titanic sinks, he believes this to be an omen: nobody’s looking for him, so maybe this is his opportunity to move to Paris and open that bookstore he’s been dreaming about. In The Titanic Survivors Book Clubby Timothy Schaffert (Doubleday, $29.00) his decision leads to more than a bucolic little business. Out April 2.

If you’re looking for something a little on the lighter side, discover Riley Weaver Needs a Date to the Gaybutante Ball by Jason June (HarperTeen, $19.99). Young adult books are perfect light reading for adults, and this one is full of high-school drama, romance, comedy, and more drama. What fun! Out May 23.

Can’t get enough of graphic novels? Then look for Escape from St. Hell: A Graphic Novel by Lewis Hancox (Graphix, $14.99). It’s the continuing story of Lew, who just wants to live his life as a guy, which he started doing in the last novel (“Welcome to St. Hell”) but you know what they say about one door closing, one door opening. In this new installment, Lew grapples with the changes he’s made and how his friends and family see things, too. This book is fresh and honest and great for someone who’s just transitioned. Out May 7.

For the mystery lover, you can’t go wrong with Clean Kill: A Nicky Sullivan Mystery by Anne Laughlin (Bold Strokes, $18.95). As the manager of a sober living home in Chicago, Nicky Sullivan has her hands full with 10 other residents of the home. But when one of them is murdered, Sullivan reaches back into her past as an investigator to find the killer by calling on her old partner. Fortunately, he’s still working. Also fortunately, he’s got a new partner and she catches Sullivan’s eye. Can love and murder mix? Out May 14.

Can’t get enough of politics? Then you’ll be happy to find Coming out Republican: A History of the Gay Right by Neil J. Young (University of Chicago Press, $30). In the fractious political atmosphere we have now, it’s essential to understand how gay conservatives have influenced politics through the decades. Find this book before November. It may be one of the most eye-opening books you’ll read. Out April 3.

The reader who loves her “space” will want to take A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women’s Culture by June Thomas (Seal Press, $30) there to read. It’s a book about historically safe places for queer women to be themselves – and some are surprisingly very public. Interviews with iconic feminists and lesbians round out a great look at the locales that queer women have claimed for their own. Out May 28.

And now the housekeeping: Release dates can change and titles can be altered at the last minute, so check with your favorite bookseller or librarian. They’ll also have more recommendations if you need them because there’s a lot of time for reading now.

The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.

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Books

Gay author takes us on his journey to fatherhood in ‘Safe’

One man’s truth about the frustrations and rewards of fostering

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(Book cover image courtesy of Atria Books)

‘Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family’
By Mark Daley
c.2024, Atria Books
$28.99/304 pages

The closet is full of miniature hangers.

The mattress bumpers match the drapes and the rug beneath the tiny bed. There’s a rocker for late-night fusses, a tall giraffe in the corner, and wind-up elephants march in a circle over the crib. Now you just need someone to occupy that space and in the new book, “Safe” by Mark Daley, there’s more than one way to accomplish that dream.

Jason was a natural-born father.

Mark Daley knew that when they were dating, when he watched Jason with his nephew, with infants, and the look on Jason’s face when he had one in his arms. As a gay man, Daley never thought much having a family but he knew Jason did – and so, shortly after their wedding, they began exploring surrogacy and foster-to-adopt programs.

Daley knew how important it was to get the latter right: his mother had a less-than-optimal childhood, and she protected her own children fiercely for it. When Daley came out to her, and to his father, he was instantly supported and that’s what he wanted to give: support and loving comfort to a child in a hard situation.

Or children, as it happened. Just weeks after competing foster parenting classes and after telling the social worker they’d take siblings if there was a need, the prospective dads were offered two small brothers to foster.

It was love at first sight but euphoria was somewhat tempered by courts, laws, and rules. Their social worker warned several times that reunification of the boys with their parents was “Plan A,” but Daley couldn’t imagine it. The parents seemed unreliable; they rarely kept appointments, and they didn’t seem to want to learn better parenting skills. The mother all but ignored the baby, and the child noticed.

So did Daley, but the courts held all the power, and predicting an outcome was impossible.

“All we had was the present,” he said. “If I didn’t stay in it, I was going to lose everything I had.” So was there a Happily-Ever-After?

Ah, you won’t find an answer to that question here. You’ll need to read “Safe” and wear your heart outside your chest for an hour or so, to find out. Bring tissues.

Bring a sense of humor, too, because author and founder of One Iowa Mark Daley takes readers along on his journey to being someone’s daddy, and he does it with the sweetest open-minded open-heartedness. He’s also Mama Bear here, too, which is just what you want to see, although there can sometimes be a lot of tiresome drama and over-fretting in that.

And yet, this isn’t just a sweet, but angst-riddled, tale of family. If you’re looking to foster, here’s one man’s truth about the frustrations, the stratospheric-highs, and the deep lows. Will your foster experiences be similar? Maybe, but reading this book about it is its own reward.

“Safe” soars and it dives. It plays with your emotions and it wallows in anxiety. If you’re a parent, though, you’ll hang on to every word.

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