Edmund White, an influential American novelist who recorded gay life through his semi -autobiographic work, including dozens of books, several stories and countless articles and essays, died, his agent said on Wednesday. He was 85.
“Ed went through natural causes last night at NYC (New York City),” said agent Bill Clegg AFP, adding that White had survived his husband Michael Carroll and sister.
The books of a literary pioneer include “Forgetting Elena”, his famous debut novel from 1973, “Boy’s Own Story”, his survey of the sexual identity of 1982 and more memories, especially the revelation of the “love of my life” this year.
Since his earliest publications, homosexuality has been the core of his writing – since the 1950s, when Gay was considered a mental illness, after a sexual liberation after Stonewall’s riots in 1969, which was first of all.
Then came the years AIDS that decimated the whole generation. White itself would be influenced directly – in 1985 HIV was diagnosed with positive and lived with a condition for four decades.
Honor the award -winning writer began to pour on social media, including his longtime friend and colleague of American author Joyce Carol Oates.
“There was no one like Edmund White!” Oates posted on the X. “Amazing stylistic versatility, boldly pioneering theme; darkly funny; friend so many people for decades.”
A colleague and playwright Paul Rudnick said on X that White is a “gay icon” whose novels, monographs and fiction have “changed and improved American literature”.
White was a passionate traveler who spent years exploring the biographies of French authors Jean Genet and Marcel Privst.
In the 1970s, “Joy of Gay Sex”, a guide and a source of relations co -aligned, which was Queer against “joy of sex”, a very popular illustrated sex manual from 1972.
In 2010 White suffered two blows and heart attack.
But he still wrote. This year “The Loves of My Life” remembered all the men he loved – White numbered his sexual partners about 3,000.
The New York Times described the book as “Flapply Graphics, Veselí and Tender”.
White himself acknowledged that literature was a powerful leadership to reveal the intimate parties of themselves.
“The most important things in our intimate lives cannot be discussed with strangers, with the exception of books,” as he once wrote.
(Tagstotranslate) Edmund White
