Chaos: A Novella and Stories »

Acclaimed writer Edmund White is a 2010 National Book Critics Circle finalist for his memoir City Boy. He also the author of the autobiographical novel A Boy’s Own Story, a previous memoir titled My Lives, among many other works. He lives in New York City and chairs the creative writing department at Princeton University.

First paper edition and three unpublished stories from the author John Irving raves is "one of the best writers."

Publishers Weekly

The title novella from novelist, memoirist and biographer White (Genet, etc.) turns on the guilt that gay novelist Jack, 66, feels about not visiting his dying friend Helene in Paris, and on Jack's obsession with Seth, 28, a charmless ex-Mormon sex bomb. Not much happens in "Chaos": financially strapped Jack and Seth (a "total top") meet on Craig's List and fall into a ritual where Jack pays Seth $120 for the pleasure of sucking Seth off. (White told a nearly identical story of obsession just last year in his much praised memoir My Lives, where the episode is titled "My Master.") Of the stories, only "Record Time" shines: it records what it was like to be 13 in small-town 1953, starved for culture, reduced to listening over and over to opera recordings on ancient 78s. The narrator recalls the excitement of going alone to a distant town for a screening of Cukor's famous Camille, taking the evening train home after a rain. Here the writing is thrilling, evocative, with a magic missing elsewhere in the collection. Despite that high point, even White's fans might feel entitled to sit this one out. (June)