Novelist Edmund White, 85, died on June 3. An early openly gay novelist (he beat Armistead Maupin by a few years and was Much More Serious), White was a staff writer for Time-Life Books from 1962-70 (remember when they had those wonderful book series, on science, art, history?). His first novel, 1973’s Forgetting Elena, was still kind of closeted, but he went on to write the more open A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, The Married Man—about a dozen novels in all, as well as several memoirs and non-fiction books. White won numerous awards and grants (when are those MacArthur mopes going to cough up some Genius Cash for me?), and lived much of his life in Paris. “A journalist and novelist are not quite the same thing,” White told interviewer Jordan Elgrably. “I was writing all the time and I was considered a good journalist but I had no idea if I could write a novel. Part of my problem as a young writer was that I was too much a New Yorker, always second-guessing the “market.” I became so discouraged that I decided to write something that would please me alone—that became my sole criterion.”
