Skinned Alive: Stories

by Edmund White

Desollado vivo reúne nueve relatos sobre la experiencia intima y la homosexualidad en la era del sida.Ambientados en Europa y Norteamérica, las nueve narraciones agrupadas en Desollado vivo conservan el sabor y la tensión autobiográfica de sus anteriores novelas y exploran los distintos modos en que se construye la personalidad a través de las claves más íntimas de la el impulso ardiente y frustrante del deseo, en la juventud y la edad adulta; la anhelante búsque- da del amor y sus decepciones; el arrebatador poder de la belleza y los celos; los efectos impredecibles de la enfermedad y la pérdi- da. En Pirografia un adolescente gay descubrirá, de manera iluminadora y triste, la contradicción entre su identidad y la necesidad de ser aceptado. En Un oráculo, un estadounidense, tras la muerte a causa del sida del compañero con el que ha vivido doce años, buscará nuevas razones para vivir. «Afiligrana- do es un emocionado homenaje a la figura del primer amor, visto a través de la melancolía y el crudo realismo del paso inexo- rable del tiempo. Su biógrafo se aproxima a la ridicula situa- ción de ser biografiado en vida y escenifica con ironía la obsesión estadounidense por lo politicamente correcto.Conmovedores, ingeniosos y sorprendentes, los cuentos de De- sollado vivo nos aproximan a un mundo poblado por una variopinta colección de hombres y mujeres, en el que se confun- den la comedia y la tragedia, el humor y la poesía, y constituye una muestra de la exquisita habilidad de White en la utilización equilibrada de los recursos narrativos.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, LGBT, Queer, Gay Fiction, American Fiction, Gay

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Edmund Valentine White III was an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer, and essayist. He was the recipient of Lambda Literary's Visionary Award, the National Book Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993.
White was known as a groundbreaking writer of gay literature and a major influence on gay American literature and has been called "the first major queer novelist to champion a new generation of writers."

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are times when I sit down on GR and skim through the reviews posted against a particular book and I suddenly realise that I am old and that I don't really have any connection with so many people younger than me. The negative and carping reviews against this collection of short stories astounds me but what dismays me is that so many younger readers simply see these stories as 'AIDS' stories ans stories from 'like the 90s' as if literature had to be aucourant to be either readable or meaningful. How do these people read, well even garbage like 'Bonfire of the Vanities' never mind someone like Jane Austen?

What amazes me is that this collection contains two of the finest stories I have read by Mr. White or anyone the eponymous 'Skinned Alive' and 'An Oracle'.

Jean-Loup in 'Skinned Alive' is one of the most funny, if also monstrous, lovers in fiction. Perhaps it only resonates strongly with those of us who have had the misfortune to know and fall in love, or at least in lust, with an arrogant and beautiful Frenchman. As a comedy of sex and manners it is light years ahead of the narrow, strangulated parochialism of such constipated tosh like 'The Weekend' by Peter Cameron. As for Ray in 'An Oracle' it is a love story that speaks on so many levels about so much that to see it only within the context of AIDS is like reading Hamlet as a warning of the dangers of indecision.

I happen to think Mr. White's short fiction is some of his strongest. I also think it amazing, when I look at the way younger 'gay' writers like Alan Holinghurst have retreated into historical settings for their fiction I think it astounding the way White in these stories, published in 1995 when he was in his mid-fifties is still engaged and writing relevantly.

If you want to be snippy about writers like Edmund White you only reveal your limitations. He is a great writer, he is not a gay writer, he doesn't write about AIDS, he writes about life and he creates characters, situations and worlds from a small palate, like Chekov or Austen that speak to all of us and all times.

[John Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

ABANDONED!

The best thing about this book is its cover and we all know how the proverb goes about books and covers...

It consists of 8 short to medium sized stories. I should have considered this more before I started reading as I don’t tend to get on too well with short stories, though I like the idea of them.

The first story Pyrography concerns 3 students on an outdoor holiday together, one is gay and has the hots for the others. Okish, interesting study of youth role and power play.

After this my interest and patience started to wear thin until I’d had enough by story 4 about an author meeting his biographer for the first time. They and their predecessors struck me as phoney whether gay, straight or whatever. At best the ones the reader was required to focus on were, in my opinion, pretentious and very irritating. I had to bale out on the writer and his biographer as my urges to slap them wasn’t doing my blood pressure any good.

Hope I meet some real men soon. After this lot, the rougher the better!!!!

[maddie · Rating 1 out of 5]

do yourself a favour and dont bother with this book

[mak · Rating 3 out of 5]

not particularly poignant in its writing style and many of the stories are kind of boring on their own but nonetheless stands as a gripping portrait of its time, undeniably interesting to read as a young queer person living in a world that feels very far away from the time of the aids crisis and who doesn’t often consume media written by this particular kind of voice.

[Jason Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you, Stacy. :)

This book is a collection of short stories about a time in gay history that I am too young to have been a part of. Stories of growing up in the 50s and 60s, of the party scenes of the late 60s, 70s and 80s. Although so many things were different, I found connections with characters, understood their wants and needs, their worries and pain. The author has a wicked sense of humor and a quirky style of writing that felt as if listening to a rambling comical monologue about life.

There were laugh-out-loud lines in this book, and many HIV positive characters in a time when the disease was newly discovered. I enjoyed this book and feel it has helped me to see more clearly an era when muscle queens and big bushy mustaches were in, and the world was just beginning to worry about 'the gay cancer.'

[Sena · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't actually read all the stories in this collection but I'm marking it as read based on the level of absolute done I am with this book

[Jack · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had to wash the psychological dirt from my hands after reading this. Strange attitudes to living.

[emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

i almost died reading this 🤢

[Taylor O · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not even going to bother finishing this.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the titular story, which reminds me of Wang Xiaobo at his best (funny, irreverent, tender-hearted!)

[João · Rating 5 out of 5]

Não posso deixar de confessar que não era grande fã de Edmund White. Tinha lido A Boy's Own Story, O Homem Casado e começado a ler a biografia de Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel (que abandonei a meio) e, assim de repente, não me lembro de mais nada. Mas chegou o João Roque e ofereceu-me este livro de contos e fiquei rendido. Agora já me apetece reler e comprar mais...

Tal como em O Homem Casado, são histórias sobre a morte e a doença (SIDA, a maior parte das vezes), mas são contadas pela ótica do desejo e da memória, uma memória que nem é saudosista nem lamechas, e um desejo que quase nunca é completamente correspondido (aliás, EW diz que o desejo nunca é satisfeito, apenas as esperanças o podem ser) e tem, quase sempre, uma componente fortemente sexual.

Um livro muito bem escrito, num tom muito pessoal, com os contos narrados quase sempre na primeira pessoa, evocando a Paris e a França onde o autor viveu 15 anos (talvez como ferramenta para dar mais credibilidade à narração e envolver mais o leitor, o que é plenamente conseguido), e revelando uma sensibilidade extraordinária para os dilemas, as agonias, as dores e as alegrias, as vidas dos rapazes e homens gay que são o centro das suas histórias.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very adult book in every way. Lustful and erotic, yes, but also with filled with deep tenderness, love, fear, grief, and despair. White brings us the lives of gay men in New York, Paris, even small town Texas and Ohio during the years when AIDS ravaged the gay community. He writes with so much close observation through such a breadth of experience that the message common in all great literature comes through loud and clear: we're here, we're human too. Happily, this message has been embraced lately, but in 1996 it was still news that a lot of people didn't want to hear. I'm very grateful that White didn't let that silence him.

[Christin · Rating 5 out of 5]

And I thought The Married Man was rough. That was one story of someone dying. This was several.

Of course I liked An Oracle the best but the rest was good too (some more than others) and it was fun to try to pick out which details or characters were from White's own life and what was just made up.

[Mauberley]

Set between the eras of Stonewall and same-sex marriage, this a fine collection of short stories that tell of love and longing under the cloud of HIV/AIDS (although I don't believe that either is named directly. My interest grew as I read further into the collection and by the time I was reading 'The Oracle', i was committed. I now look forward to reading one of White's novels.

[Lance Reynald · Rating 5 out of 5]

great stories with a heartbreaking honesty about love in the aftermath of HIV/AIDS.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes uncomfortable, but certainly never boring. On the funny/sad spectrum of this type of material, there is Edmund White and then way on the other side, David Sedaris.

[Dennis Bolen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though provocatively titled, this is a sensitive and important exploration of the depths of maleness by American expatriate-in-Paris, Edmund White. Mr. White's earlier books dealt with the homosexual experience around the world and his biography of Jean Genet won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994. This collection of stories takes us from a canoe trip in the north woods to the verdant flesh-markets of Crete.
Oddly, of an overall excellent collection the least of the writing appears in the first story, Pyrography, wherein three friends go canoeing and so help me the line `A sudden shot rang out...’ is used in a fully serious context. It reminded me of Charley Brown's dog Snoopy, whose opus beginning with the same line was returned by an editor who suggested that more careful language should be used. To his credit, Mr. White does not re-jig the line to read `A gradual shot rang out...’ (as does Snoopy), but you almost expect it, what with a lot of `really-very-suddenly’ prose-style sloppiness being tossed around.
No matter, eventually the power of insightful observation and the penetration of the male psyche is what we are enjoying here. In a later story a disaffected professorial type is described thus:

For a long time he’d told himself he was tough and unsentimental, but for the last two years he’d admitted he was simply numb and empty of sentiments... Two years ago his nephew had said to him, ``There was a study in which all these women complained their husbands were incapable of showing their feelings, and then after lots of therapy it turned out the men just didn’t have any feelings.’’

The truth therein, the beauty, makes this collection worth skipping the awkward parts and enjoying the whole.

[Matteo Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

La lettura di “Scorticato vivo”, che ha per sottotitolo “Racconti autobiografici”, il cui autore è Edmund White, mi ha destabilizzato. Non nel senso che vi ho trovato tematiche o descrizioni così scioccanti da urtare, sconquassare il mio animo; no, mi ha destabilizzato perché mi trovavo costantemente a pensare “Perché Edmund ci stai dicendo queste cose?”. La mia domanda non era priva di senso. Nella prefazione scritta da David Leavitt, egli sostiene che, a differenza di Larry Kramer, attivista gay molto impegnato per la causa, e che lo divenne ancor di più allorquando il virus – l’HIV– si propagò inesorabilmente, che riteneva che la letteratura gay dovesse essere intrisa di politica e di un qualche afflato pedagogico che inducesse i gay a smettere pratiche sessuali promiscue e imprudenti, Edmund White, al contrario, rifiutava questo compito per la letteratura: un romanzo era un romanzo, non un trattato di politica. E doveva rispettare i canoni della letteratura, non quelli della propaganda. A quel punto si produsse una frattura che non si poté più rimarginare tra queste due figure di primissimo piano nel panorama gay degli anni ’80. Quindi, sulla base di ciò, ho letto questi racconti autobiografici con gli occhi di Edmund White, e non con quelli di Larry Kramer. Assumendo però questo punto di vista, risultava sensata la domanda che ho posto all’inizio e che mi ha perseguitato per tutta la lettura. Insomma, negli otto racconti autobiografici che compongono l’opera non ci si doveva leggere nulla di “politico” o di “educativo”. Allora che cosa ci si doveva leggere?
Questi otto racconti possono essere divisi in due gruppi: quelli che fanno riferimento alla giovinezza dell’autore e alle esperienze che egli ebbe in tale periodo e quelle che fanno riferimento a un periodo della vita dell’autore decisamente più “inoltrato” e alle esperienze da lui vissute. La caratteristica che colpisce di questi racconti è duplice: da un lato, Edmund White sceglie di usare (per quasi tutti i racconti) un linguaggio in terza persona, quasi come se fosse qualcun altro a scrivere della sua vita – curioso infatti che uno dei suoi racconti si intitoli “Il suo biografo”; di nuovo ritorna l’espediente della terza persona –, dall’altro, il linguaggio è diretto, ben rifinito, con registri che si alternano opportunamente, ma, soprattutto, privo di censure: tutto il vissuto di Edmund fuoriesce senza filtri, senza “emendamenti” o perifrasi o circonlocuzioni, procedure che andavano di moda in un tempo in cui si era, anche nel linguaggio, più pudichi, forse, come quello in cui si trovava a scrivere Edward Morgan Forster, a esempio. Il linguaggio, d’altronde, non concorre a segnare il tempo storico in cui si vive? Non è anche lui un indicatore del tempo in cui si vive?
Così, i racconti giovanili sono improntati al divertimento, alla spensieratezza, anche nelle relazioni amorose, alla definizione del proprio Sé, all’audacia che caratterizza gli anni adolescenziali; i racconti più “maturi”, invece, sono improntati al rimorso, al ricordo struggente, di chi non c’è più, a esempio, allo sconforto, alla “saggezza”, dovuta, quest’ultima, anche al fatto che l’autore, come moltissimi altri della loro e di altre generazioni, contrasse l’AIDS. (Tranquilli: Edmund White è ancora vivo.)
Su tutto, sulle esperienze variopinte vissute dallo scrittore, sugli incontri promiscui, sul linguaggio, che ad alcuni può parere francamente scurrile, si faceva sempre più pressante la domanda dell’inizio, per quanto mi riguarda: “Perché Edmund ci stai dicendo queste cose?”
Ho capito, arrivando alla fine del libro e leggendo la postfazione di Antonio Veneziani, che quella domanda era mal posta, anzi, ho compreso che non avrei dovuto proprio pormela… Sono giunto a capire che ci si poteva porre quella domanda solo se si erano letti questi racconti autobiografici con l’occhio di Kramer e non con quello di Edmund. Con l’occhio di Edmund, il libro diviene una collezione di istantanee in movimento, creando quella tipica illusione di movimento che si può osservare nella tecnica dell’animazione tradizionale. I frammenti di vita che acquisiscono dinamismo, tuttavia, non hanno – me ne accorgo solo ora! – il solo intento di “intrattenere”, titillando il lettore con dettagli scabrosi o scene arroventate, penso che abbiano avuto un effetto catartico su Edmund stesso, generando così un processo che, come scrive Antonio Veneziani nella sua breve postfazione, «trasforma le scorie dell’autobiografia nell’oro del mito.»
A me non è dispiaciuto affatto; è anche vero che, da ciò che ho scritto, sono dovuto arrivare alla fine per rendermi conto che leggevo le cose con occhiali aventi delle lenti sbagliate.
Di solito si scrive a questo punto – alla fine – a quale tipologia di lettore consigliamo la lettura di un dato libro. Bene, io, al contrario, vorrei delineare quella tipologia di lettore alla quale sconsiglio la lettura di “Scorticato vivo”. Ne sconsiglio dunque la lettura a chi: 1. È puritano; 2. Non ama i linguaggi troppo triviali; 3. Non è interessato alla vita di uno scrittore omosessuale tra quelli che più di molti altri hanno segnato un certo panorama culturale (quello degli anni ’80, nello specifico); 4. Non gli/le piacciono i racconti, e men che mai autobiografici; 5. Non ne apprezza la copertina; 6. Non gli/le piace il titolo; 7. Potrebbe non gradirne la lettura per varie ed eventuali ragioni non precedentemente menzionate…
Ecco, a tutti coloro che si ritrovano in almeno un punto precedentemente elencato, ne sconsiglio la lettura.

[Vorik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Die Texte des Autors triefen stellenweise vor Brillanz, Ironie und Tiefsinn, doch arbeitet Edmund White seine Hauptfiguren wiederholt an deren körperlichem Verlangen, unerfüllter Liebe und Identitätsproblemen ab, sodass hier die Tragik als Grundelement vorherrscht. Und das in den meisten der in diesem Band enthaltenen acht Kurzerzählungen. Sicherlich sind hier vor allem die gesellschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen, die eine heteronormative Mehrheitsgesellschaft diktiert, an dem thematischen Gefüge dieses Werkes Schuld, das, am Stück gelesen, dann doch leider etwas eintönig wirkt.

[Jacob Moss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I didnt like it because it is slightly dated (from the early 90's I believe). The writing style was such that I couldn't get into the stories. It's a collection of short stories, it felt like it was a collection of them because none of them were good enough to be on its own. I really want to love all LGBT books but this one is a pass!

[Elisa Vangelisti · Rating 1 out of 5]

Che dire? Il libro parte col racconto della madre dell’autore. Ho letto un po’ e mi sono arenata. Non mi interessa.

[Riccardo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Racconti mediocri a fronte delle altre opere di Edmund White.
Traduzione italiana a dir poco imbarazzante che non ha di certo contribuito a farmi apprezzare questa raccolta.

[Christian M · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO good. For anyone who likes A Little Life, this may be for you!

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of short stories.

[Gary Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

For everything that White gets right, he ends up tripping himself and getting something completely wrong. But then again, his short stories have always been the weaker side of his material.
This collection is, far and away, stronger than his later Chaos collection; but it still wears its weaknesses on its sleeve.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was actually pretty good but the way it tended to ramble on and get off subject annoyed me a bit. This sort of thing should not happen in a short story.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books by my favorite author.

[Christopher Dionesotes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of very well-written short stories. Very typical Edmund White. Each story is crafted nicely and is tied in to the time in which it was written.....the AIDS era. A good read!

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn these stories are good. I like them as much as hisnovels.

[Frejola · Rating 4 out of 5]

White is a memorable contradiction: catty yet insightful, at times scorchingly good despite hints of generational prejudice.