States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America

by Edmund White

States of Desire Revisited looks back from the twenty-first century at a pivotal moment in the late 1970s: Gay Liberation was a new and flourishing movement of creative culture, political activism, and sexual freedom, just before the 1980s devastation of AIDS. Edmund White traveled America, recording impressions of gay individuals and communities that remain perceptive and captivating today. He noted politicos in D.C. working the system, in-fighting radicals in New York and San Francisco, butch guys in Houston and self-loathing but courteous gentlemen in Memphis, the "Fifties in Deep Freeze" in Kansas City, progressive thinkers with conservative style in Minneapolis and Portland, wealth and beauty in Los Angeles, and, in Santa Fe, a desert retreat for older gays and lesbians since the 1920s.
            White frames those past travels with a brief, bracing review of gay America since the 1970s ("now we were all supposed to settle down with a partner in the suburbs and adopt a Korean daughter"), and a reflection on how Internet culture has diminished unique gay places and scenes but brought isolated individuals into a global GLBTQ community.

Genres: Travel, LGBT, Gay, Queer, Nonfiction, History, Memoir

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

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

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished a book!! This was published in 1980 so reflects the lives of small groups of urban gay men in the late 1970s . . . just before it all goes to hell. Of course we don’t know that in 1980. In the epilogue White apologizes for his affinity for affluent white gays, and the need to focus only on urban areas. Even so, the approach is highly selective. Every city has drag groups or royal courts, and drinking groups and hiking groups. There was much generalization going on here — this city is this way, while that city is more like THAT.

HIV/AIDS changed so much, so fast, but I have to wonder how these communities would have developed differently in the absence of an epidemic. Of course one could also speculate endlessly about the year 2020 and the COVID pandemic in the same way.

This book is very dated in many ways, but that makes it interesting as a historical document— a snapshot of selected mindsets at a certain time in the United States. For one thing, no one wanted to get married!

[Jānis Lībeks · Rating 4 out of 5]

One often hears about the constant sex of the 70s (See the documentary "Gay Sex in the 70s", for one). What gay life was like during that period in other places in the US is harder to come by. Luckily this book tells it all. Beautiful travel recollections by Edmund White that each tell a quick story on the city at the time. Edmund adds his own observations and stops just short from making grand generalizations. It surely captures what is left of that odd decade between Stonewall and the start of the HIV crisis, along with the fiction of Faggots and Dancer from the Dance.

Also, I was amused by White's characterization of Camp on page 256. He says ".. Because camp is so arbitrary, it frightens the uninitiated or at least makes them uneasy. I would claim that the function of camp is to promote such uneasiness; it is a muted, irresponsible form of antagonism, one too silly to be held accountable, a safe way of subverting the system." I, a European from the other side of the Iron Curtain still struggle with recognizing camp in American culture, and this quote captures it beautifully.

[Rhockman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este libro es una descripción de cómo viven los gay blancos acomodados en varias ciudades de Estados Unidos, y si bien se me ocurren pocos temas más rancios o insípidos, la principal ventaja del libro es el autor que escribe muy bien: Sabe dónde recortar, en que hacer foco y dónde mandar una reflexión para generar una experiencia de lectura muy curiosa.
El libro se mueve en una frontera muy poco definida entre la descripción etnográfica y el chusmerio, y dificilmente alguien pueda decir que termine de leer este libro y efectivamente haya aprendido algo. A lo sumo a los eventos actuales seguro muchos lo verán como muy "progre" y deconstruide para esa época, aunque no dudo que haya mucha pioja resucitada que flashee utopia chemdisco gay en EEUU leyendo acriticamente los eventos descritos, sin la sospecha que claramente tiene el autor al escribirlo.

La verdad que lo disfruté bastante al principio, me divertí mucho con las anecdotas bizarras de las personas que conoce el autor, pero ya para el final me agotó, lo sentí redundante y me daban ganas de que terminara de una vez.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at gay life in the US in the years right before the AIDS pandemic. White's book is still essential reading. He does occasionally seem to be trying too hard to be too Proustian, his writing can start to cloy. But he's one of the sharpest observers around.

[Thomas Keane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both a time capsule and a mirror, some of what this book describes has vanished and some of it feels surprisingly current. It offers a great snapshot of gay life around 1980.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really fascinating portrait of pre AIDS gay America, with so many recognisable facets (intersectionality debates, reformist vs radical approaches to the fight for gay rights, and the personal struggles of the men he talks to on coming out and coming to peace with themselves. It seems almost that the progress made in many areas of the US in the 1970s made it as if not more progressive than even more recent times, and makes one think about how much of a step back the 1980s, with AIDS, the evangelical reaction to the permissive society and Reaganism devastating and reversing so much of the progress made.

The last chapter on Boston vs Washington and radicalism vs reformism is both the most interesting, and in part uncomfortable reading

[Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating snapshot of gay life across the US on the eve of the destructive 1980s. Reminiscent of Steinbeck's portraits of "common life" in TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, White's travelogue proves funny, affecting, and particularly insightful, retaining its relevance almost 40 years after being written.

[Saoirse Wall · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really loved this. found the writing style a little boring at times and struggled to get into the flow of what a was understanding as sort of a journalistic style,, UNTIL something popped out at me as kinda catty and from then on read i it in a gossipy tone of voice which was perfect. really special overview of gay life in the states just before the AIDS crisis. focuses very much on white middle class men but edmund critiques himself for this in the epilogue.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool idea well executed! Would've been rlly boring if I didn't care abt gay people

[bazu · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is eerily haunting- Edmund White gives us a portrait of gay America (through travels in a few key cities and regions) that is radically different than anything we know today. Its tales of newfound pride, community, and exuberance are shadowed by events that only the reader knows are coming.

[Jacob Dougherty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Serves as a great time capsule of what gay life was like in different parts of the U.S. in 1980, before the AIDS crisis hit. And many of Edmund White's observations are still relevant to this day. This book simultaneously shows that we've come a long way, and yet still have a long way to go.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Witty and insightful, Edmund White's literary road trip across America is a loving snapshot of Gay Life in the late 70s. This should be required reading for gay men under the age of 50. Tip: don't skip the epilogue in the 2014 edition, his descriptions of online dating as a 70 year old are priceless.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this while travelling around the US which was a great way of enjoying it. While much of it has changed beyond recognition in the last 30-35 years some things haven't. White's observations about people he met and their attitudes and behaviours are still very illuminating and entertaining.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished this. I was distracted by some other books that came into my life but it was a good read none the less. Very much a historical book about gay life at the end of the 1970 and beginning of 1980 - before the AIDS crisis.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating to see how things have, and have not, changed. His description of gay LA in 1978 rings equally true as a description of gay or straight LA in 2018, while his description of San Francisco makes achingly clear just how much the face of the city was changed by AIDS and the tech boom.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

changes
thanks Edmund for the afterwords,
at the end of the 2014 edition.

looking back amazing times that we have made it this far in 40 years
Happy Pride 2017

[Hal Schrieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book when I was 17; an older gay guy had donated it and a lot of other gay nonfiction books to my queer youth group as he was clearing out his house. The copy I read back then had an enticing, ken-doll-looking guy hitchhiking on the front paperback cover. I recently took the chance to reread when a friend, to whom I lent my old copy some ten years ago, returned to me...an entirely different hardback edition of the same book, insisting it was the one I'd lent her. I took it! I've been reading more recent "histories" of gay and trans life, and I like the chance to read a nearly 50-year-old glance around at the state of gay guys at the turn of the Reagan era. This gossipy travelogue, which succeeds in painting a rough picture of white gay scenes in a variety of cities across the lower 48 in 1978-1980, exists as a fascinating, if limited and stylistically particular, time capsule.

Edmund White's prose is really entertaining to me-- I enjoy his memoirs and biographies a lot. In this book, he takes as his mission a summary of the "personality" of each city he visits, starting with LA. A gimmick that I think is fun if a tad scandalicious is that, in addition to summarizing the climate, general economic and political atmosphere, anti-gay laws and police harassment, and what bars are useful, he chooses a few guys ("hosts") who he claims exemplify the tone of the cities he's in while there, and he does seem to be sleeping with all of those guys. Sometimes he is *quite rude* about his hosts--I never thought I would feel sorry for a lumber tycoon from Portland, but once White has dissed his juvenile humor and horse teeth after clearly falling into bed with the guy, I'm kind of like...damn, that would hurt my feelings.

LA is funny because White loves dissing the shallowness and unctious slowness of LA life compared to New York's neuroticism-- he's got a complicated thesis about the differences in ambition between them. He seems to genuinely revere SF much more, though he has an amusing part where he describes hating the Cockettes' drag performances because of their amateur nature. He sees in SF of the 70s a land of cheap rent, mild weather and self-actualization-- and yes, he is libertarian-liberal and loves that language.

The chapter on Seattle in 1979 is fascinating for me personally because of White's sketch of the PNW's political valences: an anti-gay ordinance is being championed by a policeman who, during the process of pushing for its place on the ballot, shot an unarmed black teenager. The people of WA reject it after gay activists run a successful campaign for protecting privacy-- meaning many people probably don't understand that the ordinance targets homosexuals at all-- and in the same election give wider power to use firearms to the police. That's the PNW's white constituency, all right. White doesn't mention indigenous activism at all, even though this was its heyday; he does spare some wordspace to mention a drunk Native guy he sees in Portland and to discuss how many Southwest indigenous nations have recognized positions for gay/gender nonconforming people, and some older indigenous people feel recognized by their tribes, even as younger generations feel displaced (again: would be a great time to mention Alcatraz or Fort Lawton, but he doesn't). He does talk a fair amount about Chicano gay interests and manages to track down a handful of Chicano/Latinx gay guys to talk to everywhere west of the Mississippi, though I suspect it's because he was also cruising them. But that's what gay guys are.

Salt Lake City is another interesting picture--it's both the dawn of a Mormon heyday, and there are cracks showing. White cogently points out that feminism's rise is hurting Mormonism's ability to retain people. This would be about the time that Patrick Califia left home to go to SF.

White isn't capable of fully engaging with gay scenes, because he's only in some of them-- the ones with leather bars and cruising cultures and mostly white guys, like him. But that scene is one he has a deft hand with, and I think this book is a good way of feeling around inside that. Folsom Street Blues by Jim Stewart is another.

There's a disturbing passage in the old edition I have where he interviews a pedophile at a bar; no idea if he took this out in later editions. That part is a reflection of the moment. Many older gay men like White had positive experiences while in adolescence; the existence of NAMBLA was controversial, but many free-speech inclined gays were kind of scrambling to support it in concept.

He is what I'd call an edgy liberal rather than a radical, but something interesting about reading this book is he does try to give a sketch of the concerns of people to the left of him as he moves around, even as he is certainly at-ease and probably seeking out a few more samples of other types: gay lumber barons, models, businessmen, etc. Read for sketches of what nightlife used to be.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in 1980, not this edition - I am sure it was a paperback from Picador, it was probably the first Edmund White I read (though I read Nocturnes for the King of Naples at the same time possibly before, I can't remember now) and it told me a lot about being gay, being gay in the USA mostly (I was barely 20, in London, knew I was gay but what that meant was something I had only started understanding) and I remember what a very powerful impression it made of a world and a new way of living and thinking that I had only begun to understand. Although at times I have been critical of the way the the early USA gay experience, particularly as presented by what happened in New York and San Francisco, came to be a monolith crushing anything different from what it experienced and represented but I can't deny how much gays in London were influenced, helped and guided by the experiences of gays in the USA.

I haven't reread it, I won't because it is a book of my youth and now a historic artifact (or maybe curiosity). I know it is flawed because we were flawed and aware and insensitive because we were pre occupied with our own struggles and understanding. I can't believe how little I realised my own position of privilege (perhaps not as bad as I think now, we in the UK were generally of a left wing view that is almost unknown now). So I know that White's book has flaws but it is was important and true and good. No one imagined the world that has come about after fifty years just as a dozen years ago I would never have imagined that the USA would be slipping so far back from the ideals that was only being established in 1980.

I loved this book and owe it a great deal.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Admittedly and as noted by others this was written a long time ago and as a time capsule pre-AIDS, pre-open gay lives in the media and in public life, it has a historical interest. But even for the times White comes here as poorly in his appreciation of the places he visited and the people he describes.
He is after all a 40 yo successfully published novelist twice over when he wrote this. His last chapter apologia is much needed but cannot make up for the unhappy impression we must take of him as callow, pretentious, and self-absorbed. His later works have shown a deeper talent better managed. Here he reasons like a self absorbed teenager.
As others have noted, he cannot wait to spring his vocabulary on the reader and demonstrate that he does speak French. His callow theorizing about weighty matters of sexual identity, the nascent gay liberation movement, and how groups within communities interact and what motivates them are simplistic and snarky. His ramblings about “man/boy” love and pedophilia are embarrassingly simplistic and even puerile.
I held off reading this for years, having read most of his other work and enjoyed it. To really like White, skip this one and head for his later stuff.

[Alfredo A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creo que este libro abrió mis ojos a una cultura que nunca supe que existió ni viví -la libertad, la ciudad, un mundo de amor y desenfreno, un paraíso perdido. No pude evitar emocionarme muchas veces, con detalles sencillos pero que capturaban bien al narrador. Me Transmitió la fuerza de un autor que escribió en inglés, y se siente que me hablaba a mí. Excelente edición y excelente traducción.

[Cata Requejo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es muy gracioso. Me gustó mucho conocer la vida gay en los 70/80s. Y el prefacio es de lo mejor porque el autor habla con mucha honestidad.
Es un poco lento de leer porque no es una novela, pero no es menos entretenido.

Mucho bar gay con temática de cowboys.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

sometimes funny, always insightful, and occasionally devastating travel dispatches from the rich, messy, promiscuous & hedonistic communities built by gay Americans in the era just before AIDS changed everything. dated for sure & not without issues but still deeply germane. as I read I scribbled little arts and culture names & artifacts to read about later on a note pad. part time travel, part queer archaeology.

[Kel · Rating 4 out of 5]

expected this to be slightly more travel guide but is definitely a bit more on the anthropological side of things - very enjoyable. all the gay were doing est in the late 70s according to this book lol

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thi

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for MSc, though some parts were skim-read.

[Josiah Bonifant · Rating 3 out of 5]

This travel guide is certainly a time capsule of 45 years back, touching on the good, the bad, and the ugly. With most of White's travel experiences occurring in the peak of disco culture in 1979, there is a carefree and optimistic perspective from most of the men interviewed -before the harrowing decades that would follow. Surprisingly, most of White's grappling between class, race, and presentations of "masculinity" hold up well and reflect many similar dialogues today, with an aside on page 51 hitting especially hard. The intermingling of personal anecdote, interview, and traditional travel guide specificity is a bit jarring to follow, but overall this book is well written and cute in how it deals with regional differences.

However, the parts that do not hold up are egregious. Race is not dealt with well in this book and there is repeated use of fetishization; there is plenty of body shaming and an exclusive ideal of a "good body," and worst of all, unsavory relations between men and teenagers or even children are brought up as the norm and never as predatory exploitations of power. There is even a whole interview in the last chapter with a man advocating for pedophiliac rights, as he began a sexual relationship with a nine-year old. While horrifying, this does put Anita Bryant's 'Save the Children' campaign and the pull toward political moderation and assimilation by some gay men into a context that is inherently different to today's political debates.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can attest to at least one chapter of Edmund White's book: Many a Cuban-American mother and father has told their children what Cuban parents told Edmund when he was here in the late 1970s: "I don't care what my gay son or daughter does in private. I will even pay for the room. Just keep the rest of the family out of it". Curiously, it took the Communist regime in Cuba until this century to adopt the same attitude. "Sexual preference" is guaranteed a right by the Cuban Constitution, gay organizations and parades are not. If "sex is politics", as Gore Vidal like to say, then Miami and Havana have much in common when it comes to sexual politics. Another brilliant chapter focuses on a spoiled kid from Los Angeles who is the kept pet of two men: "Now I have two daddies to buy me drugs". RIP Edmund, chronicler extraordinaire.

[Mark Spano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too tough on Kansas City and not tough enough on Washington DC.

[Andrew Wale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stunning writing as ever - x