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The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading
Literary icon Edmund White made his name through his writing but remembers his life through the books he has read. For White, each momentous occasion came with a book to match: Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, which opened up the seemingly closed world of homosexuality while he was at boarding school in Michigan; the Ezra Pound poems adored by a lover he followed to New York; the biography of Stephen Crane that inspired one of White's novels. But it wasn't until heart surgery in 2014, when he temporarily lost his desire to read, that White realized the key role that reading played in his life: forming his tastes, shaping his memories, and amusing him through the best and worst life had to offer.
Blending memoir and literary criticism, The Unpunished Vice is a compendium of all the ways reading has shaped White's life and work. His larger-than-life presence on the literary scene lends itself to fascinating, intimate insights into the lives of some of the world's best-loved cultural figures. With characteristic wit and candor, he recalls reading Henry James to Peggy Guggenheim in her private gondola in Venice and phone calls at eight o'clock in the morning to Vladimir Nabokov--who once said that White was his favorite American writer.
Featuring writing that has appeared in the New York Review of Books and the Paris Review, among others, The Unpunished Vice is a wickedly smart and insightful account of a life in literature.
Blending memoir and literary criticism, The Unpunished Vice is a compendium of all the ways reading has shaped White's life and work. His larger-than-life presence on the literary scene lends itself to fascinating, intimate insights into the lives of some of the world's best-loved cultural figures. With characteristic wit and candor, he recalls reading Henry James to Peggy Guggenheim in her private gondola in Venice and phone calls at eight o'clock in the morning to Vladimir Nabokov--who once said that White was his favorite American writer.
Featuring writing that has appeared in the New York Review of Books and the Paris Review, among others, The Unpunished Vice is a wickedly smart and insightful account of a life in literature.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published June 26, 2018
56 people are currently reading
1043 people want to read
About the author
Edmund White
139 books912 followersEdmund 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."
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."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
April 2, 2019
A memoir as much about writing as reading. Naturally, my backlog is growing by leaps and bounds with every page. There’s also some insight into the models he used for his fictional characters. New discoveries here for me include Jean Giono, Mircea Cărtărescu, Elizabeth Bowen and Matthias Énard. The essays on Jean Giono, Colette, Pierre Guyotat, Jean Cocteau, Rebecca West, Penelope Fitzgerald, who once snubbed White at a New York lunch, and Curzio Malaparte are wonderful. The book descends to name dropping halfway through. Well, White’s a better gossip than Truman Capote, who was just a snob revering status, and his acquaintance seems very broad. But the impulse to name drop is the same. The book was apparently written in conjunction with writing courses he taught at Princeton until recently. The praise about his husband is cringeworthy, or so I thought at first, but White works at it so earnestly that he wins one over in the end. He really is a fantastic writer. The Beautiful Room Is Empty is sheer brilliance, while The Farewell Symphony is a major work of literary fiction that is in a sense without historic parallel. See my reviews.
August 21, 2020
The most outrageous part of this occasionally entertaining stroll through Edmund’s bookish enthusiasms is chapter 11. This is suddenly not about books but all about “my young husband Michael Carroll” who is 25 years younger than 78 year old Edmund. The poison that drips onto these pages is something to behold, the Borgias would have loved a few bottles of it. We understand that Michael is devoted to Edmund and not the least resentful of Edmund’s effortless success. Michael toils away at his short stories (“Michael writes every day in a deserted bar… he works very slowly…Michael has kept writing for 35 years with an iron determination and very little encouragement”). Edmund is very fond of back-handed compliments and Michael gets plenty : “Michael hates culture, abhors the theatre, is allergic to ballet and opera, dislikes museums… he is bored by my frivolous social evenings and dinner parties…Michael needs to preserve his street cred, though you couldn’t locate his street on any known map. He hated my snobbish, condescending friends in Paris…” Maybe it’s because he’s descended from “small farmers in Tennessee too poor to own slaves”. Edmund flaunts how unsuited they are for each other. He expertly uses the technique known as back-door bragging : “My blasé airs and cosmopolitan good manners irritate him… he wants to be a real person and write about real people”. Sometimes Edmund throws up his hands : “I waste so much time frowning at Michael disapprovingly”. But he hurries to make sure we understand he really loves Michael : “I don’t want to make him sound like a bully, since he can be kind” (note “can”). Edmund dishes out some withering compliments like a parent finding something nice to say about his least favourite offspring : “he does keep his skin moisturised and his hair straightened”.
Note to Michael : you have to leave this guy, he might be rich and famous but he is not good for you.
My favourite Edmund and Michael moment :
I took him along when I interviewed Elton John…unlike me he knew who he was, which was convenient
Note on back-door bragging.
Jenna (from 30 Rock): Backdoor bragging is sneaking something wonderful about yourself in everyday conversation. Like when I tell people it's hard for me to watch American Idol cause I have perfect pitch.
Note to Michael : you have to leave this guy, he might be rich and famous but he is not good for you.
My favourite Edmund and Michael moment :
I took him along when I interviewed Elton John…unlike me he knew who he was, which was convenient
Note on back-door bragging.
Jenna (from 30 Rock): Backdoor bragging is sneaking something wonderful about yourself in everyday conversation. Like when I tell people it's hard for me to watch American Idol cause I have perfect pitch.
July 31, 2018
Minus one star for the rather peremptory conclusion, in which Edmund White abruptly ends the conversation with his Reader, as if his attention had suddenly been distracted, or as if he had a more pressing engagement offering better deployment of his faculties and discernment. Up to this point, the book is an unalloyed delight: a shaggy-dog-friendly account of the writerly life, and the importance of books and reading.
I had no idea that White was recuperating from open-heart surgery when he wrote the luminous Our Young Man, for me one of his best books to date. I also had no idea that his 25-year-younger husband (White himself is in his deep 70s) had a such a major role in editing this book.
With White distracted by his illness and not at top writerly form as a result, the text required a lot of finessing. Which raises an interesting question or issue about the provenance of a text, and the veracity of an author’s claim to sole proprietorship.
In terms of White’s illness, and how this results in a deep reflection upon his life to date, and what gives him meaning and joy despite his brush with death, this book reminded me of On Writing. In that book, Stephen King recounts his difficult road to recovery from an unfortunate hit-and-run accident.
Unlike King, however, White does not dispense writing advice or tips. He does make mention of the challenges associated with teaching creative writing – especially how there always seems to be one exceptional novel that refutes any ‘rule’ he might convey to his students.
Other than that, White invites the reader on a rambling, sometimes lewd, often very funny, always deeply impassioned, account of which books and writers have made a lasting impact on him, and how ageing has affected both the reading and writing process. There is a poignancy and energy to these reflections that is very engaging and enjoyable, and an accompanying frankness that is quite disarming.
White even refers to Goodreads and how he doesn’t understand what modern readers want, especially with reference to a writer like Stendhal. As to his claim that Anna Karenina is the ‘greatest novel ever’?
It is clear that the kind of broad classical reading/education that White was exposed to is really not the norm anymore. The fact that average readers turn to literature as a form of escape or distraction from their daily work and family/community context means inevitably that Tolstoy is certainly not on their reading radar.
Some reviewers have commented that White’s tone in this book is condescending and/or precious. Yes, there is a certain element of elitism here, and White cannot resist occasionally preaching at the poor reader from atop his gilded soapbox. But this is still a privileged glimpse into the mind and life of a truly great contemporary writer.
I had no idea that White was recuperating from open-heart surgery when he wrote the luminous Our Young Man, for me one of his best books to date. I also had no idea that his 25-year-younger husband (White himself is in his deep 70s) had a such a major role in editing this book.
With White distracted by his illness and not at top writerly form as a result, the text required a lot of finessing. Which raises an interesting question or issue about the provenance of a text, and the veracity of an author’s claim to sole proprietorship.
In terms of White’s illness, and how this results in a deep reflection upon his life to date, and what gives him meaning and joy despite his brush with death, this book reminded me of On Writing. In that book, Stephen King recounts his difficult road to recovery from an unfortunate hit-and-run accident.
Unlike King, however, White does not dispense writing advice or tips. He does make mention of the challenges associated with teaching creative writing – especially how there always seems to be one exceptional novel that refutes any ‘rule’ he might convey to his students.
Other than that, White invites the reader on a rambling, sometimes lewd, often very funny, always deeply impassioned, account of which books and writers have made a lasting impact on him, and how ageing has affected both the reading and writing process. There is a poignancy and energy to these reflections that is very engaging and enjoyable, and an accompanying frankness that is quite disarming.
White even refers to Goodreads and how he doesn’t understand what modern readers want, especially with reference to a writer like Stendhal. As to his claim that Anna Karenina is the ‘greatest novel ever’?
It is clear that the kind of broad classical reading/education that White was exposed to is really not the norm anymore. The fact that average readers turn to literature as a form of escape or distraction from their daily work and family/community context means inevitably that Tolstoy is certainly not on their reading radar.
Some reviewers have commented that White’s tone in this book is condescending and/or precious. Yes, there is a certain element of elitism here, and White cannot resist occasionally preaching at the poor reader from atop his gilded soapbox. But this is still a privileged glimpse into the mind and life of a truly great contemporary writer.
January 3, 2019
Reading Edmund White’s books is always a pleasurable experience whether he’s chronicling the contemporary, sashaying back to the distant past in his two excellent historical novels or examining the riveting details of his own experiences. His most recent book “The Unpunished Vice” gives us the rare opportunity to consider his life as a reader and how this naturally coincides with his life as a writer. This account is a natural development for White who has written many book reviews in his life and biographies of a few notable writers including a beautifully voluminous account of Jean Genet and purposefully brief but insightful looks at Proust and Rimbaud. He’s both an avid fan and brilliant participant in the culture of world literature. So it’s absolutely fascinating to read this chronicle of how his experiences have drawn him to certain books and how they've influenced his writing. He gives absorbing commentary on several books as well as the community of authors he knows and interacts with. As a quintessential reader he understands that “Reading is a hobby that never grows stale - and an unpunished vice.”
Read my full review of The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading by Edmund White on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading by Edmund White on LonesomeReader
June 5, 2025
I don’t think there is ever a bad book by a writer about books/reading. The chapter on Malaparte is the best.
November 3, 2019
I know I’ve found a kindred spirit when I read “My books are in such disorder that often I have to buy a title twice because I can’t find it on my shelves.” This is Edmund White, now in his 70s after a long and storied life, and he’s still telling stories. In 1978 I remember reading a review of his just-published novel Nocturnes for the King of Naples and rushing out to buy it, only to discover I had no idea what was going on. Now he explains: the title was stolen from Haydn; he liked “the Baroque confusion between sacred and sexual love, and I threaded into it references to several poets and mystics.” I did notice that the book was addressed to an exceptionally precious “You” as was Augustine’s Confessions but I missed much more. “I also disguised poems (couplets, a sonnet, a sestina); I wrote them out as prose.” Maybe this was over-writing (and White was a whipping boy for purple prose) but it was also ambitious in a way that the early crop of gay novels were not – odysseys of coming-out or tortured tales of tricking and subsequent regret. (Best Little Boy in the World; Dancer from the Dance)
Like an aged slightly inebriate dinner guest, White requires indulgence. For me it was worth the effort, even at his most risible. One very long passage, in illustration of his lifelong association of reading with sex, is about a boy he knew in prep school. “To this day the smell of a sweating redhead male makes me think of bunched, moist underpants, the strong, pulsing vise of clamped legs.... The aggressive smell of a redhead man, of weeds stewing in a hot, sunlit puddle, still intoxicates me.” Like we all did back then, he stumbled into the gay underworld both encouraged and alarmed by the older generation. For White it was the owner of a bookstore on Rush Street in Chicago. “I was fascinated by the owner not because I found him attractive but because I knew he was gay. I told him I was looking for a rich older lover, and he said, ‘They go for each other — why would a millionaire want you, a simple girl of the people?’”
White never met his millionaire, but he’s had quite a list of lovers. Yet this book is (mostly) about the books he loved, not the men. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. He’s a writer, not an intellectual; sometimes ridiculous in his aspirations but never pretentious. I admire him for his enthusiasms.
Like an aged slightly inebriate dinner guest, White requires indulgence. For me it was worth the effort, even at his most risible. One very long passage, in illustration of his lifelong association of reading with sex, is about a boy he knew in prep school. “To this day the smell of a sweating redhead male makes me think of bunched, moist underpants, the strong, pulsing vise of clamped legs.... The aggressive smell of a redhead man, of weeds stewing in a hot, sunlit puddle, still intoxicates me.” Like we all did back then, he stumbled into the gay underworld both encouraged and alarmed by the older generation. For White it was the owner of a bookstore on Rush Street in Chicago. “I was fascinated by the owner not because I found him attractive but because I knew he was gay. I told him I was looking for a rich older lover, and he said, ‘They go for each other — why would a millionaire want you, a simple girl of the people?’”
White never met his millionaire, but he’s had quite a list of lovers. Yet this book is (mostly) about the books he loved, not the men. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. He’s a writer, not an intellectual; sometimes ridiculous in his aspirations but never pretentious. I admire him for his enthusiasms.
May 30, 2019
The Unpunished Vice is a detailed account of a life devoted to reading and writing. If you've enjoyed White's prior novels and memoirs, you'll probably enjoy this. If you are not familiar with his work, I suggest you ignore Jane Smiley's somewhat churlish review in the New York Times, because she misses the main appeal of the book. What is most evident, on page after page, is White's catholicity of taste, and his admirable generosity of spirit, which is attested to by the dozens if not hundreds of writers he has helped in nearly fifty years of teaching, reviewing and blurbing (he calls himself "a true blurb slut. It's a bit like being a loose woman; everyone mocks you for your liberality--and everyone wants at least one date with you.") He writes with affection and sympathetic attention about the writers that have meant the most to him, many of whom are unfamiliar to even gluttonous readers (I kept a written list as I read), and he is a committed re-reader, to me the surest evidence of a serious devotion to literature--it's often amazed me that people don't think that novels, poems, and plays can be enjoyed repeatedly just as much as favorite symphonies and songs. White's re-reading is impressive: Nothing by Henry Green and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina every year and he's read all of Proust five times.
I doubt most Goodreads's members will need to be told this, but describing the superiority of prose narrative (which, with its "endless grey columns of unillustrated print in a book" he calls "surely the least beguiling medium in the world") over films and television, White reminds us that "fiction maps out our sensibilities with the greatest detail and accuracy." His comment reminded me why, as visually delightful as they are, the famed Merchant-Ivory adaptations of E.M. Forster's novels, which rarely have an entire sentence let alone a paragraph or page describing his characters' houses, clothes, or furniture--nearly the entire appeal of period films--have never satisfied me. This is because, as White states: "Books, unlike movies, give us the thoughts of the characters. That's why books are essential: we live inside our heads."
The Unpunished Vice takes you inside White's head for 223 pages. It's like spending time in a well-stocked, idiosyncratic, personal library, with the best possible guide to the unfamiliar titles.
I doubt most Goodreads's members will need to be told this, but describing the superiority of prose narrative (which, with its "endless grey columns of unillustrated print in a book" he calls "surely the least beguiling medium in the world") over films and television, White reminds us that "fiction maps out our sensibilities with the greatest detail and accuracy." His comment reminded me why, as visually delightful as they are, the famed Merchant-Ivory adaptations of E.M. Forster's novels, which rarely have an entire sentence let alone a paragraph or page describing his characters' houses, clothes, or furniture--nearly the entire appeal of period films--have never satisfied me. This is because, as White states: "Books, unlike movies, give us the thoughts of the characters. That's why books are essential: we live inside our heads."
The Unpunished Vice takes you inside White's head for 223 pages. It's like spending time in a well-stocked, idiosyncratic, personal library, with the best possible guide to the unfamiliar titles.
July 28, 2018
This seemed to stop being a memoir around the halfway mark, as if White wandered away from his own conceit, and became a compendium of introductions to the work of other writers. Still, it’s full of great observations and readings, particularly of the under-sung Elizabeth Bowen and Rebecca West, and I’ll always love him for turning me on (via City Boy) to my favourite writer Henry Green.
October 21, 2022
COMENTÁRIO
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"The Unpunished Vice - a life of reading"
Edmund White
Edmund White é um dos meus escritores vivos preferidos. É uma pessoa que me apaixona pelo modo como escreve sobre si e sobre a sua história de vida. Uma história longa em que viveu em intensamente a vida cultural - e já agora, a vida gay - de Nova Iorque e de Paris, cidades onde residiu e que conheceu como poucos.
No livro que agora li "The Unpunished Vice - a life of reading", White revisita momentos da sua vida a partir da sua paixão pela leitura, a partir da sua experiência como leitor. Ou seja não é um livro de memórias. É um livros sobre memórias de leitura na sua longa vida.
Nestas páginas o autor escreve sobre leituras em torno de autores como Proust, Cocteau, Tolstoi, Malaparte, Collette ou Nobokov entre tantos tantos outro. Longe de um registo ensaístico mais formal o autor apresenta um conjunto de reflexões informadas que mostram a paixão que o mesmo tem pelo ato de ler, de aprender com a leitura. Fala ainda da proximidade e das relações de amizade com alguns dos escritores que conheceu na vida como seja a relação intensa com Joyce Carol Oates.
Mas temos também pedaços de uma prosa deliciosa sobre a sua família, ou sobre a relação com a mãe. Ou sobre os diferentes homens da sua vida. Ou ainda um maravilhoso capítulo sobre o actual companheiro, texto imbuído de uma ternura e carinho sem fim.
E sim, temos imensos comentários sobre a vida gay nos últimos 60 anos, sobre os meandros do mundo da literatura na Europa e os EUA. Gostava tanto de me sentar a beber um café com Edmund White...
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"The Unpunished Vice - a life of reading"
Edmund White
Edmund White é um dos meus escritores vivos preferidos. É uma pessoa que me apaixona pelo modo como escreve sobre si e sobre a sua história de vida. Uma história longa em que viveu em intensamente a vida cultural - e já agora, a vida gay - de Nova Iorque e de Paris, cidades onde residiu e que conheceu como poucos.
No livro que agora li "The Unpunished Vice - a life of reading", White revisita momentos da sua vida a partir da sua paixão pela leitura, a partir da sua experiência como leitor. Ou seja não é um livro de memórias. É um livros sobre memórias de leitura na sua longa vida.
Nestas páginas o autor escreve sobre leituras em torno de autores como Proust, Cocteau, Tolstoi, Malaparte, Collette ou Nobokov entre tantos tantos outro. Longe de um registo ensaístico mais formal o autor apresenta um conjunto de reflexões informadas que mostram a paixão que o mesmo tem pelo ato de ler, de aprender com a leitura. Fala ainda da proximidade e das relações de amizade com alguns dos escritores que conheceu na vida como seja a relação intensa com Joyce Carol Oates.
Mas temos também pedaços de uma prosa deliciosa sobre a sua família, ou sobre a relação com a mãe. Ou sobre os diferentes homens da sua vida. Ou ainda um maravilhoso capítulo sobre o actual companheiro, texto imbuído de uma ternura e carinho sem fim.
E sim, temos imensos comentários sobre a vida gay nos últimos 60 anos, sobre os meandros do mundo da literatura na Europa e os EUA. Gostava tanto de me sentar a beber um café com Edmund White...
February 16, 2023
This book was a big disappointment. I'm not homophobic or anything, but if this is an accurate sample of today's gay writers, deal me out of it. The narrative rambled and had almost no cohesion, unless you count the author's often too vivid sex scenes. I guess I was expecting a literary critique of a life of reading, not filler material for Oprah. Unless you are an active LGBTQ+ person, pass this one by.
September 23, 2018
Wielding his pen as deftly as master landscapers wield their shears, acclaimed author and winner of this year's PEN/Saul Bellow Award and the Lambda Literary Prize for Lifetime Achievement, Edmund White fashions once again a literary topiary of thought, of scholarship, of memory and of the many books and authors that have informed his life as a writer and an inexhaustible chronicler of his times.
"The Unpunished Vice" parades delightfully before us the eclectic assortment of White's literary tastes. Lovers of books, lovers of writers will think they have landed in Paradise. Readers will rediscover old favorites: Tolstoy, Joyce Carol Oates, Jean Giono, Walt Whitman, Genet, Diderot, and be Googling new discoveries: Michael Carroll, Saik Fait Abasiyanik, W.M. Spackman, Yiyun Li and tons more.
White wears his trademark charm well -- a sassily-placed boutonniere. His anecdotes (some of them relayed in earlier books) take on now the scent of legend. His jokes are playful (White, a longtime friend, once had me convinced he composed the national anthem of Burma), contain no malice; he enjoys being naughty, provocative. The few times in the book he tweaks an author's work, he does so with a gleam in his Irish eye. The White wit leaves a lasting but a good scar on your funny bone. His abiding passion for writers tints every page, a beloved glove tossed to the coloratura.
White claims he reads and writes "very little and slowly" but as his official bibliographer, I have amassed almost 3000 items: books, essays, plays, poems, reviews, reviews, more reviews, and blurbs -- he hilariously refers to himself in "Unpunished Vice" as "a blurb slut". The volume of his output staggers. White is a wonder, a true Homo Scribens or, as he likes to say whenever I call him this, "just a homo". His tremendous pen never rests. I don't think the man sleeps! Or, if he does, it is only for the briefest charge needed to get his Energizer Bunny battery going again. One time, I bid him "goodnight" as he was embarking on reading Langdon Hammer's mountainous James Merrill biography. When he greeted me at nine the next morning, he had finished all 944 pages!
Ed is the soul of vigor -- he seems, on the page, as well as in person, as essential, as everlasting as a sequoia; four stokes and a massive heart attack did not succeed (thank Zeus!) in toppling him. "The Unpunished Vice" illustrates how his fertile mind percolates, and how entertainingly. His prose avoids any shade of purple; it has muscle, stride, is robust, reportorial. You feel secure in its company.
Forty years along, my passion for Edmund White's books remains in the honeymoon phase; I can hardly wait for a new one to appear at my reading room door, eager to be unwrapped. Next up -- a novel of Texas and a highly-anticipated sex memoir.
"The Unpunished Vice" offers a cool cup of water on a quiet evening to weary daylong travelers. Its intelligence, its scope, its massaging charm merit it a place alongside the great works about a creator's interior development: Eudora Welty's "One Writer's Beginnings", Andre Gide's "If It Die", Richard Wright's "Black Boy", Nabokov's "Speak, Memory". "The Unpunished Vice" already has the feel of a classic.
"The Unpunished Vice" parades delightfully before us the eclectic assortment of White's literary tastes. Lovers of books, lovers of writers will think they have landed in Paradise. Readers will rediscover old favorites: Tolstoy, Joyce Carol Oates, Jean Giono, Walt Whitman, Genet, Diderot, and be Googling new discoveries: Michael Carroll, Saik Fait Abasiyanik, W.M. Spackman, Yiyun Li and tons more.
White wears his trademark charm well -- a sassily-placed boutonniere. His anecdotes (some of them relayed in earlier books) take on now the scent of legend. His jokes are playful (White, a longtime friend, once had me convinced he composed the national anthem of Burma), contain no malice; he enjoys being naughty, provocative. The few times in the book he tweaks an author's work, he does so with a gleam in his Irish eye. The White wit leaves a lasting but a good scar on your funny bone. His abiding passion for writers tints every page, a beloved glove tossed to the coloratura.
White claims he reads and writes "very little and slowly" but as his official bibliographer, I have amassed almost 3000 items: books, essays, plays, poems, reviews, reviews, more reviews, and blurbs -- he hilariously refers to himself in "Unpunished Vice" as "a blurb slut". The volume of his output staggers. White is a wonder, a true Homo Scribens or, as he likes to say whenever I call him this, "just a homo". His tremendous pen never rests. I don't think the man sleeps! Or, if he does, it is only for the briefest charge needed to get his Energizer Bunny battery going again. One time, I bid him "goodnight" as he was embarking on reading Langdon Hammer's mountainous James Merrill biography. When he greeted me at nine the next morning, he had finished all 944 pages!
Ed is the soul of vigor -- he seems, on the page, as well as in person, as essential, as everlasting as a sequoia; four stokes and a massive heart attack did not succeed (thank Zeus!) in toppling him. "The Unpunished Vice" illustrates how his fertile mind percolates, and how entertainingly. His prose avoids any shade of purple; it has muscle, stride, is robust, reportorial. You feel secure in its company.
Forty years along, my passion for Edmund White's books remains in the honeymoon phase; I can hardly wait for a new one to appear at my reading room door, eager to be unwrapped. Next up -- a novel of Texas and a highly-anticipated sex memoir.
"The Unpunished Vice" offers a cool cup of water on a quiet evening to weary daylong travelers. Its intelligence, its scope, its massaging charm merit it a place alongside the great works about a creator's interior development: Eudora Welty's "One Writer's Beginnings", Andre Gide's "If It Die", Richard Wright's "Black Boy", Nabokov's "Speak, Memory". "The Unpunished Vice" already has the feel of a classic.
Read
October 31, 2019I am saying goodbye to Mr. White with no hard feelings. I thought this was to be an autobiography on his reading life. Even scanning ahead I can see it is an autobiography on his life. I will let it sit and give it time to transform
July 23, 2018
Half of this book is White penning the most eloquent, charming reminiscences; half is Old Man Yells at Cloud-style ranting. (Millennials! TRIGGER WARNINGS!!!) But the good parts are very good -- full of delightful character sketches and astute literary analysis. White is such a name dropper, but he somehow gets away with it; he's truly grown into the role of the convivial old uncle like it's the one he was born to play.
And on top of all that: I think I genuinely got a bunch of good book recommendations from this.
And on top of all that: I think I genuinely got a bunch of good book recommendations from this.
September 28, 2025
About fifteen years ago, I cautiously picked up a good friend had recommended to me. It was the second of Edmund White’s three-part memoir, “The Beautiful Room is Empty”. I don’t know whether it was the story of a young gay man growing up in the 1950s and 1960s or the inclusion of lurid sexual details, but I still remember parts of it all these years later. (As a classical music fan, I was also loved that volume three, about White’s life during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, was called “The Farewell Symphony” – a subtle tribute to Franz Joseph Haydn, one of my favorite composers.) A few years later, I read White’s “A Married Man,” and remember little more than the sexual escapades of the main characters, and my taste for reading him soured a little. Over the years, I have nevertheless collected half a dozen pieces of his nonfiction, including his 1993 monumental biography of yet another gay icon, Jean Genet, as well as “The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading” (2018).
In seventeen short but disconnected essays, several of which were clearly previously published in other venues, White writes about everything from two friends he had in early adulthood to opinions on various books, including that “Anna Karenina” is the best novel ever written. White’s strength has always had a talent for talking about people – especially their idiosyncrasies. On the page, he’s a fantastic conversationalist, wearing the gift of gab on his sleeve. The discussions of literature, on the other hand, fall flat. There is almost no rhyme or reason to the order of the essays, and no unifying narrative thread or even allusions that allow them to coalesce into something memorable and worthwhile. As the book goes on, there’s also a kind of gratingly coy, coquettishness as he discusses the dozens of writers whose acquaintance he has made over the years. He’s someone who’s always saying, “I never really think of myself as well-read, but Joyce Carol Oates once told me…” or about that one time he just happened to run into Toni Morrison at the grocery store.
Despite being about bookish life, his opinions about them are the least memorable part of the book. What sticks with me are the sometimes knowing, sometimes petulant asides that he offers of people that he knew throughout his life. Overall, unfortunately, this reads like some occasional nonfiction that’s been quickly cobbled together and rushed to press. Nevertheless, he always sparkles when he talks about people that he knew personally and has a gift of conveying their personalities. Not surprisingly, his impressions of them often grate against the more public personae they often try to cultivate. That old bromide about never meeting your heroes comes to mind.
Of course, one of the pleasures of reading a book about a cumulative lifetime of reading is leering onto their bookshelves for recommendations. If you read books like this to mine them for new authors and titles like I do, most people who have been reading fiction for a while will encounter few surprises. Some of the names and titles that consume most of his time are: Jean Giono, Ronald Firbank, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Nabokov (especially “Lolita”), Henry Green (especially “Nothing”), Elizabeth Bowen, Junichiro Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata, and Curzio Malaparte.
When White passed away at the age of 85 on June 3, 2025, I like to think that it was because he wanted to do it during Pride Month. What better time to read him?
In seventeen short but disconnected essays, several of which were clearly previously published in other venues, White writes about everything from two friends he had in early adulthood to opinions on various books, including that “Anna Karenina” is the best novel ever written. White’s strength has always had a talent for talking about people – especially their idiosyncrasies. On the page, he’s a fantastic conversationalist, wearing the gift of gab on his sleeve. The discussions of literature, on the other hand, fall flat. There is almost no rhyme or reason to the order of the essays, and no unifying narrative thread or even allusions that allow them to coalesce into something memorable and worthwhile. As the book goes on, there’s also a kind of gratingly coy, coquettishness as he discusses the dozens of writers whose acquaintance he has made over the years. He’s someone who’s always saying, “I never really think of myself as well-read, but Joyce Carol Oates once told me…” or about that one time he just happened to run into Toni Morrison at the grocery store.
Despite being about bookish life, his opinions about them are the least memorable part of the book. What sticks with me are the sometimes knowing, sometimes petulant asides that he offers of people that he knew throughout his life. Overall, unfortunately, this reads like some occasional nonfiction that’s been quickly cobbled together and rushed to press. Nevertheless, he always sparkles when he talks about people that he knew personally and has a gift of conveying their personalities. Not surprisingly, his impressions of them often grate against the more public personae they often try to cultivate. That old bromide about never meeting your heroes comes to mind.
Of course, one of the pleasures of reading a book about a cumulative lifetime of reading is leering onto their bookshelves for recommendations. If you read books like this to mine them for new authors and titles like I do, most people who have been reading fiction for a while will encounter few surprises. Some of the names and titles that consume most of his time are: Jean Giono, Ronald Firbank, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Nabokov (especially “Lolita”), Henry Green (especially “Nothing”), Elizabeth Bowen, Junichiro Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata, and Curzio Malaparte.
When White passed away at the age of 85 on June 3, 2025, I like to think that it was because he wanted to do it during Pride Month. What better time to read him?
August 26, 2018
The subtitle of this book, 'A Life of Reading' tells you all you need to know about the subject matter. Most of Edmund White's life has been spent in close proximity to a book, either as a reader, a writer or as an acquaintance of writers and creatives artists of all descriptions.
Some readers my find the style of this book a little too arrogant. But White knows his trade well, and he is full of interesting anecdotes. He has also been around for a good while and so he has met many of the great names in twentieth century literature. Some of what he says is witty and sometimes he goes out of his way to try to shock us in a world where shock is an increasingly rare commodity. I liked one of the quotes from the start of the book, "If I watch television, at the end of two hours I feel cheated and undernourished...; at the end of two hours of reading, my mind is racing and my spirit renewed."
We hear a good deal about White's own homosexuality and even an occasional heterosexual dalliance. His openness about this has led to one particular unforeseen consequence. "Almost every literary gay book gets sent to me for a blurb, and I've become a true "blurb-slut." It's a bit like being a loose woman; everyone mocks you fro your liberality - and everyone wants at least one date with you."
The book lists 27 previous books by Edmund White, and these include novels, essays, and memories, as well as biographies of writers such as Jean Genet, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. Some of the titles also take in White's homosexuality, such as 'Travels in Gay America'. White spent some year living in France, and Paris in particular, which may have become a little cliched after writers such as Hemingway, Henry Miller and James Slater. But White has a genuine love for the country and also its literature. He makes one very astute observation, when his very worldly agent says that he doesn't know any of the names White mentions in a book about Paris; "The English Channel is one of the widest bodies of water in the world." For my own experience the two culture stop at the coast and eye each other suspiciously.
This is a very readable and enjoyable book. There are good recommendations on every page and because White is so infectious with his enthusiasm, you feel compelled to go and search out the books he compliments. For myself, I dug out the copies of Angelo and The Horseman on the Roof both by Jean Giono, whom White rates very highly but feels his time has not yet come.
Some readers my find the style of this book a little too arrogant. But White knows his trade well, and he is full of interesting anecdotes. He has also been around for a good while and so he has met many of the great names in twentieth century literature. Some of what he says is witty and sometimes he goes out of his way to try to shock us in a world where shock is an increasingly rare commodity. I liked one of the quotes from the start of the book, "If I watch television, at the end of two hours I feel cheated and undernourished...; at the end of two hours of reading, my mind is racing and my spirit renewed."
We hear a good deal about White's own homosexuality and even an occasional heterosexual dalliance. His openness about this has led to one particular unforeseen consequence. "Almost every literary gay book gets sent to me for a blurb, and I've become a true "blurb-slut." It's a bit like being a loose woman; everyone mocks you fro your liberality - and everyone wants at least one date with you."
The book lists 27 previous books by Edmund White, and these include novels, essays, and memories, as well as biographies of writers such as Jean Genet, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. Some of the titles also take in White's homosexuality, such as 'Travels in Gay America'. White spent some year living in France, and Paris in particular, which may have become a little cliched after writers such as Hemingway, Henry Miller and James Slater. But White has a genuine love for the country and also its literature. He makes one very astute observation, when his very worldly agent says that he doesn't know any of the names White mentions in a book about Paris; "The English Channel is one of the widest bodies of water in the world." For my own experience the two culture stop at the coast and eye each other suspiciously.
This is a very readable and enjoyable book. There are good recommendations on every page and because White is so infectious with his enthusiasm, you feel compelled to go and search out the books he compliments. For myself, I dug out the copies of Angelo and The Horseman on the Roof both by Jean Giono, whom White rates very highly but feels his time has not yet come.
January 3, 2021
I love books about books, and collect them. I especially enjoyed this one, and Edmund White's meandering thoughts on books, reading, and his life long journey within a literary world with famous and forgotten authors and writing. It's an interesting combination of literary criticism and memoir. I liked the memoir aspect best - and how he uses the books he's read to remember his fascinating life. It was great fun to hear about his friendships with other authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, John Irving (one of my personal favorite authors), and Peter Carey to name just a few. I have White's latest novel on my TBR: A Saint from Texas - looking forward to it!
I marked several passages in this book, but a couple standouts for me:
"Once I was ill at the school infirmary for several days and read Wuthering Heights with total immersion of spirit and mind. I can't remember what I had, but it was contagious and I was isolated - which was perfect for reading a classic with rapture. Clean sheets. One window. Meals served in bed. I could picture Heathcliff with startling clarity." p.99
"To be sure, the score sounds different every time it's played. As we get older and more experienced, the timbre deepens, the volume grows, the ornamentation becomes denser. We never read the same book twice. But each time it is our book, locked in our innermost heart as we move and change through time." p.137
I marked several passages in this book, but a couple standouts for me:
"Once I was ill at the school infirmary for several days and read Wuthering Heights with total immersion of spirit and mind. I can't remember what I had, but it was contagious and I was isolated - which was perfect for reading a classic with rapture. Clean sheets. One window. Meals served in bed. I could picture Heathcliff with startling clarity." p.99
"To be sure, the score sounds different every time it's played. As we get older and more experienced, the timbre deepens, the volume grows, the ornamentation becomes denser. We never read the same book twice. But each time it is our book, locked in our innermost heart as we move and change through time." p.137
July 7, 2018
You went and got shit faced with friends at some noisy bar. You spent the night screaming nonsense. The next day, you have lost your voice and realize you have a lunch date with a great friend. So you pull it together and join your friend. For a delightful and scholarly one sided conversation about literature new and old. This book is that experience.
June 18, 2025
I can never truly trust a man who is so proud of loving and being loved by Vladimir Nabokov, but I got an altogether better impression of White than I did from his novel, A Boy's Own Story—though this book, in its reiteration of stories from White's childhood, certainly confirms that he was needlessly cruel in his fiction about loved ones in his life for little to no reason at all.
Another review here criticises him for the way he talks about his husband, which I think is a bit unfair. The gays aren't allowed to have "take my husband—please!" jokes? I thought that was all obviously in good humour, the decisive difference between this book and A Boy's Own Story.
Had to skip the chapter about Anna Karenina as it's on my shelf and I still don't really know the story at all other than there's a dude named Vronsky and it probably won't end well. It's good to have a couple of real classics before you of which little is known.
Now 50/50 on White, so I'll have to see if I can read another of his novels sometime before I make my mind up on him. Needs to be funny. I can't take the adolescent stuff anymore.
Another review here criticises him for the way he talks about his husband, which I think is a bit unfair. The gays aren't allowed to have "take my husband—please!" jokes? I thought that was all obviously in good humour, the decisive difference between this book and A Boy's Own Story.
Had to skip the chapter about Anna Karenina as it's on my shelf and I still don't really know the story at all other than there's a dude named Vronsky and it probably won't end well. It's good to have a couple of real classics before you of which little is known.
Now 50/50 on White, so I'll have to see if I can read another of his novels sometime before I make my mind up on him. Needs to be funny. I can't take the adolescent stuff anymore.
Want to read
July 6, 2018TR A Boy's Own Story
TR The Beautiful Room Is Empty
TR Marcel Proust
TR Fanny
TR The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading
TR Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
TR The Burning Library
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/bo...
TR The Beautiful Room Is Empty
TR Marcel Proust
TR Fanny
TR The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading
TR Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
TR The Burning Library
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/bo...
November 10, 2019
Hier en daar is hij lui en slordig, maar overall is dit een zeer fijn boek voor readaholics en book freaks. Weer een 30-tal auteurs op mijn al nooit-te-voltooien lijstje kunnen toevoegen.
October 9, 2023
If you love to read, especially "good" books, you will find this book fascinating and very informative.
August 24, 2018
I have been seduced by much of the writings of Edmund White. In this work of memoir and literary criticism, I sometimes feel I learn a little too much about White. (Could he be that pompous?) However, I enjoyed his observations of other writers especially Colette, Malaparte, and Cocteau. His observations are often tongue in cheek and hilarious. The hardest writings an author can compose is literary criticism. One needs such an in depth knowledge of other works. White has this. He was able to interest me in a number of authors in whom I had little knowledge. His revelations of the writings of Firbank and Tolstoy are spot on.
January 26, 2019
Edmund White’s strictly literary memoirs - slightly random and gentle thoughts about classic books which have impressed him, about his own writing intentions, and interesting snippets about other famous authors he knows. There is some discussion of gay writers and books but not as a developed & sustained theme. I took this book slowly - one chapter every morning with my breakfast - and actually quite enjoyed it that way. I think if I had tried to binge read it it might have exhausted me.
September 26, 2018
This is my first time to read Edmund White. I can never resist a book about reading and writing and I just loved the sound of this. I will say that I didn't expect to be reading so much, or so frequently, about sex but hey ho! He lost me sometimes, there were more than a few favourites of his that I had never heard of and I hope to chase up a couple of them at least. I thoroughly enjoyed the name dropping and the mentions of my favourites, Alison Lurie etc. As a writer, I loved to hear him describing how he worked.I especially loved his honesty about writing, that it is the last thing he ever wants to do and always hopes for an interruption of some kind. I cannot bear it when writers make declarations like if they couldn't write, they wouldn't be able to breathe/live. Unless they have fallen into a coffin or, indeed, a coffee jar, and both have somehow sealed behind them, I am confident that their lungs etc would continue to work.
December 3, 2018
I am meeting the author tonight in a pop-up book group and I am eager to hear what he has to say. His reading life seems very deep, wide and smart and he has read many important novels and writers. I have read very few of the writers he holds in such high esteem, nor have I read any of his novels, but I picked this group because I had never heard of him. This story of his reading life is intimidating and I really would only give the book 3 stars, but usually I like a book better after I meet the author. Describing things can be tricky, and there is a lot of repetition among the adjectives, as there may really be only so many words to describe books and writers. Some of his left turns into anecdote are funny and some left me cold. I had to concentrate and found some of it dense and I was reading on deadline, which left me feeling I was back in school. I think taking longer and dipping in and out of it would be the better way to read this memoir.
December 23, 2018
Reading on reading
Just as I enjoy watching an author discuss books on a television panel, I enjoy reading about books. As a career bookseller, and definitely as an autodidact (regardless of a surplus of academic credentialing), I immersed myself in reading. I can't help myself, as I peruse any magazine or pamphlet that lay near enough to pick up.
I read White's A BOY'S OWN STORY a few years back. It is moving, accessible but also literary (not an insult, but rather a comment on its lyricism). With this memoir (or perhaps aide-memoire?), I can see how his literary tastes inform his literary output.
This book is for people who have never uttered the phrase "I never read" or "that book is too long". While I have not read all the authors White talks about, I found his enthusiasms engaging. Highly recommended for "serious" readers who enjoy perusing the book section in The NEW YORKER without intention of reading most of the books under discussion.
Just as I enjoy watching an author discuss books on a television panel, I enjoy reading about books. As a career bookseller, and definitely as an autodidact (regardless of a surplus of academic credentialing), I immersed myself in reading. I can't help myself, as I peruse any magazine or pamphlet that lay near enough to pick up.
I read White's A BOY'S OWN STORY a few years back. It is moving, accessible but also literary (not an insult, but rather a comment on its lyricism). With this memoir (or perhaps aide-memoire?), I can see how his literary tastes inform his literary output.
This book is for people who have never uttered the phrase "I never read" or "that book is too long". While I have not read all the authors White talks about, I found his enthusiasms engaging. Highly recommended for "serious" readers who enjoy perusing the book section in The NEW YORKER without intention of reading most of the books under discussion.
September 22, 2019
The author, Edmund White reminisces, ruminates and rambles over long life time of consuming books and literature at a prolific rate, and interacting with a lot of the authors and literary figures over alcohol over the last few decades. Most of it went over my head as my reading of European literary figures didn't go much further than Herge. As a result he ended up at times in fan clubs of about three for some of the more obscure authors. Certainly a the rather intense engagement with the avant garde elite whose works and writing often seems so disengaged from the usual social communications. My next book, "The Book of Practical Candle Magic" seems to straight forward in comparison. Edmund White's book seems similar to Jan Morris's book I have just read, a long reminisce of literature without any levitating. (That I'm very curious about).
October 2, 2018
It makes perfect sense Nabokov found Edmund White to be his favorite American writer. His prose is a marvelous lucid glimmering wave that turns each page. However, like Nabokov, I fear his talent is more aesthetic than deep. He makes some wonderful metaphors, but much of the writing is based on the art of each writer he admires, not the deeper impressions of their works.
He writes extremely well on sex, in a Nabokovian fashion. His chapter on sex, was excellent, poetic, even to a straight reader.
The rest however, is to me rather dull, but again, a delight to read the prose. May of the authors and reminiscences were obscure or not very interesting. In fact, that was the central problem I had, I mostly did not care for Mr. White. And for a book like this, that is a big problem.
He writes extremely well on sex, in a Nabokovian fashion. His chapter on sex, was excellent, poetic, even to a straight reader.
The rest however, is to me rather dull, but again, a delight to read the prose. May of the authors and reminiscences were obscure or not very interesting. In fact, that was the central problem I had, I mostly did not care for Mr. White. And for a book like this, that is a big problem.
September 28, 2020
I think this is the first of White's books I've read. I was surprised. I truly enjoyed the breadth and depth of his reading and the way he intertwined memoir with it. I enjoyed the sting of some of his observations and found the book intensely moving at times.* The snobbishness doesn't worry me, and I don't feel qualified to comment on his relationship with his husband as some here seem to—adults and all that. I do take issue with his contention that 'Chinese is the oldest continuously spoken language', however. How about Australian First Nations languages amongst others, for instance? That said, I look forward to working my way thru the reading list I've gathered.
* But I'm a sucker for books that intertwine 'intellectual' content with the personal.
* But I'm a sucker for books that intertwine 'intellectual' content with the personal.
October 5, 2018
Part memoir and part literary critique, ‘The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading’ by Edmund White is a splendid collection of reflections from a long-established littérateur. Hopping from one great writer to another, from Nabokov to Proust, by way of Cocteau or Colette, all favourites of mine for the most part, White succeeds, rather genially, in creating the backdrop against which his literary life was ultimately shaped. Both conversational and elegiac in tone, this exceedingly well-documented series of essays will no doubt leave the most incontrovertible lovers of literature, like myself, wanting for more. Utterly spellbinding.
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