Richard Davenport-Hines
Scenes from a Literary Life
As an American schoolboy, crouched on a lavatory after dormitory lights out, Edmund White ‘read Rimbaud and Verlaine in en face translations, obsessively, secretively’. Later, he found Gitanes glamorous, noticed that Europeans misread his social standing in a gratifying way, and among the thousands of men with whom he had sex in New York recalled ‘a short, jolly French tourist (or was he a sailor from Marseille?)’, très bien monté, with whom he went to see an early Depardieu film: ‘The little Frenchman kept pushing my hand onto the enormous bulge in his trousers, and whispering incomprehensible dirty words into my ear.’
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'To me, Elmore Leonard is as comforting in extremity as Pym, and as safe, in the last resort, as Wodehouse. The guys with the best lines are going to come out the other side; the dumb fucks are going to get it in the head or chest.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-spoonful-of-elmore
'As we read, we know that in a short time the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and colour television will sweep that age over the balustrade and into the sea, but for now everyone is happy.'
Simon Baker is charmed by Graham Swift's new novel, 'Here We Are'.
http://ow.ly/uDL050ylh80
'As science moves forward ... are we entering an era where sex is for leisure and IVF is for creating the perfect child?'
@MGilmore121 takes a look at the future of IVF in her review of @RobertKlitzman's 'Designing Babies'.
http://ow.ly/xuJY50ybNJa