Inside a Pearl (39 page)

Did living in France all those years affect my writing? It gave me a lot to write about.

Once a green-haired presenter on TV in Manchester asked me, “You're known as a writer, a homosexual, and an American. When did you first discover you were an American?”

“When I first moved to Europe.”

I want to thank my partner of two decades, Michael Carroll, for encouraging me as always. Anton Mueller helped me restructure this book. Leo Racicot typed it and made many suggestions.

Edmund White is the author of two previous memoirs,
My Lives
and
City Boy
, and a previous book on Paris,
The Flâneur
. His many novels include
A Boy's Own Story
and, most recently,
Jack Holmes and His Friend
. He is also known as a literary biographer and essayist. White lives in New York and teaches at Princeton University.

Forgetting Elena: A Novel
The Joy of Gay Sex (coauthored)
Nocturnes for the King of Naples: A Novel
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America
A Boy's Own Story: A Novel
The Beautiful Room Is Empty: A Novel
Caracole: A Novel
The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis
Genet: A Biography
The Burning Library: Essays
Our Paris: Sketches from Memory
Skinned Alive: Stories
The Farewell Symphony: A Novel
Marcel Proust: A Life
The Married Man: A Novel
The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris
Fanny: A Fiction
Arts and Letters: Essays
My Lives: A Memoir
Chaos: A Novella and Stories
Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel
Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ‘70s
Sacred Monsters: New Essays on Literature and Art
Jack Holmes and His Friend: A Novel

First published in Great Britain 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Edmund White

The moral right of the author has been asserted

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the
case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London
WC1B 3DP

www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4088 2045 2 (hardback edition)
ISBN 978 1 4088 3785 6 (trade paperback edition)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY