City Boy

‘An open-throttled tour of New York City during the bad old days of the 1960s and early '70s ... it's all here in exacting and eye-popping detail’ - New York Times ‘Energetic evocation of Manhattan in the Sixties and Seventies ... an absorbing insight into the life alongside a constellation of greats of the American literary and gay scenes’ - Harper's Bazaar ‘At once fascinating social history and sublimely detailed gossip’ - John IrvingIn the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult. Combining the no-holds-barred confession and yearning of A Boy's Own Story with the easy erudition and sense of place of The Flaneur, this is the story of White's years in 1970s New York, bouncing from intellectual encounters with Susan Sontag and Harold Brodkey to erotic entanglements downtown to the burgeoning gay scene of artists and writers. It's a moving, candid, brilliant portrait of a time and place, full of encounters with famous names and cultural icons.

'An open-throttled tour of New York City during the bad old days of the 1960s and early '70s... it's all here in exacting and eye-popping detail', ‘Energetic evocation of Manhatten in the Sixties and Seventies...an absorbing insight into the life alongside a constellation of greats of the American literary and gay scenes', 'This splendid book is at once fascinating social history and sublimely detailed gossip', ‘A wonderful deepening and broadening of Edmund White's great life-work . . . Everything he says about love and friendship is so penetrating and true . . . a marvellous book', A graceful memoir of a decidedly ungraceful time in the life of New York City... A welcome portrait of a time and place long past, and much yearned for.

An esteemed novelist and cultural critic, Edmund White is the author of many books, including the autobiographical novel A Boy's Own Story; a previous memoir, My Lives; and most recently a biography of poet Arthur Rimbaud. White lives in New York City and teaches writing at Princeton University.