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Summary: A Boy's Own Story, continued
Review: A continuation of A Boy's Own Story, this book is no less well written and no less brilliant. It is no wonder that White is considered--by the worthy, literate critics, at least--the finest gay writer in America. I would modify that to say he is one of the finest writers (gay or otherwise) in the world today. This book cronicles the life of ABOS from shortly after that book leaves off through the Stonewall riots in New York in June of 1969. The narrator's growth is evident from the end of the last novel through the end of this one. This is one of the most important works by one of our most important writers; White is the nearest writer to Proust to write since, though minus the cork-lined apartment and with quite a few more social graces.
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Summary: You CAN go home again!
Review: Being in a mood of reverence for Edmund White's biographies of Jean Genet and Marcel Proust and having enjoyed "The Married Man", I have returned to White's career-making novels and find that they not only withstand the test of time, they are indeed truly even finer novels than remembered. "The Beautiful Room Is Empty" is the best summation of the agonies of growing into adulthood and finding that niche of destiny as any book around. But not only is this one man's journey to self acceptance, it is a journal of sociologic change that peaked in the Stonewall Bar and forever changed the way sexuality is viewed, lived and accepted. White's descriptive powers are at their peak as is his ability to draw characters so believeable that they seem like old personal acquaintances. And they are that....for those who met them in 1988 when this book first burst on the scene. This is history, psychology, a dissection and appreciation about Love all eloquently and entertainingly told by a master craftsman!
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Summary: The Beautiful Room
Review: Edmund White's 'Beautiful Room' is a moving, wonderful story, crafted around the late teens to late twenties of the narrator, known only as 'Bunny' to his friend Lou, one of the many lively, memorable characters encountered along the way, as well as Tex, a flaboyant bookstore owner, who gives 'Bunny' his earliest education in 'gay slang.''Bunny', at the beginning of the novel, is a prep-school student coming to terms with his homosexuality, by engaging in anonymous sexual encounter after encounter in the boy's bathrooms, where his lovers are seen only from waistline to knees. He dresses and plays the part of the dutiful prep school student by day, but once class is out, he drifts toward the bohemians, gracing the coffee shops of their 1950's and 60's lives, watching them paint, sharing their surrealist literature and poetry, and secretly lusting after the males. A child of divorced parents, his father determined to make a man out of him, his mother convinced that all he needs is a cure, the narrator carries us along on his ride, meeting many notable characters along the way, that shape and influence his gradual acceptance that he is gay. Following his school years, when he enters the work force and the real world, the words of a school-friend come back to haunt him, that 'some day he will have too much freedom,' freedom to choose where he goes, what he does, and who he is. He drifts along from job to job, from lover to lover, Lou, Fred, and the frequent pick-ups from Christoper Street, until he meets Sean, a closeted young man who leads 'Bunny' to question his own identity as they both enter group therapy to try and overcome their 'illness' and go straight, with very different results. Culminating at the famous Stonewall site, Edmund White provides readers with a grand tour-de-force of growing up gay in the 50's and 60's in Chicago and New York. Sometimes poignant, sometimes emotional, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, 'Beautiful Room' is a beautiful book, with a beautiful story to tell. The narrator, presumably White himself, as the book is supposed to be autobiographical, slips from identity to identity as he tries to find his own. Young and unsure of himself, he tries to be what everyone else wants him to be until he finds himself. Although this story centers on a gay man, the book speaks volumes to anyone struggling to find their own identity, and the choices and mistakes we all make along the way.
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Summary: A real Charming Book
Review: I loved it!!!!! Again I really identified with the author. It made me think and I learned a lot about myself in this book. I guess I could say I learned how to think in this book. Please read it and you will understand what I mean. It is worth it
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Summary: The coming out of young America
Review: The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White is a wonderful additon to the inspired A Boy's Own Story. It is not exactly a sequel but it does loosely form the middle in a semi-autobiographical trilogy (between A Boy's Own Story and A Farewll Symphony). All can be read and enjoyed on their own but also fit together smoothly to take the reader through different times in the life of a gay man. This volume takes the reader from the repressive fifties into the time of Stonewall as the main character grows from a young man in the midwestern college into a gay urbanite going to the gym. The growth of the narrator is more honest and well written than in many gay novels and will resonate with the reader with painful or humourous , at different times, recognition whether he grew up in that era or not. It is a fine novel that plays all the right notes.
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Summary: A Satisfying Addition
Review: The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White is a wonderful additon to the inspired A Boy's Own Story. It is not exactly a sequel but it does loosely form the middle in a semi-autobiographical trilogy (between A Boy's Own Story and A Farewll Symphony). All can be read and enjoyed on their own but also fit together smoothly to take the reader through different times in the life of a gay man. This volume takes the reader from the repressive fifties into the time of Stonewall as the main character grows from a young man in the midwestern college into a gay urbanite going to the gym. The growth of the narrator is more honest and well written than in many gay novels and will resonate with the reader with painful or humourous , at different times, recognition whether he grew up in that era or not. It is a fine novel that plays all the right notes.
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Summary: the best title ever
Review: The Beautiful Room is Empty is extemely poetic, and it is deeply moving. i love this book, and cannot express how well i related to the character. granted, i would suggest that you read the first autobiographical book A Boy's Own Story first, because it will enable you to feel for the characters better.
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Summary: The Beautiful Room is Empty
Review: This book is the second in the trilogy beginning with A Boy's Own Story and ending with The Farewell Symphony. To get the full impact,read them in sequence.White is one of the finest writers on his subjects, both in language and content. The era of the 60's from the buttoned down end of the Eisenhower era to the Stonewall Uprising are compellingly seen through one man's eyes. (White was a participant in Stonewall and the book ends on that note.)Read this book and you will learn or remember a lot.
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Summary: Relive a writer's hypnotic youth
Review: This is the majestic second autobiographical novel by Edmund White, told with such elegent honesty that one is simply entranced by each scene. I don't believe that this novel is better in any arguable way than A Boy's Own Story. The first book in White's autobiographical series is just as serious, but less enjoyable, simply because adolescence is SO much more interesting (for me at least) than the childhood White dealt with before. Both books illustrate (with great candor!) their respective periods of life (and the author's specific grappling). But it's just that this is when it "gets good" for me, when the protagonist is more sophisticated. Edmund White paints with honesty a believable portrait of life as he has lived it. Of course, his own experiences differ significantly from certain scenes in his novels, but nonetheless, he writes with blunt honesty, which is often the way we experience life: bluntly. A quote characteristic of White: "Because a novel -these words- is a shared experience, a clumsy but sometimes funny conversation between two people in which one of them is doing all the talking, it will always be tighter and more luminous than that object called living. There is something so insipid about living that to do it at all requires heroism or stupidity, probably both. Living is all those days and years, the rushes; memory edits them; this page is the final print, music added. But for an instant imagine the process reversed, go with me back through the years, then be me, me all alone as I submit to the weight, the atomospheric pressure of youth, for when I was young I was exhausted by always bumping up against this big lummox I didn't really know, myself." White has a flair for the everyday things. He makes them seem beautiful, horrible; they are the little things, and this author writes them down in their warts-and-all glory. A previous reviewer said that reading this book is much like experiencing a grand opera while sitting in the bathroom, "a darkly exciting, unorthodox and revealing artistic encounter that one would curiously find oneself wanting to revisit". It's a very insightful comment and best tells the potential reader what he awaits. Edmund White's prose will sweep you along to relive part of his youth along with him. I can say nothing more but read this book!
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Summary: An Excellent Work... Better Than It's Predicesor
Review: This is the second book in an autobiographical-fiction trilogy by Edmund White. The first book, A Boy's Own Story--was an amazing read, but this sequel turned out to be even better. This picks up shortly after ABOS left off, and continues right up through the riots at Stonewall. I cannot tell you any better about the plot, because, like life in the span it covers, it consists of a great many events. The mood of the book is absorbing, and as beatiful as the tittle ("The Beautiful Room is Empty" is one of the best titles I've heard, along with those like "Silence of the Lambs" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes.") It is also an essential work--as all of White's are--in understanding gay literature. White is truly one of the best writers the genre has ever seen, and will be one of the fathers and inspirations of what will come later.
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