When the narrator of White’s poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men. Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay uprising–and populated by eloquent queens, butch poseurs, and a fearfully incompetent shrink–The Beautiful Room is Empty conflates the acts of coming out and coming of age.
"With intelligence, candor, humor–and anger–White explores the most insidious aspects of oppression…. An impressive novel."–Washington Post book World
About The Beautiful Room Is Empty
When the narrator of White’s poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men. Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay uprising–and populated by eloquent queens, butch poseurs, and a fearfully incompetent shrink–The Beautiful Room is Empty conflates the acts of coming out and coming of age.
"With intelligence, candor, humor–and anger–White explores the most insidious aspects of oppression…. An impressive novel."–Washington Post book World
Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1940. His fiction includes the autobiographical trilogy A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony, as well as Caracole, Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, and Skinned Alive, a collection of… More about Edmund White
About Edmund White
Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1940. His fiction includes the autobiographical trilogy A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony, as well as Caracole, Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, and Skinned Alive, a collection of… More about Edmund White
