Customer Reviews

Chaos: A Novella and Stories

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Edmund White in his novella CHAOS covers much of the material he wrote about in his recent MY LIVES: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY so it's probably safe to assume that some of this story is autobiographical. Jack is 66, teaches at a university, is more in demand for blurbs he writes for other writers' books -- although since his computer crashed, he often has to ask for their last names-- occasionally gets one of his old novels translated, and spends a lot of his time worrying about his dwindling income and his eternal quest for sex. He of course is attracted to men 40 years his junior and prefers Craig's List rather than Silverdaddies as a source for finding them. He is willing to pay for sex; he mets Seth, a tall, blond Mormon with aspirations of being a writer and has no problem dishing out over a hundred dollars for each session with him even after they become friends. Then there is a young Italian, etc., etc., etc. Jack lives for "a cultural life, good food and a supply of available men." He, however, is also a good friend, perhaps the saving grace of this man with a truly chaotic life, particularly to his friend Marie-Helene who is diagnosed with cancer.

Regardless of whether or not you sympathize with White's characters, you have to marvel at his language. His prose can be as dense as anything Henry James wrote and as transparent as the writing of Truman Capote. His description of memory loss, particularly forgetting names, is both scary and sounds too familiar: "He made lists of things to do but forgot to consult them. Nothing yet was completely lost, but he had to write down his appointments right away or they would escape him an hour after he'd worked them out in detail and he'd have to make a humiliating second call ('Did we say Tuesday at three?' 'No, a week from Thursday at four.'). You also have to grudgingly admire White's chutzpah for letting Marie-Helene describe Alan Hollinghurst as the greatest critic "if he weren't already the greatest novelist." Aren't White and Hollinghurst good friends?

In addition to CHAOS, there are three short stories, two about older men and younger "boys," and a third one about a lonely adolescent who listens to classical music in the 1950's.

Mr. White supposedly is working on a novel about the writer Stephen Crane. We can only hope that gets published soon.

Edmund White remains one of the reigning masters of committing the English language into models of communication in his intelligent, witty, wise, and compassionate novels. While some critics and admirers tend to place CHAOS: A NOVELLA AND STORIES in a lesser important ring of his work, for this reader this book works on every level. Yes, some of the ideas on which the stories are based have been the nidus for other of his more famous works, the current work (especially CHAOS) has polished the atmosphere of the plight of the aging gay man to a jewel-like presence. Reading Edmund White is as much a pleasure of the joy of reading superb prose, as it is an entry into the fascinating lives of his created characters.

In 'Chaos' we meet Jack, a man whose once successful life as a writer afforded him the luxuries of satisfying his physical needs at will. Now, his career careening down toward desperation, Jack finds his gratification in hiring men for sex. His 'employees' include a strangely assembled ex-Mormon lad named Seth and an Italian club dancer Giuseppe, both of whom, while fond of Jack's kindness and patronage, always demand cash on the line, no matter the frequency of their daily episodes with Jack. Jack's cultural needs are played out in fascinating asides, moments when the intellect must emerge and steal the podium from sensuality. And it is precisely in these moments that White exercises his facility with the language. 'Both statements were more or less true, but these half-shades became startlingly emphatic colors only because it was easier to write declarations than nuances - and sentences, once awakened on the page, began to rattle and writhe in their own direction, dangerous and hissing and no longer submissive to meaning'.

Each of the four stories carry the theme of aging, of recollection, of longing for the unattainable made out of grasp because of the erosion of time. 'Time was speeding up just as it was running out, like the last of the water draining form the sink'. But the manner in which Edmund White carves these tales is not one of desperation, of nihilism. His characters retain the sensual longing yet the inherent dignity of the Marschallin of 'Der Rosenkavalier'. And the stories are just about that operatic. Reading Edmund White is a feast, beautifully prepared. Grady Harp, October 07

I've been a fan of Edmund White ever since States of Desire which I received as a gift at a surprise birthday party when I was much younger and starting to come out. As is sometimes the case, Chaos is not an easy read, not only because of Edmund White's superior command of language, but also because he captures the truth of middle-aged gay men of my generation so well. I found myself wondering how much of what I was reading was reflective of the author and those he has known in his life and how much was from his imagination. Regardless, the book felt honest and accurate, even though fiction.

Though the title work is a little long, this is a wonderful collection of stories from a writer in his prime. White parades a succession of head-turning hunks before us, but it his aging protagonists and lonely midwest aesthete who have us turning the page.

I read novels related to the gay male experience pretty voraciously. I think Edmund White is my single favorite writer. His prose is so perfectly executed that the books fly by too quickly.

He really made me laugh with this novella (the other stories are nice, but not quite the same). I share many of his foibles and obsessions, although what he considers economic stress would feel stable to me.

The clearly autobiographically-based writing continues in this novella, and he's very funny in this one about failing memories and repeating elements of stories, more or less shrugging them off.

His writing is like good ballet - only through his years of reading and study of the art of literary writing can he make it look so easy. I almost wish it were harder to read and I'm tempted to reread all his autobiographical "fiction" just for the pleasure. I would argue he is one of our relatively few real "men of letters."

White is the perfect voice for the aging Gay (male) Baby Boomers.The main character is older and heavier,but still interesting and sexy.He writes about exotic places like Turkey and also familiar ones like New York City,Paris and Princeton,New Jersey in a way that makes the reader feel a part of it all.

He writes beautifully about friendship and the frustrations of everyday life.Quite autobiographical,but disguised as fiction.

Living in a Chelsea neighborhood populated by men three or four decades younger, Jack, the narrator of "Chaos," is having a difficult time growing old in a manner his boyish neighbors might consider graceful. Things seem to be falling apart around him: he can't remember the names of his colleagues or times of his appointments. Memories that should enthrall him are slowly diminishing. He has grown accustomed to strategies to disguise his misfiring neurons. ("Remember that hilarious dinner we had with Michael Ondaatje in the Korean restaurant?" He'd say, "Are you sure it was Korean?" though in fact he could not place the dinner or cast of characters in any epoch, city, or restaurant.) His books are barely selling well enough to support his lifestyle. His best friend is dying of cancer--this latest calamity after decades of losing friends and lovers to AIDS.

Regardless, Jack's "sex ambitions were still the same--to have sex with every man in the world." His trysts are both a release ("he plunged into a new hysteria of sex") and a lifeline ("he hadn't died yet"). Yet he is thrown for a bit of a loop when he "thinks" he might be in love with Seth, a 28-year-old ex-Mormon and former meth addict whom Jack pays for sex--and the unlikely pair become a "couple" in spite (or perhaps because of) the arrangement. It's "chaos" all right, and in spite of its brevity, this novella covers a lot of ground: from the online culture of the new millennium to the difficulty of publishing literary works in today's publishing world. And White never fails to remind us of the comical side of the adventures of the libidinous. The work culminates in a scathing e-mail tirade from Seth to Jack that, in tone and substance, is unlike anything White has ever written before--so much so that I felt sure it had been modeled off an actual exchange. (I actually asked the author about it, and he told me it was in fact written from scratch.)

White's virtuoso performance adopting the voice of an unlettered hustler is matched by the voices of the three stories that round out the book. They are all excellent, but two are among the best things White has ever done. "Record Time" is almost Proustian in its recollection of boyhood in 1953, with its old vinyl 78s and seeing Greta Garbo in "Camille" alone in a theater and "the smell of the boxes of tea" that the boy collects but rarely drinks. And you'll never again read anything quite like "A Good Sport," about a 71-year-old in retirement on the Greek island of Naxos who ends up on the Turkish island of Buyukada, enamored by a local young man and losing himself to the lethargy of the opium pipe. The story's dreamlike atmosphere displays the envious range of White's prose and, above all, the humorous warmth and erudition underlying his descriptions of aging, nostalgia, and longing.