Customer Reviews

Farewell Symphony, the

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

White chose the title to this novel from Haydn's The Farewell Symphony, in which, as the musical piece nears conclusion, the musicians leave the stage, one by one, until there is a sole violinist remaining, who finishes the work that so many others began.

In White's novel, we are taken on a tour of the protagonist's (White himself) 30's, 40's, and 50's as he climbs from unknown author to celebrated chronicler of gay life. Along the way, White bares his soul through his no-holds-barred sexual confessions, as we see him interract with friends, lovers, and back-alley liaisons.

Beginning post-Stonewall, and culminating in the AIDS crisis we witness White in many scenarios: best friend, object of desire, live-in lover, and even surrogate parent. White envelops each role with his particularly magical brand of prose, sentiment, and bravado, that is sometimes shocking, sometimes sad, but always entertaining.

As the novel carries on, and reaches the now 20 year old beginning of the AIDS epidemic, we see the significance and poignancy of the title, as the disease ravages the ranks of White's friends, and leaves him the one violinist remaining to chronicle their lives, as they intertwined with his own.

From backrooms to bedrooms, from parking lots to Paris, with stops in New York, Venice, and Morrocco along the way, White delivers another triumph in chronicling his life, and what began as A Boy's Own Story becomes the life of a man.

This is the most moving and most accessible of White's novels. The subject matter - the author's relationships, the intellectual and sexual and emotional aspects of which are dealt with - transcend his own circumstances, so that there is a universality with which a reader of any age, gender or sexuality can identify. The language is smoother and more simplified than in his previous works, so that the reader is swept along and not mentally hampered by imagery which clogs rather than enhances meaning. (A shortcoming of some of the previous works). The fluidity of the construction is masterly. Autobiographical novels should be distinguished from autobiography and it is the author's privelege to play with time-scales, to use flashbacks and juxtaposition of events to enhance the effect. There is a seamlessness which enables the reader to enjoy the flow of the narrative. There is no sense of this being a `plotted' novel with a rigid plan, an unobtrusiveness which is a tribute to Edmund White's skill. Finally, the anguish caused by the succession of deaths due to AIDS of his friends and lovers is unbearably sad. The book ends appropriately with an aching inconclusiveness, conveying the sense of waste for which there is no answer.

I'm always intrugued by White's work and his singular ability to capture not only his stories but mine and those of many other gay men. As a raconteur of the dawning and tarnishing of gaylife, he is peerless. He leaves me breathless, having to re-read the last paragraph over & over.

I picked up this book in my local bookshop as it was being sold off half price. I'd never read Edmund White before, never even heard of him, so it's purely by chance that I'm reading this novel. His prose is perfect, I can't fault it and the story is moving and honest. I never want this book to end. I disagree with a previous poster who said you have to read this book as part of the trilogy, it hasn't spoiled my enjoyment of this novel one bit not having in advance the history of the other books.

This is one of the finest books ever written - and I have read a lot of books. Not for those of a moralising or piously nervous disposition, or for those with a tragically short attention span. You don't have to emulate Mr White's life in order to be the beneficiary of his breathtaking writing skill. 'The Farewell Symphony' is a work of art.

I read the first two books of the trilogy with less and less energy and interest. Nevertheless, the first book was satisfying - its flaws were compensated by its qualities. In this volume however, only the flaws are left.

The writing is sometimes clever, but it doesn't make up for all the times when it's pompous, affected, nothing more, I regret to say, than intellectual wanking. The author goes from place to place (New York, Paris, Italy) and from character to character without making any point. Of course, one does not *have* to make a point, if the characters are entertaining and the scenes thrilling. This is not the case here. We just follow this insipid self-loathing and mysoginist young gay man whose only quality is to have friends that are better than him, and hear about his constant changing moods, his failures and his tedious sex life.

This book seems like a self-published book. As if it hadn't been edited: Pages and pages of uninteresting, irrelevant details and facts and events that could and should have been cut out. The only interesting moment of the book is the death of his friends - it is, indeed, moving. But then again, how hard is it to be moving when one is talking about aids? Nothing to be proud of.

In conclusion, an overrated book from an overrated author, whose success symbolizes the problem of gay litterature: There's so little of it that it doesn't take much to make a "classic"... In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Absolutely extraordinary! Fiction, memoir, apologia, confession, chronicle, biography all wrapped in one eidetic gay life. Is this White's own life or his narrator's or both? Regardless, it tells of a life, a consuming life, at times raunchy, other times sweet, but always viscerally real, that, in the author's own words, is "about the 1960s ending with the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 and the beginning of gay liberation . . .placed on such a rapid cycle - oppressed in the fifties, freed in the sixties, exalted in the seventies, and wiped out in the eighties . . . .[to] remind gay readers of the need to fight lest we fall back into the self-hating, gay-bashing past" (405). Its mimetic power lies in its honesty and candor, as though reading Augustine's "Confessions" or Newman's "Apologia," but instead of theology as its impetus, the existential truth of the gay consciousness is told to confound, "the Christian Right-my very relatives in Texas!-now attacking gays, since the gradual collapse of the Evil Empire of Communism left nothing to unite the rich few and the numerous poor on the right into the semblance of unity except a factitious agitation over `family values'" (ibid.). This novel is real gay history!

Ironically, the German Catholic theologian Hans van Balthasar wrote a tract known as "Truth in Symphonic." It plays on the symphonic metaphor that each instrument in the orchestra contributes its unique insights into the theological truth of Catholicism. In every imaginative way, White's "truth" is even more symphonic; it's captures the truth about real lives whose truth is in feelings, emotions, sensations, hopes, desires, compulsions, regrets, anger, libido, literature, art, aesthetics, ideas, justice, happiness, depression, disgust, revulsion, elan vital, lust, recreation, smoking, coffee, drugs, alcohol, sleep, trade, orgies, fantasies, and harsh realities. But that's not where the title derives; it comes from Haydn's Farewell Symphony, where musicians gradually leave the stage, until the conclusion with a solo violinist. That metaphor is apt for our narrator's life.

Reliving these events both vicariously and with verisimilitude brought tears and joy in reading. Powerfully, the narrator's life is intrinsically my life; the mirror of the times and places brought reabsorption, the joy, the pleasures, the pain, the agony, the frustration, and above all the fight to be. That struggle must continue. For example, one sees clearly how the adversity of AIDS has taught the world more compassion than all the fever of the religious zealots. And despite setbacks, the fight is by no means over, there's still more to overcome, both personally and collectively. As the a gay consciousness continues to evolve, love, not ideology, is the nexus that will ultimately conquer and bring us to the Promised Land. Many Christians get it, but sadly too many don't. Doubly ditto for Muslims. How can someone posit "God is Love," then turn to hate? N o one knows if God exists, that takes faith, but we do know that love exists, and if Christian maxim is true, then the hope we have will be evident in the loves that we express-in all its symphonic ways.

White is an extraordinary author. His elegant, mellifluous, sumptuous, and Baroque prose won't appeal to everyone, but his ability to tell a highly complex story in such an efficient way will. This story will alight memories to everyone over fifty, and be instructive history to everyone under. One of my all-time top five novels.

Wow being a gay male must be rough, so I can't go there. I found Edmund's so called "ramblings" as described by many reviewers to be beautifully written and real. Yes, the book was a bit hard to read and get through, but I found it poignant yet distressing. Most of his friends start dying, and his surrogate teenage children go back to Chicago. I found the chapter about Gabe and Ana rather interesting since it was retold again in The Boy With The Thorn In His Side (Gabe and Ana are Keith and Laura), in his version he describes all the love he feels for them as a mentor/parent. Not only is Edmund in the 70's, a gay cruiser, struggling writer, drug user, but he also has to struggle financially to parent two rambunctious teenagers that he rescues from horrid circumstances. Edmund writes from the heart, and is painfully honest as he writes about the many losses he goes through in this wonderful book.

This is the final volume of the trilogy that includes A Boy's Own Story and The Beautiful Room Is Empty.The book is much longer, covers a longer period and is more rambling than the other two. Some of the prose is intense to the point of eliciting disgust. This can be a turn off but you must remember that White is writing from much pain and from a perspective much closer to the events he is describing. There is a good deal of self-pity, but after all the AIDs epidemic hit the author very hard. I suppose this is a roman-a-clef and it can be fun trying to figure out who the characters represent.Don't read this book before you read the other two.

While shopping with an ex-lover of mine I found the Dutch print of this book. Bought it... read it... enjoyed it... told all my friends about it...

I have never been a person who liked to read books with an autobiographical point of view; but I am glad I have dared to look beyond my prejudices and go for it.

Nice words, beautifully written, Edmund White is a real craftsman. (Based solely on this novel, because he lost some magic when I read A Boys story).

A very helpfull and insightfull book. How did gay men live in the 50's up till the 80's... Really beautiful!

I spread the word about the book among almost all of my friends and even the heterosexual people really liked it. I think it's not only a gay-tale, but it's a tale about loving people, wheter they are male, female... whatever, it doesn't matter, because the one thing you can read between all the lines is that the writer must have really loved the people he wrote about.

Within a few weeks he'll be coming to the Netherlands for a presentation, most definitely I am one of the people being there and hanging on to every word he tells.