Set in Europe and America, these eight stories (many of them autobiographical) explore the ways we make sense of personal experience: the workings of desire, in youth and later in life; the yearnings of intimacy and love; the powers of beauty and jealousy; and the unpredictable effects of illness and loss. In “Pyrography” a gay adolescent is torn between his sexual desires and
his longing for acceptance as he goes on a camping trip with two straight male friends. An American in Crete finds a new reason for living after the death of his lover in “An Oracle.” “Watermarked” is a moving tribute to a beautiful young actor, the subject of an early passion. And, perhaps the funniest story in the collection, “His Biographer” deals with the ludicrous experience of being the living subject of a biography, and shows a hilarious encounter between Old World sophistication and New World political correctness.
Moving, witty and full of audacious surprises, Skinned Alive delivers us to a world of comedy in the midst of tragedy, one peopled by a startling diversity of men and women. This book gives us the full range of Edmund White’s extraordinary powers of observation and his finely balanced, musical sense of structure.
- Pyrography
- Running on Empty
- Skinned Alive
- His Biographer
- An Oracle
- Reprise
- Palace Days
- Watermarked
