{"product_id":"9781620406335","title":"Inside a Pearl : My Years in Paris","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eInside a Pearl\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Edmund White\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen Edmund White moved to Paris in 1983, leaving New York City in the midst of the AIDS crisis, he was forty-three years old, couldn't speak French, and only knew two people in the entire city. But in middle age, he discovered the new anxieties and pleasures of mastering a new culture. When he left fifteen years later to take a teaching position in the U.S., he was fluent enough to broadcast on French radio and TV, and in his work as a journalist, he'd made the acquaintance of everyone from Yves Saint Laurent to Catherine Deneuve to Michel Foucault. He'd also developed a close friendship with an older woman, Marie-Claude, through which he'd come to understand French life and culture in a deeper way.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe book's title evokes the Parisian landscape in the eternal mists and the half-light, the serenity of the city compared to the New York White had known (and vividly recalled in \u003ci\u003eCity Boy\u003c\/i\u003e). White fell headily in love with the city and its culture: both intoxicated and intellectually stimulated. He became the definitive biographer of Jean Genet; he wrote lives of Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud; and he became a recipient of the French Order of Arts and Letters. \u003ci\u003eInside a Pearl \u003c\/i\u003erecalls those fertile years for White. It's a memoir which gossips and ruminates, and offers a brilliant examination of a city and a culture eternally imbued with an aura of enchantment.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[A] beautifully written memoir. . . \u003ci\u003eInside a Pearl \u003c\/i\u003erefers not only to Paris, with its mists and mysteries. This pearl is somehow a kind of snow globe as well, a transparent sphere that encloses a miniature world. White shakes this luminous object. Snow shimmers everywhere. And then the snow settles.” —\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Stealthily affecting . . . With a feather dipped in acid, White recounts his off-page encounters with a glittering 1980s beau monde . . . Characteristically vivid when it comes to eros White is just as unsparing when the pleasure-seeking gives way to the loss (including the death of his lover, Hubert, of AIDS), and to his own increasing sense of vulnerability and mortality.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This rumination on his beau monde cohorts finds the writer acclimating to a slightly more sober lifestyle, but the memories of high-profile artists, fashion designers, actors and socialites are loose-lipped, uproarious tales of the louche and famous.” —\u003ci\u003eT, the New York Times Style Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“What is fascinating about \u003ci\u003eInside a Pearl \u003c\/i\u003e[is] its game effort at self-examination and its commitment to warts-and-all sharing about sexual aging, social arrivism, and the brutal sadness caused by AIDS . . . His portrait of Marie-Claude de Brunhoff . . . is one of the most affecting depictions of the contours of friendship between a gay man and a straight woman in recent literature.” —\u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A memoir that engages on a number of levels, as a pivotal literary figure recounts his production Parisian years.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“White is renowned for the purity of his style and for his frank depictions of sex, and he is in peak form here . . . He is wise in his portrayal of the French.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Edmund White is the preeminent gay man of letters of our time . . . Revelations come wrapped in revelations . . . The book is a joy ride from first to last.” —\u003ci\u003eBay Area Reporter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A glittering, delicious, tender, and funny memoir about his fifteen years in Paris.” —\u003ci\u003eNashville Scene\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShort-listed Lambda Literary Award - Nominee (2015)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9781620406335\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Bloomsbury USA","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":40628072579278,"sku":"9781620406335","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/getimage_2a368442-be91-4013-a0ac-41afcc8b7f6e.jpg?v=1638756104","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9781620406335","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}