You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

Today my guest is Edmund White,

the author most recently of the Farewell Symphony,

a novel, which is also the third book in his trilogy

of autobiographical novels, A Boy's Own Story,

The Beautiful Room is Empty, the Farewell Symphony.

All of these have been published by Knopf and Hardcover

and are available or will be available from vintage and paperback.

He's the author as well of a recent collection of his essays, The Burning Library,

a collection of short stories, Skindolive, Our Paris, sketches

from memory with the illustrator Hubert Osorin. But our subject today is the farewell symphony

and issues relating to autobiography and sexuality.

I wanted to ask,

there are certain figures who are named with their actual names,

Isherwood and Bacardi, for instance, Peggy Guggenheim, others,

and then others whose names, although invented,

are so transparent if one knows the cultural life of New York that one finds oneself, you know,

writing down Virgil Thompson, Richard Howard, James Merrill, Robert Wilson.

...