This Monday, October 6, 2025, at 7 PM, the Maison de l’Amérique latine (217 boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris) is organizing a meeting. Writers and publishers are gathering to honor Edmund White – a figure of gay literature from the post-sexual liberation era. He passed away in New York on June 3, 2025. Moderated by Albert Dichy, a round table weaves the narrative of a work that has become significant: from the pathologizing years to the freedoms of the seventies, up to the ordeal of AIDS. Between humor and accuracy, a collective memory is reborn.
The Intact Presence of a Work That Brings Together
This Monday around 7 PM, Maison de l’Amérique latine, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The light settles like an open hand on the moldings, the rustling of coats calms down. At the table: Claude Arnaud, Dominique Bourgois, René de Ceccatty, Olivier Cohen, Albert Dichy, and Gilles Siouffi. The chairs stop creaking, silence consents. A mausoleum is not erected: Edmund White’s novels are reopened, a voice recently extinguished is welcomed.
From the outset, the thread is given with sobriety: three ages to understand a life and what it allowed to be written. The mid-20th century had a "medicalizing" view on loves that were to be corrected. Then, the 1970s brought a newfound breath. Finally, the era of losses and survival followed. No more will be said: the shadow exists, but the evening’s speech chooses clarity. It favors accuracy and a share of joy. This joy has always traversed Edmund White’s sentences.
A Tone, a Demeanor
Albert Dichy opens: recalling the essential, without emphasis, and letting the works speak. Everything welcomes him towards the same evidence: if we speak of "survival," it is because the writer held on beyond the expected, where so many others disappeared. But reducing his gesture to this single word would betray the living person he was. He was a man of friendships, laughter, and attention. Moreover, he possessed a grace in the ordinary. "A formidable stylist," it is said, whose "crystalline" qualities served the absent without ever stifling the present.
René de Ceccatty situates the journey: born on January 13, 1940, White lived in New York, Paris, Rome, traversed American and Italian cities, published in The American Scholar, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Vogue, Granta, Harper’s, House & Garden.
He recalls the breadth of the work A Boy’s Own Story (Un jeune Américain), a foundational novel of a young American man facing desire and norm, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, The Farewell Symphony (La Symphonie des adieux), a chronicle of a generation marked by AIDS, States of Desire, The Married Man (L’Homme marié), a novel of love and mourning between Paris and New York, Hotel de Dream, a novelistic homage to Stephen Crane and New York; and this way of combining novel and memory without trinketing. "He writes what he must write," René concludes, seeing him first as a novelist. Indeed, he is a master of the transition from "he" to "I". This Jack we look at, since we listen.
Claude Arnaud follows with a lively portrait: the spirituality of a funny, instructive spirit, a "playful" presence, almost "teddy bear-like," but "with claws." With White, everything interests, everything is absorbed, filtered, metabolized: from the anecdote, literature is born.
There were difficult beginnings, refusals, and firm modesty. Indeed, writing is long and difficult. It gives courage "to the most cowardly among us." In Claude’s memory also returns the hospitality: those Parisian dinners where he cooks himself for his guests, reviving a literary conversation thought to be extinct. This friendly gesture: "Do it, you," says White, placing a stack of books. It’s a way of entrusting a future work and putting the other to work.
Olivier Cohen recounts, with a smile, the "friendly harassment" that precedes the decisive reading. One takes a manuscript for the weekend, reads it, is captivated: a small dreamlike book, precious, traversed by flashes of brutality. A chapter is published in Promeneur. There is a debate about the "sexy cover," a visit to a bookstore for enthusiasts, flipping through American paperbacks to choose a cover… The editorial kitchen surfaces, but what remains is Edmund’s generosity: advice, leads, an unquenchable curiosity. On the question of the dispersion of translators, Olivier shrugs: "It’s rare to scatter a work like this," a mystery he would gladly refer to Ivan Nabokoff. Precisely, Ivan Nabokoff reappears in memories: a meeting at Brown University, him, a French reader, White, a creative writing professor, later, Parisian years filled with exchanges.
Gilles Siouffi mentions the last project received: a novel titled Monsieur, about Philippe d’Orléans, brother of Louis XIV. Two ages where "one did a bit of what one wanted," Edmund said: the French court of the 17th-18th centuries and Hollywood. The narrator, a real Italian, author of memoirs, discovers France as a delighted foreigner, like White in Paris. One already reads Edmund’s signature: dazzling memory, speaking detail, liquid accumulation propelling the narrative. Gilles sums it up with a striking formula: a great literary "cop," attentive, never heavy, always exact.
Jean-Marie Besset shifts the focus: to the 1980s-1990s, to the debate on the "homosexualization of America" and the "Americanization of homosexuality." White, he says, was a vector of this circulation in France, sometimes at the risk of flattening a "French" complexity. But his gaze remained European: raw when necessary, poetic, resistant to any identity reduction.
A text that grips the heart is then mentioned: the preface to Memory. Hubert Sorin – The Married Man – suffering, wanted to see the desert before dying, they leave for Morocco, from Erfoud to the oases. Sorin dies in Marrakech on March 17, 1994. Eight hours of waiting for a plane; at the airport cafeteria, Edmund writes. That same evening, in Paris, he wants to have this text read, written two hours after the loss. A silent lesson: with White, writing stands within life, as close to it as possible.
Another, more intimate testimony further nuances the label of "survivor." Yes, sociologically, but above all alive, fully. The day he announces his HIV-positive status, he says: "I will live, I will have to work, earn my living, think about my retirement." Laughter in the room: this lucid-tenderness that also comes from his mother, prodigious vitality "on a raft, she would have pushed me to survive!" His attention to people is recounted, this way of composing an immediate micro-biography for each. A detail suffices, a photographer exhausted at a wedding exit, he carries the suitcase to the car, returns, and already has her life in mind.
Albert Dichy closes the loop with Genet. A small "office" on rue d’Ulm: archives of Céline and Genet. An American wants to write a biography, the University, he says with a smile, first has "the temptation to shoot him down." White confides his situation: a colossal advance "one million dollars," the difficulty of completing, and the nagging question: if I don’t finish? The contract will be signed (thanks, Maxime K.) with a crazy simple clause: if Edmund dies before the end, Dichy will finish. It was 1987, death everywhere, and this retort from Edmund, half bravado half intuition: "I know everyone dies, but I won’t die!" He was perfect for Genet because he kept a good distance, without the taste of "shooting down" his subject. And to quote: "Genet was simultaneously Stendhal armed, Saint John of the Cross, and Gaston Leroux: a poet of formal purity, a mystic in love with holiness, and a storyteller of adventures for exuberant little boys."
Three Times, One Same Light
Returning to the triptych at the beginning allows breathing differently in the work.
1950s
A world of "traps," plainclothes policemen, words that hurt before describing. The adolescent of A Boy’s Own Story seeks a language, between realism and poetry, to give himself the right to belong. White does not take the victim’s stance: he advances in the name of a "conquering desire," holding joy at the height of the ordeal.
1970s
New York opens the window. Writing is oxygenated, the city becomes rhythm, States of Desire maps American gay communities without ever reducing them. White loves the Paris of the Americans, not quite ours, he rekindles a conversation thought lost: open houses, full tables, the politeness of true listening.
1980s-1990s
The shock wave. The Beautiful Room Is Empty, then The Farewell Symphony compose a narrative where pain does not wall up: it illuminates. It is remembered that Edmund made his contamination public. He held on, asymptomatic, without posture, with this vitality that astonished. However, some doubted this vitality as it contradicted the preconceived idea of the disease. However, the evening does not linger and prefers the demeanor of prose that names without burdening. It disarms with humor, then returns more serious, with a calm voice.
The Workshop and the City
At Brown then Princeton, White imparts an ethic of the sentence: encourage, cut, restart, prefer clarity to effect, aim for accuracy. It is heard in class stories and in these readings organized in front of "thirty-four people." This trait is retained because it is precise and a bit funny, like the man. The cities are his characters: in Paris, the sentence slows down, welcomes conversation, in New York, it walks, notes, frames without crushing, in Rome, it opens to detours. Everywhere, elegance takes the form of attention.
A Community Without Closure
What is composed in the room, through the voices, is not the portrait of a monumental "figure." It is the recognition of a style allowing many to read themselves. There are cautious and sometimes frightened publishers. One thinks of this chapter of The Married Man, "My Master," entrusted to a lawyer. It was deemed "dangerous." Grateful friends and readers who became colleagues are also present. There is agreement on the essential: Edmund White held together sorrow and joy, precision and tact, modesty and audacity.
What Remains
When the applause rises, it is understood that a definition of the classic has quietly slipped in: a text that enters the readers’ lives gently and never leaves. Literature, here, did not save; it held. It provided this precious line of flotation: naming without burdening, recognizing without confiscating, giving place.
Outside, the pavement has retained the day’s warmth. One walks a bit. A phrase returns that could serve as a viaticum: writing is making hospitable what is frightening. That’s all White: an active hospitality, that listens, that restarts, that entrusts the work to the other "Do it, you," that transforms the detail into life. The tribute, this evening, succeeds because it gives back to read.
Better Know the Participants of the Tribute to Edmund White
Albert Dichy
Critic and literary historian, specialist in archives and 20th-century writers. Worked extensively on Jean Genet, whose work he accompanied and illuminated. Cultural mediator: he connects library, memory, and contemporary literary life. Hosts round tables and scholarly editions with warm rigor.
René de Ceccatty
Novelist, essayist, and translator (notably from Italian), a reader of great subtlety. An attentive biographer, he illuminates the lives of writers without turning them into statues. As an editor and critic, he builds bridges between French and foreign literature. His sober and precise prose seeks the truth of beings rather than effect.
Claude Arnaud
Writer and biographer (notably of Cocteau), winner of several literary awards. A lively stylist, he blends erudition, humor, and a keen sense of portraiture. As a chronicler of the life of ideas, he examines French myths with tact. His work explores identity, friendship, and the art of “self-narration” without pretense.
Olivier Cohen
A major publisher on the French scene, a discoverer and defender of unique authors. Known for his editorial rigor and his flair for strong voices. He has published world literatures while keeping the excellence of the text at the center. A man of dialogue, he accompanies manuscripts with curiosity and loyalty.
Dominique Bourgois
A great publisher, heir, and animator of a reference literary catalog. With a sure eye and keen ear, she supports authors over the long term. Her work creates a dialogue between fiction, memoirs, and high-level essays. Discretion and demand: two virtues in the service of books that endure.
Gilles Siouffi
Linguist and university professor, specialist in the history and styles of French. A keen reader, he places works in the long duration of forms and usages. Combines language science and sensitivity to individual voices. Illuminates literature through the grammar of the sentence and the rhythm of an era.
Ivan Nabokoff
Writer, journalist, and publisher, accustomed to back-and-forths between France and the United States. A keen interviewer, he knows how to bring a life to light through the right detail. A companion to many authors, he loves bold manuscripts. Curious about styles, he cultivates a direct elegance, without unnecessary embellishment.
Jean-Marie Besset
Playwright and translator, a figure of contemporary French theater. His writing, lively and structured, intertwines politics, intimacy, and History. A mediator between French, European, and American stages. Producer and man of initiative, he circulates texts and ideas.
The place: the Maison de l’Amérique latine
The Maison de l’Amérique latine (Paris, 217 boulevard Saint-Germain) serves as an essential address. It fosters dialogue between Europe and the Americas. It is nestled in two mansions opening onto a secret garden. Diplomats, artists, and writers meet there: exhibitions, conferences, debates, and literary dinners sustain a tradition of demanding conversation. Its restored salons, library, and restaurant create an art of hospitality where culture is shared with tact. A place of hospitality more than prestige, the ‘MAL’ resonates with Paris at the rhythm of Latin American scenes.
The writer: Edmund White
Edmund White (1940–2025): an important American writer post-1968, between New York and Paris, a novelist of the true and the sensitive (A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, The Farewell Symphony). Professor of creative writing (Brown, Princeton), biographer of Jean Genet, a careful mediator of discreet lives and cities that become characters. A clear, fraternal prose that holds together lightness and gravity, humor and precision. His work, now classic, monumentalizes nothing: it welcomes, enlightens, and keeps us company.