The Unpunished Vice:
A Life of Reading
by Edmund White
“Many people like books because they’re suspenseful or scary or touching or inspirational or because one admires the characters as if they were real people. Maybe it’s only writers who like the writing.” ― Edmund White, The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading
Despite or perhaps because he is a literary legend, Edmund White remembers his life through the books he has read. For White, every significant event was accompanied by the perfect book: Proust's In Search of Lost Time, which while he was attending boarding school in Michigan opened up the seemingly closed world of homosexuality; the Ezra Pound poems loved by a lover he followed to New York; the Stephen Crane biography, which served as the basis for one of White's novels (and one of my favorites). But White didn't fully appreciate the important role reading had in his life—forming his tastes, influencing his memories, and providing him with entertainment through the best and worst of life—until he underwent heart surgery in 2014 and momentarily lost his desire to read.
The Unpunished Vice is a compilation of all the ways reading has influenced White's life and work, fusing biography with literary criticism. His eminent position on the literary scene allows for intriguing, personal glimpses into the lives of some of the most well-known cultural icons in the world. He recalls making early morning phone calls to Vladimir Nabokov, who reportedly declared that White was his favorite American author, and reading Henry James to Peggy Guggenheim in her private gondola in Venice. Ultimately it is a fascinating memoir of a life spent both reading and writing; Edmund White does not disappoint with this gem.
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