Forgetting Elena - Softcover

White, Edmund

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067975573X ISBN 13: 9780679755739

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1994

Synopsis

The narrator tries to identify and understand the elaborate manners of a wealthy island community, but just as he begins to understand them, Elena tries to convince him to break with convention

About this title

About the Author:

Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1940. His fiction includes the autobiographical trilogy A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony, as well as Caracole, Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, and Skinned Alive, a collection of short stories. He is also the author of a highly acclaimed biography of Jean Genet, a short study of Proust, a travel book about gay America—States of Desire—and Our Paris. He is an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and teaches at Princeton University. He lives in New York City.

From the Inside Flap:

ittering wit, an atmosphere dense in social paranoia, and a breathtaking elegance and precision of language, White's first novel suggests a hilarious apotheosis of the comedy of manners. For, on the privileged island community where Forgetting Elena takes place, manners are everything. Or so it seems to White's excruciatingly self-conscious young narrator who desperately wants to be accepted in this world where everything from one's bathroom habits to the composition of "spontaneous" poetry is subject to rigid conventions.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 067975573X
• ISBN 13: 9780679755739
• Binding: Paperback