May 2nd: Edmund White in conversation with Bill Goldstein

Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Edmund White will discuss his new novel The Humble Lover with Bill Goldstein.

This event will take place live at 192 Books at 192 10th Avenue, between 21st and 22nd street, on Tuesday,May 2nd at 7 PM ET. Seating is on a first come, first serve basis. The event will also livestream directly on this page. There is no login or rsvp required. A recording will be archived and posted shortly afterwards.

Edmund White — The Humble Lover: A Novel  (Published by Bloomsbury, 2023)

Aldwych West, an eighty-year-old modern-day aristocrat living alone in his Manhattan townhouse, is used to having what he wants. And when he sets eyes on August Dupond, a strong, stunningly beautiful soloist in the New York City Ballet, he decides he must have him. Soon they strike up a closeness that falls between the blurry lines of friendship, sponsorship, and love, and August moves in with Aldwych. But eventually August starts bringing home other men, and a formidable woman in Aldwych's circle named Ernestine also takes a deep interest in the young, enchanting star. Messy entanglements and fierce rivalries ensue, and the result is an unforgettable, outrageous tragicomedy that explores the many layers of love and sexual desire as only Edmund White can.

Edmund White is the author of many novels, including A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, The Farewell Symphony, Our Young Man and A Previous Life. His nonfiction includes City Boy, Inside a Pearl, The Unpunished Vice, and other memoirs; The Flâneur, about Paris; and literary biographies and essays. He was named the 2018 winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction and received the National Book Foundation’s 2019 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in New York. 

Bill Goldstein, the founding editor of the books site of The New York Times on the Web, reviews books and interviews authors for NBC’s “Weekend Today in New York.” He is also curator of public programs at Roosevelt House, the public policy institute of New York’s Hunter College. He received a PH.D in English from City University of New York Graduate Center in 2010, and is the recipient of writing fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross and elsewhere. Bill is the author of The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature.