Good afternoon, playitagain, here I am - as promised. A bit late, I know.
My EW experience started definitely with the Genet biography. I had been into Genet during my whole adolescence and youth and bought a copy when visiting Portland, Oregon, devouring the book in a few days.
I discovered a new, brillant writer and an important voice of gay literature. And a good researcher (I'm a musicologist and a biography writer myself...)
I then read everything he ever wrote.
Burning Library and Skinned Alive were very influential for me, and I read with a lot enthousiasm the Trilogy (which you don't want to be called 'autobiographical'). Whatever. As much as I liked the two first volumes, (and I agree, their titles are excellent!) I found the last (F.S.) a bit depressing in spite of its merits.
The Married Man is, without any doubt, his best book, the most moving too. Although I must say, as his Paris books prove, he is better describing cultural phenomenons, observing sociological shifts, topographical particularities than "inventing" an authentic, believable story. That's why TMM is so good: it's based on his own life, strong, vulnerable, and very conventional at that - straightforwardly told. That's why FANNY is so disappointing: It's somehow not his period and not something he really went through. He's at home when he talks about New York, Paris, gay trends, he is wonderfully cruel when describing gay stereotypes - and God knows there are many (too many).
The Proust book I found it difficult to read: almost too naïve, and as a Proust connaisseur I found it a bit too "light" and not serious enough.
Now I'd like to see how he has moved on in the new book you mentioned. Will it resemble "Palimpsest", the magnificent, witty, and highly ironic "memoirs" by Gore Vidal? Will it be at the same level as my favourite books by Felice Picano, Alan Hollinghurst (both authors I admire...), or at that of EW's earliest books.
Some years ago I got the impression that he's simply writing too much and too fast and found his style at time a bit 'burned out'.
Hope that has changed...
Would like to meet him personally and get the opportunity to talk to him for a long while, because I have lived in Paris for a very long time, partially simutaneously to him (1990-2002 for me), know people who met him sometimes, but I would not necessarily dream of wanking around with him or even exchange b***jobs. It'd be a discussion between writers and helpless francophiles like myself, a discussion about the qualities of French lovers, French cooks, French c***s maybe.
I was shocked when I saw how incredibly fat he became in recent years, on author's photos.
I understand he is living with a young sci-fi writer, is that true? Or no longer true?
So if you love to read EW, you should also read Ned Rorem, but you've certainly done that already. Rorem = As good as it gets in highly sophisticated, sociological, aesthical and yes, gay, writing. The quintessence of cultivated snobbery.
Keep our exchange on, if you wish or like.
Bonne nuit, Ingmar
(BTW, I'm a German living in France.)