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Jack Holmes and His Friend Edmund White 9781408815175 Books

Download As PDF : Jack Holmes and His Friend Edmund White 9781408815175 Books

Jack Holmes and His Friend Edmund White 9781408815175 Books

Here is a novel centered around the intimate lives of its characters who developed their urbanity in NYC. The two central personalities are sort of friends - one gay and one straight, whose lives intertwine, primarily secured by their sexual activities. The graphic details of their sexual exploits are plentiful, perhaps not appealing to all readers. Their professional success or lack thereof take a secondary place in the author's focus; it is the evolving nature of their city life viewed through their sexual experiences that is central here. I found this form of narrative appealing in its uniqueness and thus an enjoyable read....and the dialogue too.


Tags : Jack Holmes and His Friend [Edmund White] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Jack Holmes is in love. The other men he takes to bed never last long, and it doesn't look as if there will ever be anyone else he falls in love with. Sadly for him,Edmund White,Jack Holmes and His Friend,Bloomsbury Publishing PLC,1408815176

Jack Holmes and His Friend Edmund White 9781408815175 Books Reviews

I think this really does capture the sexual revolution from a very sophisticated point of view. White is a tremendously talented writer, even if he is still so melancholy. Jack's "friend" is not the real problem, is he? It is really a story about how a character overcomes his lack of self that is startling.
I was surprisingly disappointed in this book compared to White's other works. While it clearly retains his pleasantly fluid rhythm and his keen attention to subtle detail, it misses the big picture of telling an engaging story that White is more than capable of.

One of the biggest letdowns is the flatness of his characters, not one stands out with any psychological depth; there is no journey for the reader to take, either emotionally, spiritually or geographically. What you get in the first 100 pages, you are stuck with for the next 300; no character development is palpable. It feels more like a journalist reporting a string of events than a novelist crafting an absorbing story.

Given the story's setting in New York from the 60s-80s, I don't know why he didn't mine more historical coal to color his landscape. The reference to AIDS is used merely as a hasty device at the very end to underscore a shift in time and culture. It fails to resonate, in any meaningful way, with his characters or the reader.

I think what's missing most is a piece of White himself; in all his other works that I have read White is part of the story and the characters are real or at least based on real people. As such, his remarkable intuition and powers of observation provide the reader with a rich canvas of personalities and interesting, motivated action that work to build a story with a sense of personal journey which is hard to put down.

If you haven't read White before, I would suggest "A Boy's Own Story," "The Married Man" or "My Lives" to truly appreciate his bold elegance of style.
Edmund White's new novel, JACK HOLMES AND HIS FRIEND, tells a not especially unique story in a not especially exciting way. That being said, the book is stuffed with the usual White tropes and treasures. There is an omniscient narrator who follows Jack Holmes, a gay man who, like most of White's protagonist, is an intellectual who moves to New York City in the early 1960s ("Oh No, JFK has been assassinated!") and works for a magazine, has a bohemian circle of friends and trolls the Village for fresh meat. Oh, and he has an enormous penis, which seems to be a third character at times in the book. Jack Holmes will not be a foreign archetype to anyone who has read White's A BOY'S OWN STORY trilogy, White's memoirs or White's short stories. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just lacks surprise. What is surprising in this book is the "friend" of the title. Jack is in love with a straight man, a blueblood from Virginia, whom isn't described as particularly smart, nice or attractive. Normally White's ideal men or a variation of Al Pacino in CRUISING, so this was a departure. Will Wright, the friend, tells his story in first person, with Jack then a supporting character. Will's story picks up in the 1970s after he is married and basically follows his lustful affair with an Italian decorator. At this point I couldn't get over how much the book reminded me of Updike (1970s sex that seems to all take place in upper middle class homes in the middle of the day with dust on the lampshades and the body's natural flaws highlighted.) It was good to see White going in this new direction and made the hackneyed storyline much more intriguing. There is a puzzle at the end that I couldn't quite figure out, but it didn't change my opinion of the book. White is at the place in his career where he can continuously churn out these intellectual books, with their evocative eras and locales, ambivalent characters and a lucid plot. And that's a good thing. If you haven't read White start with the trilogy and then wade into the non-fiction, including STATES OF DESIRE; you'll be glad you did.
Solid writing. But the characters are not terribly interesting. They become more frustrating as the story grinds on. As the blurb above notes, AIDS is introduced toward the end, but without spoiling the story, I'll just state that the clumsy insertion of AIDS is not even realistic, in the timing and the way it develops.

I much prefer White's "Hotel de Dream," which had me mesmerized throughout.
When I started this novel, I wasn't sure I would finish it. I've read most of E White's novels and I was getting tired of his exploration of the self-loathing of gay men of his generation. This book seemed to be another in that series but it surprised me when the narrator changes half way through the book from Jack to his straight friend. That switch made the book different from the author's other books and more interesting. The story becomes about both men's struggle to find some way out of their self-absorption and insecurity and their effort to find some way to love. They are mostly unsuccessful but their journey is poignant and sad in the best possible way.
Here is a novel centered around the intimate lives of its characters who developed their urbanity in NYC. The two central personalities are sort of friends - one gay and one straight, whose lives intertwine, primarily secured by their sexual activities. The graphic details of their sexual exploits are plentiful, perhaps not appealing to all readers. Their professional success or lack thereof take a secondary place in the author's focus; it is the evolving nature of their city life viewed through their sexual experiences that is central here. I found this form of narrative appealing in its uniqueness and thus an enjoyable read....and the dialogue too.