The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading

Interweaving his reading memories with his autobiography, Edmund White has written an engaging narrative on the importance of reading and books. I enjoyed this book in part because I share his vice - from an early age to the present. Some of his remembered vignettes mirror my own in that I had similar experiences with particular books, perhaps not the same book but certainly much the same result. The totality of his remembrances yields something like what I believe many readers will have experienced - I know that I have.

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, show more 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. show less

Plaudereien über Lieblingsbücher, Lieblingsautorinnen und -autoren, ein wenig Gossip und eine bemerkenswerte Verbindung zwischen Sex und Lesen. Gefährliches Buch: Nach der Lektüre beginnt die Suche nach Büchern der vorgestellten Autor*innen - oft nur noch antiquarisch erhältlich.

A bit stuffy but any book on books by a reader is a pleasure not to be missed,

Having read few of the authors Mr. White is detailing in this memoir of a reader, I found myself floundering a bit. When I compared what he says about those books that I have read with those I have not, I recognized books I might have enjoyed and others I am content to have missed.

Having read few of the authors Mr. White is detailing in this memoir of a reader, I found myself floundering a bit. When I compared what he says about those books that I have read with those I have not, I recognized books I might have enjoyed and others I am content to have missed.