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The impish slug

Edmund White’s masochistic metafiction
by
April 2022, no. 441

A Previous Life by Edmund White

Bloomsbury, $29.99 pb, 270 pp

The impish slug

Edmund White’s masochistic metafiction
by
April 2022, no. 441
Edmund White (photograph by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Alamy)
Edmund White (photograph by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Alamy)

What a performance this novel is! And not just in the virtuoso sense. What an exhausting mishmash of contradictions: snobbery, self-abasement, campery, stock masculinity. The whole pastiche is laced with vivid images of what it means to be finally old and ugly.

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Comment (1)

  • Oh dear! Narcissim through a mocking looking glass. Robert Dessaix excellent review of Edmund White's A Previous Life exoses the sad, seedy, and senseless side of snobbery.
    Posted by Helen Covernton
    26 April 2022

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