Edmund White Dies at 85

The Patron Saint of Queer Lit had HIV for 40+ years, and survived two strokes, a heart attack and the prevailing attitude that to be serious, one shouldn't be sexual

June 4, 2025

Edmund White, the great queer writer — arguably the greatest — died June 3 at 85.

I still vividly recall finding a gay section at the University of Chicago's student bookstore in 1987, flipping open A Boy's Own Story (1982) and finding a passage about the teen protagonist being taught about “cornholing” by another young guy.

I had read filthy Harold Robbins and V.C. Andrews books, but it was a revelation to me that a literary work could also be explicitly sexual. It absolutely — and positive — inspired me as I wrote my novel Boy Culture.

With that priceless Mel Odom cover art (Image via Penguin)

His other novels — Forgetting Elena (1973), Nocturnes for rthe King of Naples (1978), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988), The Farewell Symphony (1997), The Married Man (2000) and many others — were unapologetically queer and sexual, daring the establishment to try to overlook the raunch, knowing the quality of the work would force the issue.

First & Last Lines from Queer Novels & Novellas — HERE

He also documented queer lives, as in Genet (1983) — and, with The Joy of Gay Sex (1977), co-authored with Charles Silverstein (who died in 2023) — literally wrote the book on what men can get up to together. Not a frivolous pursuit in a world that never taught us where the noses go.

I was inspired by his unapologetically sexual nature, as when he flippantly told The New York Times he'd slept with 3,000 men, only to have a friend ask, “Why so few?,” even if — as a square Midwest boy — I probably never quite got to that level of total acceptance. I knew I was still shockable when I found Mr. White on Manhunt 20 years ago, stark naked and unconcerned about his spare lbs., advertising for young, hard men to service.

Gotta put yourself out there.

So long to one of the greats. His leaving during Pride, unlike Trump stripping Harvey Milk's name from a ship this month, feels more like a period at the end of a fantastic sentence than like a gut-punch. ⚡️