Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris

When Edmund White moved to Paris in 1983, he was forty-three years old, couldnt speak French, and only knew two people in the entire city. But in middle age, he discovered the new anxieties and pleasures of mastering a new culture. When he left fifte... Read more

When Edmund White moved to Paris in 1983, he was forty-three years old, couldnt speak French, and only knew two people in the entire city. But in middle age, he discovered the new anxieties and pleasures of mastering a new culture. When he left fifteen years later to take a teaching position in the U.S., he was fluent enough to broadcast on French radio and TV, and in his work as a journalist, hed made the acquaintance of everyone from Yves St. Laurent to Catherine Deneuve to Michel Foucault. Hed also developed a close friendship with an older woman, Marie-Claude, through which hed come to understand French life and culture in a deeper way.The books title evokes the Parisian landscape in the eternal mists and the half-light, the serenity of the city compared to the New York White had known (and vividly recalled in "City Boy"). Because White certainly fell headily in love with the city and its culture: intoxicated and intellectually stimulated. He became the definitive biographer of Jean Genet; he wrote lives of Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He became a recipient of the French Order of Arts and Letters. "Inside a Pearl "recalls those fertile years for White, dishes and ruminates, and offers a brilliant examination of a city and a culture eternally imbued with an aura of enchantment.The cast of characters, French and expat, includes: Yves St Laurent, Diane von Furstenberg, Azzedine Alaia, Christian Lacroix, Paloma and Claude Picasso, Diane Johnson (author of "Le Divorce"), Mary McCarthy (author of "The Group"), Susan Songtag, Julian Barnes, Alan Hollinghurst, Martin Amis, Nigella Lawson, Kristin Scott-Thomas, the King and Queen of Sweden... and hundreds more Less