Between the sheets, on the page: Edmund White’s scintillating sex memoir delivers.

On this episode of Fully Booked, Edmund White joins us to discuss The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir (Bloomsbury, Jan. 28), “an irreverent and unapologetically provocative scrapbook of an aging author’s sex life” (starred review).

White is the celebrated novelist, memoirist, playwright and essayist The New York Times calls "the paterfamilias of queer literature.” He is the author of many exquisite books, including the novel A Boy’s Own Story, the biography Genet, the informative guide The Joy of Gay Sex, coauthored by Charles Silverstein, and the memoir Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris; and the recipient of many major awards, including the Lambda Literary Visionary Award, the National Book Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. He lives in New York with his husband, the writer Michael Carroll.

Here's a bit more from our starred review of The Loves of My Life: “Despite admitting he falls short in the male equipment category, that has never stopped White from enjoying sexual escapades with a wide variety of boys and men around the globe across his 84 years. Heady flashbacks of his first experience lusting over a classmate and wrestling partner in fifth grade give way to unreciprocated dalliances with Cincinnati ‘hillbilly hustlers’ as a teenager in the 1950s. Acknowledging the power imbalance and social disapproval, White is frank about his long history as a customer of male escorts; he prefers the quality, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and accommodation they provide. He shares varied romances—some fleeting, some enduringly romantic—and a few faux-curative interludes with female partners.…Throughout, White remains fearless and purposefully blunt with descriptions so exacting that some readers will be able to imagine the funk of his lovers in full bedroom bloom.…In crisply written episodes laced with a wry sense of humor about his own shortcomings and social foibles, White remains a talented, carnally flagrant raconteur whose memoir thumps with the palpably racing heartbeat of life, sex, love, and unbridled desire.”

White and I join in enthusiasm over the forthcoming publication of The Loves of My Life. We discuss his publisher’s reaction to the concept, the role numerous sexual partners played in his life, and the challenges of writing about love and jealousy. He reflects on his early sexual experiences. We talk about the portrayal of desire in the movie Queer—and the book it’s based on, by William S. Burroughs. White touches on the distinction between realist sex writing and pornography, his evolving identity as a gay writer, and his admiration for Toni Morrison. The conversation concludes with his thoughts on the saddest and sexiest words in the English language, as well as his future aspirations.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, John McMurtrie, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

First Love Language by Stefany Valentine (Penguin Workshop)

Danilo Was Here by Tamika Burgess (Harper/HarperCollins)

Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World by Dorian Lynskey (Pantheon)

Going Home by Tom Lamont (Knopf)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. by Colin C. Campbell

When I Hear Spirituals by Cheryl Willis Hudson, illus. by London Ladd (Holiday House)

Four Women by Norman Shabel

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.