Edmund White is prolific. Not content with his trilogy of autobiographical novels, which span a period of three decades, White also produced a much-condensed memoir called My Lives. He is now working on another set in 1970s New York. In addition to his memoirs, White has written eight novels, one book of short stories and three biographies documenting the lives of other prolific gay writers.
The latest of these is a short but fascinating biography of 19th-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud. "I always wanted to write about Rimbaud because he was an idol of my adolescence," says White. "I think a lot of adolescents like him. He’s a favourite of Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith. They’ve all written songs about him."
Boorish and hard to get along with, Rimbaud alienated almost all of his contemporaries. It didn’t help that he and an older poet named Paul Verlaine were one of the most notorious homosexual couples of their day. But by the time of his death Rimbaud had been hailed as the father of symbolism by the same people who had once shunned him.
