In this biography, the nephew of seminal gay writer Edmund White presents the "real" version of the coming-of-age experience already portrayed in White's novel A Boy's Own Story
, in which White purportedly altered the truth to make his story more "universal." Fleming (The Boy with the Thorn in His Side)
aims to "bring to light intriguing aspects of White's actual boyhood that have never been written about...." Fleming relies on extensive interviews with White; his sister, Margaret (Fleming's mother); and childhood friends to flesh out the story of his uncle's unhappy upbringing. Fleming takes great pains to insist that White's was no ordinary childhood. After his parents' divorce, White had to grow up very fast, becoming the little man in an extremely dysfunctional household. His mother is cartoonishly portrayed here as painfully unstable, relying on her son as a pseudo-lover, even inviting him to sleep in her bed on occasion. Visits to his unemotional and selfish father provide no relief. Fleming frequently takes on the role of amateur psychologist in an attempt to determine the origins of what he sees as White's most salient personality traits—lying, phoniness and a propensity for betrayal chief among them—but rarely does he come to any illuminating conclusions. Ironically, it is only when Fleming quotes A Boy's Own Story,
which he does frequently, that White's childhood transcends repetitive biographical details and comes alive on the page. Perhaps for fans of White, the real story truly is the boy's own story after all. (Nov.)
