“Our Young Man”
By Edmund White
Bloomsbury USA (304 pages, $26)
Esteemed novelist and memoirist Edmund White’s latest book, “Our Young Man,” centers on the aptly named Guy, a gay French model living in New York City.
The novel follows Guy’s life in the modeling industry from France to Manhattan, through hedonist parties and relationships with older, and then younger, men. Guy is blessed with almost unnatural good looks. Even when he ceases to be a young man, Guy remains exquisitely handsome, able to pass as 20 in his 40s.
Defying the standard tropes of fabulously good-looking models or celebrities, there are few hints of vapidness or vanity about him. As a narrator, he is always internally aware of how he looks and how he can use his gift to his benefit. Yet there is also a fundamental goodness and decency to Guy.
Early in the novel, he begins a short-lived romantic relationship with an older man, motivated primarily by thoughts of obtaining a beach house. Later, though, when this same man is dying alone from AIDS, Guy tenderly continues to visit and care for him.
Guy’s attractiveness as a character is enhanced by his general wit and insight. His commentary on the differences between France and America, presented as they are by a somewhat biased narrator, are amusing and thought-provoking. He recalls being called “down to earth” as “America’s highest and weirdest compliment.”
In moments like this, White pulls from his own biography: an American, born in Ohio, who spent many years living in France and New York. In this sense, Guy’s life trajectory is a mirror of White’s own. (TNS)
