The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading - Tapa dura

I find it impossible to imagine anyone better read than White . Wisdom and a certain kind of tenderness are to be found on every page (Rachel Cooke Observer)

White is above all else a writer's writer: one of the great prose stylists of our time ... An afternoon stroll with a Grade-A literary flâneur . There are few paragraphs that pass by without an illuminating, wise or funny comment (Tim Smith-Laing Daily Telegraph)

As a peerless chronicler and interpreter of gay American life before, during and after the age of Aids, as a connoisseur of French (and so much other) literature and as a Princeton professor of creative writing, White never lost touch with that spirit of antic mischief . Much more fun - and more surprising - than a leisurely ramble through favourite works by a 78-year-old giant of letters has any right to be (Spectator)

Praise for Edmund White (-)

A writer blessed with ... [an] elusive gift, and it should probably be called wisdom (Daily Telegraph)

His writing finds itself echoing Proust ... Since the publication of A Boy's Own Story thirty years ago, [White's] own prose style has hardly aged a day (The Times)

Edmund White is one of the best writers of my generation; he's certainly the contemporary American writer I reread more than any other, and the one whose next book I look forward to reading most (John Irving)

White's prose is a series of slaps to the face, filled with reckless energy (New York Times Book Review)

White simply does it better than most (Neil Bartlett Guardian)

One of America's pre-eminent men of letters ... White's great achievement lies in his never holding back (Washington Post)