The Humble Lover

Edmund White’s impressive early novels, A Boy’s Own Story (1982) and The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) were considered groundbreaking in the genre of gay literature, with numerous prestigious awards bestowed on him during his long career. From the beginning and as he has aged (White is now 83), much of his fiction has followed a semi-autobiographical track. The Humble Lover continues this trend, with a protagonist, Aldwych, who is a gay, 80-year-old, wealthy Manhattanite.

The plot centers around Aldwych’s obsessive attraction to a ballet soloist, August, who becomes an object of worship because of his beauty, though August is otherwise a zero: uneducated, uncultured, and emotionally flat, with no attributes except sexiness and his dancing ability, which is his own obsession.

As Aldwych tries to buy August’s attention and covets him almost to the point of delirious erotomania, August agrees to sleep in the same bed but remains chaste except with others, some of whom he brings to Aldwych’s home. That Aldwych allows this is in one example of his masochism, which is rife throughout the novel. Sexual sadism is present, too, exemplified by Ernestine, Aldrich’s aging niece-in-law, who entangles August and serves as a heterosexual bookend to Aldwych.

Throughout, the author’s lens is focused on sexuality to the exclusion of qualities like intelligence, kindness, love, and caring. This is a book about sex, including a two-page, play-by-play description of a porn film and detailed descriptions: “He had an intoxicating aroma, the aroma of sneakers worn sockless after a long summer day.” (Note: This line is mild compared to others involving foot fetishes or the fascination with excrement and urine.) Warning: Readers may be turned off by these frequent forays.

The comparisons of Aldwych to Edmund White seem obvious. One wonders if this lacerating fictional portrait is, in fact, a self-lacerating autobiographical portrait: “how unfair that he’d been marooned in this bloated body and pouchy face!” While Aldwych thinks this, does White also see himself this way? The narrator repetitively mentions his age and unattractive physique, leaving the reader to speculate why a man of Aldwych’s elite background would select a young man who would make him constantly aware of his personal disintegration.

So is the book’s lover a “humble” character or a “humble” author? Is the adjective meant to be darkly ironic, i.e., that one or both are disguising themselves in a cloak of false humility? Throughout, White flaunts Aldwych's repulsiveness in the reader's face (as well as lot of other things) but to what purpose? Is the novel’s goal to showcase the frustrations of being an older gay man in a society that revers youth and beauty, or is it a satire about foolishness? Or a parody of “the old New York white shoe elite?” The latter is one of the work’s successes.

For an accomplished novelist, the wandering point-of-view perspective in adjacent paragraphs is a disconcerting practice as White switches within the heads of his characters, with no text/chapter breaks between to indicate the change in narrator. He even lapses into an omniscient voice on occasion. Most contemporary writers understand this stylistic migration is an amateur’s mistake—perhaps these issues will be corrected for the final publication.

White also has a penchant for liberally inserting French phrases, which seems like an attempt to impress with Aldwych’s erudition and worldly experience (or White’s?). As an American, even a wealthy New Yorker, this habit comes across like name-dropping (and there is quite a bit of that, too) and may widen the separation between the narrator and the reader . . . and possibly between the reader and the writer.

As one would expect, there are some handsome passages. “[She]made a negating tick-tock motion with her finger.” And a revelatory moment by Aldwych: “When he was with beauties like August he could be attractive by association.” Or: “early morning appointments . . . and silencing an alarm clock shredded the gossamer wings of dream dragonflies.” More of these lines and more sympathetic and emotionally dimensional characters, with the removal of some of the sex, might nudge the work into literature.

Billed as a “tragicomedy” by the publisher, there isn’t much humor in the novel. The tragedies that occur to these shallow, selfish characters, who are so infatuated with sex and bodily functions, don’t evoke our caring. Instead their plights seem deserved. If this is satire—and, in part, most likely it is—it mostly misses the mark.

While this story of l’amour fou will be eagerly awaited by many of Edmund White’s devout fans, it may turn off general readers and perhaps some in the LGTBQ+ community because of its unsavory descriptions.