A review by alenaski
City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and 70s by Edmund White

2.0

I haven't read any of Edmund White's other books, so I imagine that I was not the target audience for this book. Instead, I was reading this as one in a series of books on life in New York City in the 1970s. This definitely did present a great view of life in the city in the 60s and 70s, however, I really struggled with White as a narrator. I found his tone constantly grating. At one point, he casually refers to how he negatively wrote about someone he viewed as a mentor under a very thin fictional veneer in one of his books. He then seemed surprised that the mentor had been offended by it, as was typical for many of his stories in the book. For me, the whole thing felt very narcissistic and pedantic and I was very happy when I finally reached the end.