Arts and Letters

This title offers a unique and insightful contemplation of the leading figures of modern art and literature. The first paperback edition of this dazzling collection of profiles and interviews by one of the most prolific and important cultural essayists writing today. Bestselling novelist, memoirist and biographer Edmund White once again displays his razor-sharp wit and boundless erudition in thirty five portraits of the writers, artists and cultural icons who have captured his curiosity and imagination for the last twenty years. White is his usual compelling, yet unpretentious, self as he tells of his encounters with the icons of the age, including Marcel Proust, Catherine Deneuve, David Geffen, Andre Michel Foucault, Andy Warhol, Vladimir Nabokov, Jean Genet, Jasper Johns and Yves Saint Laurent. This is a thoughtful, learned and freshly insightful work, which is consistently conversational and accessible whether he is writing about the literary greats or about celebrities like Elton John.