The Prissy Closet

An interesting theme that runs through Edmund White's City Boy is his passage from the eternal and universal to the contemporary and particular, both as a reader and a writer. In his twenties he "still had an unquestioning admiration for the Great … because they were Great." As a writer, "I defended myself against … immersing myself in my own period. … A writer must be eternal and universal." With an artist's instinct he moves against his prejudices. But later, when successful, he has to put up with such fulminations as Richard Poirier's (slant rhymes with "warrior"):

Gay writers! I've never heard of anything so absurd. It's obscene! … it's a betrayal of every humane idea of literature. Have you never heard of universalism?

To answer his ilk in kind: "yeah, that dago guttersnipe, writing in the vernacular — Dante!"

The NY Times obituary of the "warrior" concludes

Mr. Poirier never married. No immediate family members survive.