Skinned Alive: Stories

I don't feel that these stories are riddled with "pertention" like others have said. As a matter of fact, it is the frankness of White's writing that gives his characters the ability to be both relatable and divine. His descriptions of Greece and Texas create a world so striking in your mind that you want to give him the Oscar for Best Cinamatography despite the fact that this is a book and not a movie.Amazing stories about life, love, and rejection from both. If you have read one of his novels (which you should do first) and enjoyed them then you will be able to read these with great pleasure.

Edmund White's published output seems to grow yearly. This multi-talented writer has added scholarly biographies, shared research, and new novels to his resume since publishing this book of short stories SKINNED ALIVE in 1995. And it is because of this expansion of his scope of writing that it is refreshing to make this mini-retrospective excursion into White's gifts.Some will argue that his stories are too self centered, that his Francophilia gets in the way visually and textually. The stories is this collection are not at all limited to his expatriate status - our own American In Paris. The spectrum described by his characters is much more than that. White is not afraid to mix his own history with that of his characters and in doing so he validates what might otherwise seem like far-fetched tales. "My Oracle" is a simple story about an aging HIV exposed man taking a trip to Crete and how he rediscovers passion and being alive - a state all but discarded by his ruminating on the terminal drought of his experiences at home. Here is a buffed middle aged male longing for resurrection and he finds it in the simplest way. His other stories ask us to glimpse mortality and vanity and make some sense of it. White has some difficulty ending a short story; we're left with a feeling of lack of resolution. But maybe that is part of this superb writer's talent. "You, dear reader, finish the thought". This is a collection that deserves revisiting on a regular basis, when life changes rise in your path.