«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

Great gay author Edmund White explains how his major foray into biography-writing, his acclaimed life of Jean Genet, has informed his work as a novelist. Of his years researching Genet, he makes some connections that wouldn't have occurred to us."I interviewed Jane Fonda, the mother of one of my former students, Vanessa Vadim . She had met Genet at a benefit for the [Black] Panthers in the early 1970s in Hollywood. Genet had grabbed onto her because she was one of the few people present who could speak French. Genet took her phone number and called her the next morning at six. He'd awakened in a strange house, he didn't know where he was, and he wanted his coffee. Miss Fonda said, 'Okay, I'll come right away, but where are you?' Genet didn't know. At last she, who'd grown up in Hollywood and knew every house, said, 'Go outside and come back and describe the pool to me.' He did so, and she said, 'Oh, you're at Donald Sutherland's. I'll be right over."

Bay Area Reporter
July 2 2009