The Farewell Symphony

White's narrator is that world's survivor and its eulogist. As he marks the six-month anniversary of his lover's death from AIDS, he leads the reader back on a thirty-year journey of memory and desire. From the 1960s to the 1980s, from Parisian salons to the dunes of Fire Island, and from envening of brilliant conversation to nights of unfettered sex in the basement clubs of the West Village, The Farewell Symphony commemorates lust and friendship, the beautiful dead and their prematurely aged mourners. Here is a work of Proustian richness, sadness, and wisdom. It establishes Edmund White as premier chronicler of his generation.