SOURCE: "An American Scrapbook," in The Nation, Vol. 246, No. 14, April 9, 1988, pp. 503-4.

In the following review, Lemon praises White's The Beautiful Room is Empty, but complains that "the ending's exhilarations [are a diminishment of the power and beauty of what had gone before."]

It was inevitable that the 1960s revival would produce a retrospective novel about gay life in New York City. Less fated, and more welcome, is that the task was assumed by an artist as gifted as Edmund White. The Beautiful Room Is Empty (the title comes from one of Franz Kafka's letters to Milena Jesenská) interweaves public and private events, and even more than its predecessor, A Boy's Own Story, encourages speculation that the author is offering us not just an autobiographical novel but a memoir tout court.

The unnamed narrator lifts facts from White's own dossier: year of birth (1940), Midwestern childhood, University of Michigan...