SOURCE: "An Interview with Edmund White," in The Missouri Review, 1990, pp. 89-110.

In the following interview, White discusses the autobiographical nature of his work and what he thinks about literature.

[Bonetti:] Mr. White, can you fill us in on some background about yourself? Do A Boy's Own Story and The Beautiful Room Is Empty follow your own chronology?

[White:] The books fairly reflect where I was and what I was doing. I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. My parents got divorced when I was seven and my mother began to move from city to city while my father remained in Cincinnati. I was sent to a boarding school in Michigan, near Detroit, a school called Cranbrook, which appears as Eton in my books.

And you went to the University of Michigan?

I studied Chinese there, and when I graduated I moved to New York and worked for Time-Life...