The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1994) - Plot & Excerpts
Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word and immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would only pretend not to look at the other, if he slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the the beautiful room is empty." - Franz Kafka (in a letter to Milena Jesenská)Kafka's "beautiful room" is encumbered by the trepidation that one associates with love and longing; its emptiness is symbolic of the inability of two like-minded people to connect.In THE BEAUTIFUL ROOM IS EMPTY, Edmund White's room is more conspicuously empty; its potential occupants are encumbered not only by the trepidation that one associated with love and longing, but with the fear, doubt, and scrutiny imposed upon homosexuals during the 1950s and 1960s.Here, the "flick of an eyelash" arrives in the form of police who break up gay bars or arrest men in public toilets for performing "indecent acts"; the "utterance of a word" arrives in the form of psychoanalysts who want to cure these young men and women of their "perversion". They are effectively condition to be afraid of each other, never knowing who is a friend and who is a plainclothes cop.Before placing the title in the context of Kafka's quote, I considered the title in a different light. The "beautiful room" could be any number of strangers who serve as the narrator's transient lovers, their vacancy attributed to their anonymity. The "beautiful room" could be New York, its vacancy the unfulfilled promise of a glamorous life in the big city - the narrator remarks: "The working world seemed so vulgar and simple-minded that I couldn't imagine why we'd been taught so much Confucius, Kant, and Renoir." (pr. 140)The story ends with (presumably) the Stonewall riots. Throughout the novel, the author has avoided making any specific reference to the date. The death of Marilyn Monroe and assassination of JFK are indirectly referenced (so indirectly that these two events merge into one), but in the case of the Stonewall riots the author makes a point of referencing the death of Judy Garland. (Judy Garland died 22 June 1969, days before the Stonewall riots on 28 June 1969. The author, however, refers to the death of Judy Garland as being the same day. Is the author suggesting that this was a minor riot that preceded the Stonewall riots, or has he confused the facts?)The Stonewall riots are portrayed with some ambiguity. The author even manages to retain the uncertainty that accompanied its spontaneity. The Stonewall riots, however, are of profound importance to the narrative (as they were to the Gay Rights movement). The narrative would be no less important if it existed for the singular purpose of prefacing the Stonewall riots. To see world from the perspective of a gay man in the 50s and 60s, to associate with him, to know his fears and doubts and struggles in a world that considers his lifestyle to be “criminal”... To see and know that is to understand the significance of the Stonewall riots.What I liked about the novel... The language and the author's ability to keep the narrative moving. Although the narrative may be considered uneventful (uneventful in terms of its adherence to an episodic structure rather than an overarching storyline), it flowed in such a way that made it light and readable without compromising the depth and complexity of its narrator. The author's candor and ability to criticize himself.What I disliked about the novel... Some of the language was a bit too... I don't know. Suffice to say that at times it felt like the author was reaching for descriptive language. For example: "And he opened the wet papaya pulp of his kiss to me." (pg. 134) Racism is peripherally addressed - perhaps too peripherally considering the use of racial epithets. The author thinks it's enough to moralize without contextualizing. I wanted the author to address in greater detail the struggle of lesbian women. Thankfully, his closest friend in the story is a lesbian woman. She is a strong character and their friendship is vividly portrayed... "Between Maria and me a new kind of intimacy developed, nurtured by her, even defined by her, for I wasn't worldly enough to understand that a friendship can flourish only if watered by tact and pruned by diplomatic silence. With a friend we recognize bounds but within those bounds respond with candor; with a lover we expect limitless communion but resort to stratagems. Maria recognized the ways in which I feared sexual intimacy and firmly ended that possibility between us. But she didn't cut the thread of courtship, or gallantry, even of romance that lent vitality to our love. We coined the notion of 'passionate friendship' and we suspected that ours would last a lifetime." (pg. 148-9)
The title is not a line from a scene in the book. Perhaps it's a warning?I'm no great fan of autobiography but this is one of the best tooled autobiographies. I've ever read. My problem with the book is that it seems to meander through comonplace events that have been told in more engaging ways elsewhere. No matter how nice the cup, poor coffee is still poor coffee. The writing here is excellent and at times brilliant but the story itself is unengaging. While it deals with one man's journey from private midwestern schoolboy to jaded Stonewall rioter it just barely maintained my interest enough to finish it. On the summary level it's a story about a young Michigan man coming of age and coming out in the 60's It even ends with the Stonewall riots but the character doesn't seem to have resolved his issues by the end of the book. The title is NOT a line from the book. As far as I can tell it doesn't even sum up any particular scene. It may be that the young man's life is empty. It is pretty autobiographical and the protagonist does end up a failed writer of sorts. Maybe the title is an inside joke or a summary of sorts, I'm not sure that that is correct and if it is, whether the author would be summarizing this book or his life or both. If this book had appeared in 1978 it might have been important and ground-breaking but it didn't. It appeared in 1988 and much of what's covered here had by that time already been told better elsewhere. I'd say that the book is an important read. I'm glad that I read it, for the lovely imagry, if nothing else, but I'd suggest that it be read over time and savored for what it contains. It's sort of the green mint jelly that one serves with lamb. Great for its lovely color and the flavor that it adds but, I wouldn't recommend it as a main course.
What do You think about The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1994)?
It’s a shame that White is our Updike, which is to say that he’s our learned and well read and omnipresent white-male writer born decades ago whom we are meant to revere solely because of his status and age and productivity. It means that I have to read the final book of the trilogy, The Farewell Symphony, which I’m hoping to god is a lot more palatable.The problem with these novels is that they aren’t novels. They’re memoirs labeled as novels at a time, I imagine, when the memoir wasn’t as marketable a genre. And so they’re all coming-of-age stories through various ages, this one being the narrator’s college life and post-college life in New York; it ends at the Stonewall riots, which would be interesting if White wasn’t so committed to his own narrow perspective in retelling the events.But the narrator (which is White’s self) is often so callous and repellent, and the novels never seem to place their narrator in a position of critique. We’re meant to sympathize with whatever his plight is (the lonely sadness of cruising men’s rooms for sex up to three times a day), but it’s hard to when sex in these novels is treated as a kind of sporty inevitability. Unfulfilling emotionally, sure, but that doesn’t mean the narrator should try to really feel for anyone.I mean: "I met a pretty Korean [. . .] who lived next door. Whenever the mechanical world frustrated him—if his bike jammed or the laundry machine swallowed his coins, or his key snapped off in a lock—he’d ring my bell, trudge in, take off his clothes, fold them neatly on my white wood chair, and lie face down on my white bed. He’d take it like a man, bite the pillow if I hurt him, and nothing had ever felt quite so good as those small taut muscles under that chamois-soft skin, the color of cinnamon when it’s sprinkled on cappuccino. That’s my way of saying that a low fire, a pilot light, burned under that glove-smooth skin, and that he smelled excitingly of that foul fermented cabbage the Koreans like to snack on. The minute it was over he’d dress and leave, his eyebrows raised in painful doubt as though he didn’t quite understand what had just happened. He had the whitest teeth. (107)."Paging Edward Said.... And this is 1988!
—Dusty Myers
I think I give White the benefit of the doubt because (a) "City Boy" is so great; and (b) he's a queermo, like me. But in point of fact, neither of his novels that I've read were really that fabulous. Maybe this is a lil' whiff of my latent snobbery coming out, but I found this and "A Boy's Own Story" to be glorified erotica, rather than a measured exploration of queer subjectivity in the mid-century cultural and political American context. And I can't figure if I'm a snob or if White toots his own supposedly "high art" horn too loudly. "City Boy" is great as an historical piece of titillating gossip, and it feels important because it traces the development of a gay history that, I think v importantly, White repudiates as originally political. His sense of gay revolution is that it was, from the outset, about sexual radicalism - a turning away from heterosexual norms, rather than a rhetorical diatribe or investment in civil legalese. And it's exciting to read because White knew everyone and fucked most of them, and he has great stories about familiar figures. But the two novels redirect that energy into flat characters and endless series of similar sexual encounters. When the protagonists find "love" (structured as psychologically more important and healthy counters to the anonymous sex they've been shamefully having until that moment), one wonders: who are these people and what would ever generate actual emotional resonance between them? This one in particular sets Maria up as the enigmatic center of the novel, but she never really lives up to that dream - she seems banal rather than quirky, undeveloped rather than mysterious. She's a Holly Golightly or a Sally Bowles without any of the fun or the actual nuance. All this said, as a pulpy read, it has its moments. I do find it troubling that White's personal history of gayness seems so much more astute and radicalized than his novelistic renderings of it, but the sex can be pretty hot and of course, I'm a sucker for any portrayal of past gay lingo, the faggot underground, and so forth. I just wish that by the end of the novel, I actually gave half a shit about the characters I'd joined for 200 pages.
—Jamie
Titling your novel "The Beautiful Room is Empty" is really asking for it, and this book unfortunately lives up to the insult of its title. The luminous, mordantly insightful writing style White is known for is in full flower here, but it all unspools across the page with no purpose, no heart. The deeply moving emotional bedrock you usually feel grounding you so powerfully while wandering through White's patented haze of romantic, vaguely connected set pieces seemed totally lacking here. The ending was abrupt and unbelievable, the characters (particularly our narrator/autobiographical stand-in) all flat, lost, and insipid. Reading about them was like cruising the tearooms of Cranbrook and U Mich because one can think of nothing better or more meaningful to do with one's life -- only a marginally pleasant experience, offering me a few choice one-liners but absolutely nothing long-lasting, leaving me in the end feeling just overindulgent, sad, and a little bit sick.
—A
