• City Boy

  • My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s
  • By: Edmund White
  • Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
  • Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (72 ratings)

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City Boy  By  cover art

City Boy

By: Edmund White
Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
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Publisher's summary

In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult. Combining the no-holds-barred confession and yearning of A Boy's Own Story with the easy erudition and sense of place of The Flaneur, this is the story of White's years in 1970s New York, bouncing from intellectual encounters with Susan Sontag and Harold Brodkey to erotic entanglements downtown to the burgeoning gay scene of artists and writers. It's a moving, candid, brilliant portrait of a time and place, full of encounters with famous names and cultural icons.

©2009 Edmund White (P)2014 Audible Inc.

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What listeners say about City Boy

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Lecture on '70s literature?

I love Edmund White's novels, but it was hard to struggle through this one. Large portions of the books are about subjects which are only intriguing for scholars of literature or philisophy.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Every Gay Must Read

It is important to know the people who came before us that gave us the freedom we now take for granted.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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Must read

A must read for all young gay men !! This is what it toke to get to where we are today in the world of gay

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting Reflections and Memoirs

Would you listen to City Boy again? Why?

It has its great moments and interesting tidbits of information about NYC and it's gay and non-gay history. I enjoyed hearing this audiobook.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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Pointless self indulgent and uninteresting

Terrible. Pointless self indulgent and uninteresting. Sorry I started it and not worth the price

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Pretense upon pretense.

I love Edmund white but this was a recycling or amalgam of several excerpts from his novels. And the narrator: awful, uppity, and ultimately a bore.

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2 people found this helpful