White, Edmund “A Previous Life”, Bloomsbury, 2022.
The Decline of Beauty
Amos Lassen
In “A Previous Life” Edmund White explores polyamory and bisexuality, ageing and love through the lives of Sicilian aristocrat and musician, Ruggero, and his younger American wife, Constance who agree to break their marital silence and write their Confessions. They had placed a ban on speaking about the past, since transparency had ruined their previous marriages. As the two alternate reading the memoirs they’ve written about their lives, Constance shares her multiple marriages to older men, and Ruggero talks about the affairs he’s had with men and women across his life, especially most importantly his passionate affair with White.
White aims to give us a broader understanding of sexual orientation as we read about complex characters, physical beauty and its decline. We look at themes of love and age through different eyes, hearts and minds.
The stories of Ruggero and Constance take us back to their childhoods and sexual awakening and we see the influence their lives. When Ruggero begins a relationship with White that the becomes somewhat surreal. Ruggero is a narcissist who often appears becomes a character that is hard to like and who seems focused only on himself and his self-gratification. We explore sexual relationships that are in states of constant evolution.
Ruggero and Constance have by-and-large kept their pasts secret, but when Ruggero is confined to bed, they decided to write out their memoirs and read them aloud to each other and in doing so they reveal their past loves and affairs.
The novel takes place in 2050 and much of the past narrative is about the life today in the more modern world.The story opens with Ruggero and Constance in a Swiss chalet after he breaks his leg skiing. He’s in his 70s, she is her 40s. They’ve never spoken about their past lives to each other and now decide to write their confessions and read them aloud to pass the time. We feel the sense of Ruggero’s previous love affair with White.
Constance is afraid of being abandoned (because of Ruggero’s age) yet she ultimately leaves him for an American lover her own age who can give her the family that Ruggero refused to do. The second half of the novel goes into Ruggero’s intense affair with White and then further into the future when husband and wife have split and found happiness while no longer together.
. And finally still further into the future where both Constance and Ruggero have found their own happiness, apart from each other. Constance and Ruggero are both bisexual and through this we look at the differences between men and women, sexually, emotionally, and socially. They are both flawed characters. Ruggero is charismatic and obsessed with his own masculinity.
The parts of the story with Edmund White in them are quite amazing. We see him as vulnerable and later old. The lines are blurred between what we view as binary categories. I found the entire read to be absolutely fascinating and the fact that it has really made me think is very special.