Edmund White comes to Books at Noon this week to discuss discuss his latest work, Our Young Man.

When and where do you like to read?

I like to read in bed with a classical music station on the radio.  Sometimes I sit in a big, shabby 1930s club chair in the living room and listen to CDs.
 
What were your favorite books as a child?

I never read children’s books as a child though I’ve read some as an adult (Kidnapped, The Little Prince).  As a child I read War and Peace.
 
Do you have any strange writing habits (like standing on your head or writing in the shower)?

I write longhand in blackbound sketching books of unlined paper and then I dictate to a typist. I revise very little.
 
What are five words that describe your writing process?

Headlong, distractable, impatient, bored, SELF-ADMIRING.
 
How have libraries impacted your life?

I’ve always been a library user—as a kid I lived in Evanston, Illinois and was a habitué of the Public Library and of Northwestern’s neo-Gothic Deering Library, where I read Max Muller’s Sacred Books of the East.  I’ve worked in The New York Public Library, where I was a Cullman Fellow, and in the British Library near St. Pancras.  At the British Library I researched my novel Fanny and at The New York Public Library I researched Hotel de Dream.