{"product_id":"9781620406328","title":"Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris","description":"When Edmund White moved to Paris in 1983, leaving New York City in the midst of the AIDS crisis, he was forty-three years old, couldn't speak French, and only knew two people in the entire city. But in middle age, he discovered the new anxieties and pleasures of mastering a new culture. When he left fifteen years later to take a teaching position in the U.S., he was fluent enough to broadcast on French radio and TV, and in his work as a journalist, he'd made the acquaintance of everyone from Yves Saint Laurent to Catherine Deneuve to Michel Foucault. He'd also developed a close friendship with an older woman, Marie-Claude, through which he'd come to understand French life and culture in a deeper way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book's title evokes the Parisian landscape in the eternal mists and the half-light, the serenity of the city compared to the New York White had known (and vividly recalled in \u003ci\u003eCity Boy\u003c\/i\u003e). White fell headily in love with the city and its culture: both intoxicated and intellectually stimulated. He became the definitive biographer of Jean Genet; he wrote lives of Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud; and he became a recipient of the French Order of Arts and Letters. \u003ci\u003eInside a Pearl \u003c\/i\u003erecalls those fertile years for White. It's a memoir which gossips and ruminates, and offers a brilliant examination of a city and a culture eternally imbued with an aura of enchantment.","brand":"Bloomsbury USA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47134476599536,"sku":"9781620406328","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781620406328_p0.jpg?v=1763858349","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781620406328","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}