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 Hotel de Dream is the latest offering from Edmund White, best known for his autobiographical fiction documenting late 20th century New York and the AIDS epidemic.
In his latest work, White conjures an atmospheric portrayal of doomed love, blackmail and flawed beauty set against a backdrop of 19th century values. White re-creates this world in a realistic, if impressionistic, way, skilfully interweaving the twin narratives of real-life author Stephen Crane’s struggle with tuberculosis and the obsessive love story played out in his novella, ‘The Painted Boy’. As Crane succumbs to the disease, with his devoted common-law wife Cora as attendant and nurse, he dictates the story of a male prostitute he’d met and interviewed some years previously, his inspiration for ‘The Painted Boy’.
Elliott is a streetwise lad who sells newspapers, along with ‘extras’, to certain older men. He becomes the obsessive fixation of Theodore Koch, respectable banker and, up till now at any rate, married man. Koch sets Elliott up in a room and visits him on the way home from work. As he becomes increasingly besotted with the engaging Elliott, Koch commissions a statue to be made of his idol. This act inadvertently triggers a sequence of events that proves to have catastrophic outcomes.
White based the premise for this short, beautifully crafted novel on the apocryphal account of one of Crane’s contemporaries. It was alleged the author had written then destroyed an early draft of a novella about a boy prostitute. White poses the question to the reader, ‘How would a heterosexual man (Crane) who had wide human sympathies have responded to male homosexuality if confronted by it?’ White answers this by seeking to re-create a work that probably never existed (Crane, a famous author of his day, wrote the ‘Red Badge of Courage’, among other prose and poetry). White achieves this with an economy of words and a masterful sense of place and time, the reward for the extensive research any historical novel requires (he alludes to this in a postscript).
The title, Hotel de Dream, takes it name from the bordello Cora operated as Madam prior to her association with Crane. White’s spare prose successfully evokes the rigours of a terminal disease without resorting to sentimentality; instead he imbues Crane’s suffering with a poignant, yet straightforward, clarity. Crane’s quiet acceptance of his fate contrasts with increasing desperation to see his final work completed. White’s insight into terminal disease is vividly captured in the text and no doubt draws from his own long-term battle with HIV.
The humanity of the syphilitic boy, Elliott, is conveyed in his apparent regard for Koch and his heartfelt, if ineffectual, attempts to rectify a situation beyond salvation. The resolution and tragedy of this storyline is mirrored in Crane’s own fate, his steadfast wife at his side to the end. The dual love stories of Crane and Cora and Elliott and Koch evoke an era long past while illustrating the themes of obsessive love and betrayal, which are timeless. A darkly entertaining read.
Hotel de Dream is published by Bloomsbury.
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A darker shade of White
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