ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I juxtapose two experimental texts: Lost Years (2007), a reconstructed diary by Christopher Isherwood, and The Loves of My Life (2025), a memoir by Edmund White, to examine a related development of queer reading, namely, “queer writing”. I contend that Isherwood and White push the envelope further and envisage books as desire, not being satisfied with books being sites of desire. Furthermore, I highlight their subversion of the genre of the memoir through these “sex memoirs” as they deviate from the sovereign nature of subjectivity by bringing their partners into the narrative, turning these narratives into “shared sexual stories”.
