French lessons.

Edmund White talks about his new novel, a story of love's mysteries that reflects his cultural and sexual struggles with his late French lover

Edmund White knows nothing quickens the pulse like a little mystery, particularly if that mystery is in the swarthy form of a younger, sexually ambiguous foreigner. The Married Man, White's 15th book and fourth autobiographical novel, is the affecting story of a chatty, charming American writer and scholar named Austin and his secretive, refined French boyfriend, Julien. Based on White's actual relationship with the late Hubert Sorin (with whom he wrote Our Paris), the novel is a beautiful yet unsettling account of loving a self-absorbed, childlike and ultimately enigmatic bisexual man.

"In real life I lived with someone who was very much like Julien," says the 60-year-old White, referring to Sorin, who like Julien left a heterosexual marriage to be with a man. "And I wanted to write about it honestly. I didn't want to glorify it."

Indeed, the character of Julien, with all his hissy fits and self-delusions, is hardly the picture-perfect beau. Yet neither is he the bitter creation of an ex-lover seeking revenge. Rather, he is a complex mix of human frailty and willfulness, a humbling reminder of the infuriating person we're all capable of being--or obsessing over, much to our friends' dismay and disbelief. "I think we all fall for some bastards in our life," says White. "Although I think Julien is also totally lovable."

For White, part of Julien's appeal stems from his incredible sense of dignity. Like Sorin, Julien comes from a poor, lower-class family, but he presents himself to Austin as a cultured aristocrat. He's mum on his gay past, but he embellishes lavishly about everything else. "Julien never lied to get somewhere," says White. "It's more a form of fantasy and, in his case, to sound a little more important than he was. Hubert had that same sense of entitlement, and I think it was hard for him to find an objective correlative without inventing a lineage for himself. And Julien has this belief that he's special, that he has a special destiny, but in a romantic, not slavish, way."

White admits that Julien's unrevealing nature may strike some American readers as underhanded, but he hopes they'll look beyond their own social conditioning. "Americans are the only people in the world who actually communicate so openly with each other," he says. "But telling all your secrets doesn't mean you've achieved any real intimacy. I wanted to give the experience of what it's like for a very open American to live with a very enigmatic French man, which is a theme Americans have been writing about since Henry James."

Yet does the now New York-based White, who lived in Paris from 1983 until 1998, feel he ever cracked the French reserve? "I probably penetrated further into French society than any American I know," he says. "I think that's primarily because I learned not to ask any questions."

For more on Edmund White and his work, go to www.advocate.com

Bahr also writes for The New York Times, Time Out New York, and Poets & Writers.