Edmund White’s best-known work is his four-volume autobiography of life as a gay man, which began with A Boy’s Own Story (1982). White, 69, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, studied Chinese at the University of Michigan and worked for Time-Life Books in New York, later becoming an editor at The Saturday Review and Horizon. His non-fiction books include studies of Proust and Jean Genet. He is a professor of creative writing at Princeton and lives in Manhattan.

When did you know you were going to be a writer?

When I was 14. I wrote a poem and the teacher praised it and read it to the class. I liked the attention.

What was the last book you couldn’t finish?

Don DeLillo’s Underworld.

What books are currently on your bedside table?

Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. He is the most relentlessly fascinating author I’ve read in the past 10 years. Also Belly of Paris by Zola and a hundred books for a literary contest.

Who are your literary influences?

Proust, Isherwood and Nabokov.

Who is your perfect reader?

A gay man of my age.

Do you have a writing routine?

No, I write whenever I have a free moment. Often I go months without writing at all.

Who would you want to play you in a film about your life?

Peter Eyre, a friend. He understands me and he’s a fantastic actor.

What book changed your life?

I was a teenager when I read Wuthering Heights, while I was in my school infirmary with a fever. It gave me a sense of the dark glamour of literature.

Which painting do you wish you owned?

A [Gustave] Caillebotte that’s in the Art Institute of Chicago, showing people with umbrellas in Paris. It’s called “Paris Street; Rainy Day” (1877). It has a sweeping perspective and the figures are so close you can see their features.

What is your favourite place?

Provence. I’ve been going to Var for 15 years. I used to go to Saint Rémy and stay across the street from the madhouse where they put Van Gogh, which is still an asylum.

Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with?

[The English tenor] Ian Bostridge. He’s the person I admire the most.

What would you change about yourself?

I’d lose 100lb. I also have a melancholy streak, which could use a bit of enlivening.

What would you do if you had to give up writing?

I’m a very good cook so I could perhaps open a restaurant. But that would be harder than writing.

Edmund White’s latest book is ‘Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel’ (Atlantic Books)