Hubert Sorin (December 19, 1962 - April 6, 1994) was an architect and illustrator. Partner Edmund White
Queer Places:
Cimetière du Père Lachaise
Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France
Hubert Sorin (December 19, 1962 - April 6, 1994) was an architect and illustrator.
He was born in 1962 in Nantes, where he received a degree in architecture. He subsequently taught architecture for two years in Addis Ababa. Upon his return to Paris he went to work for Jean-Jacques Ory, who directed at that time the largest architectural office in France. After retiring at the end of 1989, Sorin became an illustrator, contributing drawings and text for a privately printed book, Mémoires dessinées.
Our Paris, Sketches from Memory, written by Edmund White is a collection of charming, funny, telling series of vignettes of the Paris neighborhood where he and his lover, Hubert Sorin, lived. In this ode to Pairs, the everyday becomes extraordinary with White’s observations accompanied by Sorin’s illustrations. With characters like Father Pierre Riches, the “kind and elegant” catholic priest whose hair had been stroked by Cavafy, to Billy Boy, the jewelry designer with 16,000 Barbies, there is delightful eccentricity to this collaboration. Written during Sorin’s decline to AIDS, Our Paris is a poignant look at the couple and the city they loved.
Saul Bellow wrote Ravelstein, a roman à clef based on Allan Bloom, his friend and colleague at the University of Chicago. In the novel, both Julien (Hubert Sorin) and Abe (Allan Bloom) have very developed tastes for luxury. Julien inherits a small legacy, but the enhancement of his lifestyle is mostly paid for by his lover, Austin (Edmund White). Ravelstein instead pays for his own lover, Nicky (Michael Z. Wu), Ravelstein's friend is Chick (Saul Bellow).
Sorin died in March 1994 and is buried in Paris at Père-Lachaise.
My published books:
