Edmund White spent his boarding school nights crouched in a toilet stall reading Rimbaud, the French poet who gained notoriety for his drunken violence and love of older men. Fast-forward some odd years and White's again thinking about Rimbaud, but under decidedly different circumstances.

No longer the teen clinging to dreams of the big city and loving men, White's made quite a name for himself on the literary scene, a name that led Atlas publishing company to ask the author to pen Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel.

White recently invited our editor into his home to talk about the book, but, as happens, the conversation veered in all sorts of directions - from Rimbaud's drunken days to White's evolving take on gay marriage; from Rimbaud as the "teen top terror" to how France changed White's writing style. It's a potpourri!

Take a peek, after the jump…

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French poet Paul Verlaine caused a scandal when the 28-year old left his wife and children for 17-year old Arthur Rimbaud. Forever stigmatized by the lavender letter, the men fled Paris for London in 1872, where they bounced between various homes. Unfortunately, their storied affair came to an end in Brussels when Verlaine shot young Rimbaud through the hand.

Now, 134 years later, activists, business folk and actors are coming together to memorialize the men's brief tenure:

One of the houses the couple stayed in during their time in London has been bought by a businessman who intends to restore it.
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The house will become a museum dedicated to poetry, a scheme backed by prominent gay actors Stephen Fry and actor Simon Callow.

Mr Callow said it would be "a wonderful memento of the fruitful if nightmarish stay in England of these extraordinary men, of the work they did there, and indeed, of their affair."

Ah, yes, aren't doomed love affairs perfect for a touristic jaunt?