Of course, Edmund White was writing when this reporter arrived at his Manhattan apartment. The novel-in-progress is called Losing It: A Ghost Story, inspired by a nephew who White had once cared for, and who, at 50, committed suicide. White had been writing poems too, he said, while proffering the bound proof of another novel, The Humble Lover, due to be published in May, about a beguiling male ballet dancer caught up in a...