This felt like YA for non-Y adults. A lot of expository dialogue about the colonization of Puerto Rico put forth in off-the-cuff fashion, a pretty unrThis felt like YA for non-Y adults. A lot of expository dialogue about the colonization of Puerto Rico put forth in off-the-cuff fashion, a pretty unrealistic gay male AOC-inspired character, and pillorying of the idle rich of NYC that's been done a million times before. It got better toward the end, but it was a slog....more
I was in North Vermont for a wedding last summer eating at a quaint restaurant when Colin Jost and his then week-old baby--as well as his superstar wiI was in North Vermont for a wedding last summer eating at a quaint restaurant when Colin Jost and his then week-old baby--as well as his superstar wife Scarlett Johansson and their retinue of other assorted friends and/or caretakers--strolled right by us to eat at the same restaurant. They looked a bit haggard, which is to be expected for parents of a newborn, but more than anything else, Colin Jost is surprisingly yoked. The guy had real dad presence. Perhaps this was because he was pushing around a 10-lb. infant and standing next to his surprisingly short wife. But I always thought he was maybe my height or a bit taller. How big is Michael Che, it made me wonder.
Anyway, this book is fine; not as hilarious as Amy Poehler's or Tina Fey's books, but you can tell that Colin Jost is a tremendously hard worker and works very hard at his craft. Despite the book's title, he seems genuinely thoughtful and likeable, and it was an enjoyable chronicle of his journey from Staten Island, to Harvard, to SNL....more
I really liked Amor Towles' first two books. This one was alright, but not quite as much my cup of tea. Similar to Ms. Rooney, after three books the tI really liked Amor Towles' first two books. This one was alright, but not quite as much my cup of tea. Similar to Ms. Rooney, after three books the themes don't really deviate too much: Americana, proximity to Gilded-Age largesse, manly heroics. Still, an engaging read from a writer who knows how to entertain....more
I've always liked Cecily Strong on SNL. But the love only goes so deep for a person you mostly see doing cThis was a surprising 2021 standout for me.
I've always liked Cecily Strong on SNL. But the love only goes so deep for a person you mostly see doing celebrity impressions or slurring through drunk girl bits.
This memoir about the onset of the pandemic and her cousin who died very young of glioblastoma (a vicious disease that somewhat recently also took my uncle) was touching, beautifully written, thoughtful, gracious, and vulnerable. It made me smile and it made me cry. This was a multifaceted reflection on what makes life worthwhile and what is worth cherishing in the midst of losses minor and profound, the likes of which we've all felt over the past few years. ...more
When I first heard the premise for this book my eyes about rolled out of my head: two trans women are dating, one of them decides to de-transition, anWhen I first heard the premise for this book my eyes about rolled out of my head: two trans women are dating, one of them decides to de-transition, and then the one who de-transitioned gets a cisgender woman pregnant, and the three of them all raise a child together. Only in Brooklyn, right?
If you can get over the implausibility of the premise, it's a really entertaining and thought-provoking book. The writing could have been a bit better, but the storytelling was on-point. I really enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would....more
The only other book I've read by Sarah Schulman was The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, which is considerably shorter and mThe only other book I've read by Sarah Schulman was The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, which is considerably shorter and more conceptual but focuses on the highly related subject matter of the New York City's loss in the wake of HIV/AIDS. That book is one I evangelize for, and I was excited to read a more granular, primary-source-anchored account of ACTUP, not only because of my interest in HIV/AIDS, queer history, etc., but because I've always been impressed by the creative and evocative ways that ACTUP made it impossible for an apathetic/hostile public to turn its attention from the scourge of HIV/AIDS.
Reading this during a pandemic was often poignant and felt very germane. Not only are some of the same names relevant--for example: Anthony Fauci is very prominent, and often demonized in this book for his perceived slow-rolling of AIDS treatments--but it's impossible not to draw parallels, or, more often: distinctions. Because HIV/AIDS is never and has never been a pandemic, even though those it affects are considerably less siloed than was and is still believed. If there is a thrust to this book, it's that HIV/AIDS was allowed to decimate certain populations because in the best of circumstances the straight/white world didn't care, and in the worst of cases saw HIV/AIDS as condign punishment for a life of vice, or an expedient end to lives better disposed of than preserved.
Vito Russo, an HIV/AIDS activist who died of the disease gave a speech titled "Why We Fight," and the speech in its entirety is included in this book. I have never been able to read through it without tearing up, and the few times I've tried to read it aloud to friends I have been unable to finish. But I think it's worth reading in full, because it speaks to the exigency of empathy.
A friend of mine in New York City has a half-fare transit card, which means that you get on buses and subways for half price. And the other day, when he showed his card to the token attendant, the attendant asked what his disability was and he said, I have AIDS. And the attendant said, no you don't, if you had AIDS, you'd be home dying. And so, I wanted to speak out today as a person with AIDS who is not dying.
You know, for the last three years, since I was diagnosed, my family thinks two things about my situation. One, they think I'm going to die, and two, they think that my government is doing absolutely everything in their power to stop that. And they're wrong, on both counts.
So, if I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from homophobia. If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from racism. If I'm dying from anything, it's from indifference and red tape, because these are the things that are preventing an end to this crisis. If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from Jesse Helms. If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from the President of the United States. And, especially, if I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from the sensationalism of newspapers and magazines and television shows, which are interested in me, as a human interest story -- only as long as I'm willing to be a helpless victim, but not if I'm fighting for my life.
If I'm dying from anything -- I'm dying from the fact that not enough rich, white, heterosexual men have gotten AIDS for anybody to give a shit. You know, living with AIDS in this country is like living in the twilight zone. Living with AIDS is like living through a war which is happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches. Every time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that you've lost more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isn't happening to them. They're walking the streets as though we weren't living through some sort of nightmare. And only you can hear the screams of the people who are dying and their cries for help. No one else seems to be noticing.
And it's worse than a war, because during a war people are united in a shared experience. This war has not united us, it's divided us. It's separated those of us with AIDS and those of us who fight for people with AIDS from the rest of the population.
Two and a half years ago, I picked up Life Magazine, and I read an editorial which said, "it's time to pay attention, because this disease is now beginning to strike the rest of us." It was as if I wasn't the one holding the magazine in my hand. And since then, nothing has changed to alter the perception that AIDS is not happening to the real people in this country.
It's not happening to us in the United States, it's happening to them -- to the disposable populations of fags and junkies who deserve what they get. The media tells them that they don't have to care, because the people who really matter are not in danger. Twice, three times, four times -- The New York Times has published editorials saying, don't panic yet, over AIDS -- it still hasn't entered the general population, and until it does, we don't have to give a shit.
And the days, and the months, and the years pass by, and they don't spend those days and nights and months and years trying to figure out how to get hold of the latest experimental drug, and which dose to take it at, and in what combination with other drugs, and from what source? And, how are you going to pay for it? And where are you going to get it? Because it isn't happening to them, so they don't give a shit.
And they don't sit in television studios, surrounded by technicians who are wearing rubber gloves, who won't put a microphone on you, because it isn't happening to them, so they don't give a shit. And they don't have their houses burned down by bigots and morons. They watch it on the news and they have dinner and they go to bed, because it isn't happening to them, and they don't give a shit.
And they don't spend their waking hours going from hospital room to hospital room, and watching the people that they love die slowly -- of neglect and bigotry, because it isn't happening to them and they don't have to give a shit. They haven't been to two funerals a week for the last three or four or five years -- so they don't give a shit, because it's not happening to them.
And we read on the front page of The New York Times last Saturday that Anthony Fauci now says that all sorts of promising drugs for treatment haven't even been tested in the last two years because he can't afford to hire the people to test them. We're supposed to be grateful that this story has appeared in the newspaper after two years. Nobody wonders why some reporter didn't dig up that story and print it 18 months ago, before Fauci got dragged before a Congressional hearing .
How many people are dead in the last two years, who might be alive today, if those drugs had been tested more quickly? Reporters all over the country are busy printing government press releases. They don't give a shit, it isn't happening to them -- meaning that it isn't happening to people like them -- the real people, the world-famous general public we all keep hearing about.
Legionnaire's Disease was happening to them because it hit people who looked like them, who sounded like them, who were the same color as them. And that fucking story about a couple of dozen people hit the front page of every newspaper and magazine in this country, and it stayed there until that mystery got solved.
All I read in the newspapers tells me that the mainstream, white heterosexual population is not at risk for this disease. All the newspapers I read tell me that IV drug users and homosexuals still account for the overwhelming majority of cases, and a majority of those people at risk.
And can somebody please tell me why every single penny allocated for education and prevention gets spent on ad campaigns that are directed almost exclusively to white, heterosexual teenagers -- who they keep telling us are not at risk!
Can somebody tell me why the only television movie ever produced by a major network in this country, about the impact of this disease, is not about the impact of this disease on the man who has AIDS, but of the impact of AIDS on his white, straight, nuclear family? Why, for eight years, every newspaper and magazine in this country has done cover stories on AIDS only when the threat of heterosexual transmission is raised?
Why, for eight years, every single educational film designed for use in high schools has eliminated any gay positive material, before being approved by the Board of Education? Why, for eight years, every single public information pamphlet and videotape distributed by establishment sources has ignored specific homosexual content?
Why is every bus and subway ad I read and every advertisement and every billboard I see in this country specifically not directed at gay men? Don't believe the lie that the gay community has done its job and done it well and educated its people. The gay community and IV drug users are not all politicized people living in New York and San Francisco. Members of minority populations, including so called sophisticated gay men are abysmally ignorant about AIDS.
If it is true that gay men and IV drug users are the populations at risk for this disease, then we have a right to demand that education and prevention be targeted specifically to these people. And it is not happening. We are being allowed to die, while low risk populations are being panicked -- not educated, panicked -- into believing that we deserve to die.
Why are we here together today? We're here because it is happening to us, and we do give a shit. And if there were more of us AIDS wouldn't be what it is at this moment in history. It's more than just a disease, which ignorant people have turned into an excuse to exercise the bigotry they have always felt.
It is more than a horror story, exploited by the tabloids. AIDS is really a test of us, as a people. When future generations ask what we did in this crisis, we're going to have to tell them that we were out here today. And we have to leave the legacy to those generations of people who will come after us.
Someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. Remember that. And when that day comes -- when that day has come and gone, there'll be people alive on this earth -- gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives, so that other people might live and be free.
So, I'm proud to be with my friends today and the people I love, because I think you're all heroes, and I'm glad to be part of this fight. But, to borrow a phrase from Michael Callen's song: all we have is love right now, what we don't have is time.
In a lot of ways, AIDS activists are like those doctors out there -- they're so busy putting out fires and taking care of people on respirators, that they don't have the time to take care of all the sick people. We're so busy putting out fires right now, that we don't have the time to talk to each other and strategize and plan for the next wave, and the next day, and next month and the next week and the next year.
And, we're going to have to find the time to do that in the next few months. And, we have to commit ourselves to doing that. And then, after we kick the shit out of this disease, we're all going to be alive to kick the shit out of this system, so that this never happens again.
COVID is undeniably a scourge, but the mortality rates are so much lower than HIV/AIDS that the two cannot be plausibly compared. In the United States, COVID mortality rates hover around 0.3%. At its peak in 1995 before the development of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), HIV/AIDS mortality exceeded 16%, and was above 30% for self-identified gay men; what's more, it had been above 10% for the prior three years.
We moved heaven and earth in response to COVID, shut down our entire society, altered our way of life for years, took honest and cautious account of who might be harmed the most by its spread, and managed to create several astoundingly effective vaccines within a single year. For HIV/AIDS, developing HAART took well over a decade, and things like PrEP took more than three times as long.
The contrast is as repellent as it is revelatory. There is no world in which we would have tolerated HIV/AIDS if even 10% of straight, white, non-drug-using people in rich countries had been falling victim to it. Because that wasn't the case, as Vito Russo says: they didn't give a shit. Queer people mourned the families it's so hard for us to build as they died off in droves; gay men died horrifically undignified deaths, emaciated and covered in thrush and sores and excrement while straight people blamed these victims for their behavior and sinfulness. This, too, contrasts painfully with COVID, where doing things like living your life--including doing things like having a sex life and pursuing romance--are expected, and even the most reckless behaviors are largely free of moral condemnation less than two years in.
In 1985, Bob Hope told a joke about AIDS to an audience that included then-President Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan. "The Statue of Liberty has AIDS. They don't know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island 'ferry'." "Ferry" was a pun on "fairy" and "Hudson" was a double entendre referencing the Hudson River and also Rock Hudson, who was fairly well known to be a closeted gay man and the first high-profile celebrity to be acknowledged as having HIV/AIDS. President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan purportedly laughed uproariously at the joke. Hudson, who was friendly with the Reagans from their time in Hollywood, begged the White House to intercede on his behalf to admit him to a hospital in France that he believed could provide the only treatment that might save his life, or at least mitigate the disease ravishing his body; Nancy demurred, and Hudson succumbed three months later. President Reagan didn't say the word "AIDS" until late in 1985, though his staff had been joking about it during pressers for years. Earlier this year, First Lady Jill Biden participated in a flashy ceremony honoring Nancy Reagan's depiction on a postage stamp.
I mention Nancy Reagan's rehabilitation because part of me thinks that the time has passed for white/heterosexual society to contend with and make amends for its passive toleration of HIV/AIDS. America is a supremely flawed country, and it's understandable that its people need to deploy a lot of cognitive dissonance just to get on. But as queer people our rage should be enduring and incandescent, and it's all the more incumbent that we work in solidarity with other groups facing less analogous forms of oppression and disregard to pull them from the teeth of a brutal and self-interested society....more
I'd give it a solid 3.5 out of 5. McCann has a way with language--the repetitive gives his voice a kind of imperative quality. Reading about New York I'd give it a solid 3.5 out of 5. McCann has a way with language--the repetitive gives his voice a kind of imperative quality. Reading about New York in any bygone era is a romantic indulgence for anyone who lived there afterward, and this is no exception. This book is one of those panoramic stories told by a dozen or so protagonists, whose lives intersect in variously profound and insignificant ways, not unlike Cloud Atlas or The Tsar of Love and Techno.
It's hard to describe my reaction to the book--on the one hand, I enjoyed listening to it and was eager to finish when my library copy "expired" with a single chapter left. On the other, I'm left feeling a bit disappointed, like the characters were not meaty enough to leave a sustained impression in my mind. Only time will tell, I suppose. But McCann has already impressed me as a master of the written word, poetic and evocative. I'm sure I'll continue to read him and see where this slots into the oeuvre....more
This was really well written and intense, so much so that for the first time in memory, I found myself a bit exhausted and exasperated living in the aThis was really well written and intense, so much so that for the first time in memory, I found myself a bit exhausted and exasperated living in the author's head.
The premise is that a 30-something gay, having left NYC for LA and not in possession of wealth or the perfect body, seeks out an otherworldly solution for his brokenness. He is in recovery from addiction and coming off a few very painful breakups, so when he hears about a shaman who can cure everything, he leaps at the opportunity.
As I said, Lansky is such a skilled writer and an observant narrator, but sometimes--especially when cataloguing the materialistic things, e.g., the Creed cologne bottles or the fur trim of a designer coat--it felt hard to take seriously, especially when these details vied for space on the same page with (or stood in as metaphors for) breakthroughs and more transcendent realizations. There's a certain type of gay whose currency seems to consist entirely in being fluent in identifying, ranking, and hoarding such details, and while I get the impression that the author wanted us to associate those with his former self--the pre-enlightenment iteration--it didn't really come off that way in the end.
Regardless, I hope the author (presumably the narrator) is happy, and seems genuinely headed in that direction....more
I love this book from the beginning. I was finishing The Fifth Season on a car ride home from visiting my mom, my first real departure from DC since tI love this book from the beginning. I was finishing The Fifth Season on a car ride home from visiting my mom, my first real departure from DC since the pandemic started. I finished it with about 30 minutes remaining and frantically looked around on my phone for something else to tide me over. At a stop light, I realized I had three days left on a rental from the library: "Deacon King Kong," a book that had received rave reviews from bookmarks.com. I hadn't even downloaded it, it just had been reserved. Within twenty minutes, I was hooked.
The book follows a charming cast of characters, all old New York mainstays, as they navigate the drama that touches off the action: a doddering old widower drunk--Sportcoat, or Deacon King Kong--shoots the projects' chief drug dealer in cold blood, right in the face. The insights into the characters' backgrounds, their connections, and their colorful pasts and how they came to Brooklyn unfolds in a charmingly Dickensian manner, and a lot of ground gets covered and issues reconciled by the time the book ends.
I had read this author's The Good Lord Bird before, and it has similar elements. I don't remember being blown away by it, but I certainly enjoyed it. But I think this book shows off the author's whimsy, talent, ability to develop humorously flawed characters whom you root for and enjoy seeing resolve their issues.
"Weather" came highly recommended by a number of people I follow, and I'm glad I put myself on the library list. I didn't know much about it going in-"Weather" came highly recommended by a number of people I follow, and I'm glad I put myself on the library list. I didn't know much about it going in--I admit, I originally thought it was a series of short essays--but it's really just a deadpan novel about an unmoored mother raising a child in New York City among the banal outrageousness and stupidity that characterized the years leading up to and following Trump's election, with a focus on the environment. It dwells on marital satisfaction, parenting, global warming, ennui, addiction and family loyalty in a surprisingly short and brisk way.
It's peppered with jokes and reflections on modern life and all of its dissatisfaction. Although written before the pandemic, it felt strangely appropriate for the moment....more
A short, intergenerational tale about race and class, mobility and shame, spanning much of the 20th Century. Written with a deft pen, but not the mostA short, intergenerational tale about race and class, mobility and shame, spanning much of the 20th Century. Written with a deft pen, but not the most substantive....more
A really lovely debut novel about race, adoption, immigration, the meaning of family, and addiction recovery.
This is the story of Deming and his mothA really lovely debut novel about race, adoption, immigration, the meaning of family, and addiction recovery.
This is the story of Deming and his mother Polly, and it begins in the Bronx. Deming and his mother live a hardscrabble but happy life, but then suddenly Deming's mother vanishes and his life is upended in consequence.
The rest is a stumbling story of healing and finding one's place in the world. I'm not sure if any of the characters from this book will stay with me, but I kept finding myself eager to get back to reading it....more
Read this for my gay (gayer?) book club, and liked it a lot. I had never heard of it or the author, but I found it extremely entertaining, even as a gRead this for my gay (gayer?) book club, and liked it a lot. I had never heard of it or the author, but I found it extremely entertaining, even as a gay who was never really in the circuit in NYC and who has never stepped foot on Fire Island. This was all about Malone for me. He was endlessly entertaining, truly either the perfect commemoration of a voice that has endured for generations or the instantiation of a gay archetype that continues to this day.
As we discussed in book club, this book was also interesting for having been released right before AIDS mushroomed into full-blown epidemic. Gay culture seemed to have developed in many baroque, intriguing, alluring, and disturbing ways. There was so much hedonism and promiscuity, and it's easy to see how those were both good and bad things, simultaneously. It's also easy to see how a contemptuous cishet society would link gay holocaust to the types of behaviors portrayed in this book, characterizing the scourge as condign punishment for the most scandalous sybaritism this side of Gomorrah. And as a factual matter I don't think you could say those statements were wrong, though assignment of blame and culpability are an entirely different matter. But it's interesting to see in so much of the puritanism within and without the gay community how internalized that feeling is, that any sufficiently uninhibited behavior is "asking" for punishment. It wasn't until much later that people began to acknowledge that this was a particularly virulent disease and one that was uniquely linked with a particular subgroup's maligned form of sexual activity, and that these things were much more likely to be purely and tragically coincidental than at all connected in some more cosmic sense. If it had been a bunch of straight people dying because they move to the suburbs and catch diseases related to lawn care regimens, I doubt we would be blaming them or warning that a renewed wave of lawn-care enthusiasm is a harbinger of a second pandemic, but humans are simple creatures prone to cognitive biases, and so I imagine the condemnatory mindset will persist.
Having lived through the recoil following the worst of the AIDS crisis and living in the drug-positive, PReP-enabled 2010s, it feels in some ways as though we're back at that moment depicted in this book. Maybe a bit "before" it, but it's hard to make exact comparisons. There were parts of this book that seemed alluring, and there was some nostalgia for a time I never experienced, and probably never will. But would my life have been better if I had lived back then? I probably would have been some miserable suburban closet case, and if I had broke free to live the lives of the men in this book, I probably would have had a ton of anonymous sex and done a lot more drugs, but I certainly have those avenues available to me still and don't find them particularly alluring.
Maybe it's just that that time will never return, that culture will never again be as vital and vibrant, robbed as it is of its frisson of danger and intrigue and the complexity of semiunderground social strata. But books like this are the next best thing. ...more
I don't know why, but this book did not land for me. A zombie apocalypse tale set in NYC by a great writer? Has all of the ingredients for a winner buI don't know why, but this book did not land for me. A zombie apocalypse tale set in NYC by a great writer? Has all of the ingredients for a winner but for whatever reason it did not resonate....more
Brooklyn! My erstwhile home. We all know it as queer today, but the pedigree traces back much further. This book is excellently researched, highly conBrooklyn! My erstwhile home. We all know it as queer today, but the pedigree traces back much further. This book is excellently researched, highly conscientious about its inability to report on the histories of queer women/people of color/trans people (and dutifully elaborate when it does have material to report), and revealed a bunch of strange little facts, all pluses. I would say that a lot of it was stuff I didn't find that interesting, even if others likely would.
Certainly not a fault of the author's, but this is my review so I give it a hearty 3.5 stars....more
This was fun, kind of felt like Philip Roth's lighter stuff if he had been a woman--the characters were interesting and textured, they did things thatThis was fun, kind of felt like Philip Roth's lighter stuff if he had been a woman--the characters were interesting and textured, they did things that surprised you but when you reflected on them, it all made sense, there's a tone and a pace to it that are very realistic, lots of sex and cultural Jewishness. But the dislikable female characters were at least partially redeemed, and the male characters had glaring flaws that, in the end, were hard to overcome (not exactly Roth-like traits).
So why three stars? This book was entertaining, but I think I don't think I found it as thought-provoking as the people in book club who loved it. I also found the extreme wealth to be distracting and alienating. It's a book that I thought was pretty good but not amazing. But I'll probably recommend it to a lot of people....more
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