From Publishers Weekly
What has AIDS done to us gay men? is a question that can only be answered one gay man at a time. Decrying New Age Bunnies who claim that AIDS is the best thing that ever happened to them, Hardy asserts that if there is redemption in living with HIV, it is only in determining that something good can be constructed in the midst of great evil, and it can only be personal. With an eclectic mix of memoir, social history, diatribe, journalism and cultural criticism, he defends and celebrates the sex-positive ways gay men have continued to connect in the face of an ongoing catastrophe. Hardy, who died in a mountaineering accident before AIDS could kill him, believed HIV is not the enemy of sex; its the antagonist of love, and that even against death, revolution can be joyful. At its most incisive, the book documents AIDSs great evil, governmental and institutional inaction and the loss of most of a generation of gay men... who would have told the rest of us how to grow old, how to be adult. Hardy was a first-rate journalist whose honesty and intelligence are most evident in his personal history, particularly his account of a Dutch lovers state-sanctioned euthanasia. The greatest strength of the book is in its portraiture and reminiscences. Although Hardy left this manuscript incomplete, editor David Groff has done an excellent job of preserving the work of an important writer.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
Hardy was a gay liberation pioneer, and like most of them, he got AIDS. But he died in a mountaineering accident, not of AIDS, leaving this book to be finished from his notes and in his voice by Groff, as the latter explains in a splendid introduction-cum-eulogy. The book complains about AIDS and the lagging response to it, but, more important, it restates the original gay lib ideal of a society of brothers (
and sisters) developed, as the last chapter's title puts it, "Beyond the Culture of Love" --specifically, romantic and monogamous love. The binding forces in such a society would be sexual desire and its unhindered fulfillment. Love, now held captive by marriage, would be directed instead to all fellow humans and to the planet. AIDS deflected gay liberation from that vision, Hardy thought. Besides enriching his arguments with amusing, instructive, and moving personal stories, Hardy states the gay lib position and the AIDS activists' case against the medical-scientific establishment more stylishly and cogently and less inflammatorily and defensively than any of his predecessors has.
Ray Olson
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.