“In short but sweeping
chapters, (Guiteau) offers
brief, easy-to-digest sum-maries of major religious
belief systems...A good
starting point for those
wanting to learn more
about what unites and
separates them.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Religion
and Man
Our Story
by LEIF GUITEAU
Learn about the history & beliefs of
the major world religions, including
your own, in this short & comprehensive study of the legacy of mankind
For information on publication rights,
contact lguiteau@gmail.com
The American People, Vol. 1:
Search for My Heart
Larry Kramer. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $40 (880p) ISBN 978-0-374-10439-9
It wouldn’t be implausible if deep in his publisher’s office, Kramer’s editors had to form a support group. Which is not o say that this—his sprawling, brazen, problematic, frus- trating, incendiary bid at the Great American Novel, re-vi-sioning the U.S. from European colonialism through the 1950s,
thrusting toward 800 pages yet only comprising volume
one—is entirely misguided. To call it a rough read at times
would be an understatement. Of course, Kramer is not known
for being easygoing. A founding force behind the revolutionary AIDS activist group ACTUP, finalist for the Pulitzer
Prize, and author of Faggots (a novel) and The Normal Heart (a play turned HBO movie),
Kramer has made red-faced fist pumping into his art. This latest book has been 30 years
in the making, the subject of much anticipation. It straddles the line between history
and novel, propelled along by a fictional narrator, Fred Lemish. A clear Kramer stand-in, Lemish is inspired to write his history when President Ruester (this book’s Reagan)
references “the American People” in a speech and Lemish realizes that gay men aren’t
included, a fact even more inimical considering that the “Plague of the Underlying
Condition” (this book’s term for HIV/AIDS) is well underway. The remedy, then, is “to
record a history of hate when one is among the hated,” which Fleming does.
Were this opus merely history, it might not prove so harrying. A straightforward narrative centering on the contributions of gay men and claiming (as Kramer—pardon, as
Lemish does) that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Samuel
Clemens, Adolf Hitler, and Ronald Reagan were all gay would be easy enough to sort
through, the citations lined up and examined. Even the Abraham Lincoln orgy scene
might earn a place. But the novel is subtitled Search for My Heart, and so this is a very
individualized reckoning with a culture that both made Kramer and killed a good number of the people he loved. Its sections vacillate between rant and narrative, tragedy and
ribaldry. People eat mud and invent poppers; the history of medicine is shot through with
the history of sexuality; the voice of the Underlying Condition insists in all-bold text that it
has been around for centuries; and semen and blood and feces flow like rivers. There are
striking insights into the human condition and perplexing digressions (the handling of
race is particularly cringe inducing at times, with characters of color rarely transcending
stereotypes). It’s a story that can be as surprisingly tender as one boy loving another, yet as
deeply disturbing as the graphically rendered Nazi-led medical-sexual torture of youth.
“You tell your history, and I’ll tell mine,” Lemish reminds us near the end, as though he
needed to.
Kramer has been operating at a fever pitch for over three decades now, and it’s doubtful
that even his most ardent fans don’t find him consistently frustrating. There are certainly plenty of occasions to turn away from this long-due effort in anger or distrust ( I
did, three times). But if you have the stomach for it, Kramer is a singular force, furious
because he cares. He honestly confronts hard, unspoken truths and goes somewhere with
them, which is a rare thing. One wonders what the hell will happen in volume two. (Apr.)
T Fleischmann is the author of Syzygy, Beauty.
[Signature]
Reviewed by T Fleischmann
