Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited
AIDS and Its Aftermath
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3.8 • 10 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Andrew Holleran's Ground Zero, first published in 1988 and consisting of 23 Christopher Street essays from the earliest years of the AIDS crisis, was hailed by the Washington Post as “one of the best dispatches from the epidemic's height.” Twenty years later, with HIV/AIDS long recognized as a global health challenge, Holleran both reiterates and freshly illuminates the devastation wreaked by AIDS, which has claimed the lives of 450,000 gay men as well as 22 million others. Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited features ten pieces never previously republished outside Christopher Street, as well as a new introduction keenly describing and evaluating a historical moment that still informs and defines today's world-particularly its community of homosexuals, which, arguably, is still recovering from the devastation of AIDS.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Holleran (Dancer from the Dance) has expanded and rereleased his classic collection of 1988 Christopher Street essays for a generation for whom the 1980s New York AIDS epidemic may seem as exotic as ancient Egypt. Holleran recreates that vanished time and place: gay New York, when no one knew the way out in his tender elegies for his dead and dying friends, in masterfully rendered imagery "a polluted Fire Island shore mirrors a sea of potentially diseased partners "and in examining the paradoxes of survival "a French journalist transcends the mediocrity and materialism of his previous life by writing an internationally renowned novel on the very disease that's killing him. Confusion and terror radiate from these pages, and humor of the blackest variety predominates (a young man endows a rubber in his pants pocket with the talismanic quality of a crucifix in a land of vampires ). While Holleran may be correct that the only thing anyone wants to read about AIDS is CURE FOUND, his essays "originally titled Ground Zero "stunningly illuminate New Yorkers coping with modern tragedy.
Customer Reviews
Mono-thematic
Holleran focuses too much on sex. I understand that AIDS—especially its intersection with Gay men—cannot be separated from sex, but he dwells on it unnecessarily. Stating the publication dates of the essays would help situate them better although the nomenclature often indicates the date. Some essays soar with beautiful imagery, but many seemed rushed as if he was meeting a deadline. When he says “a handsome man”—and he says this a lot—he means a white man; otherwise, he says, “a handsome Puerto Rican,” “a cute Hispanic,” “a handsome Black guy.” He lists his STDs as if they were normal. That was his audience and that was his life. A bit too confessional at times, the essays became a burden rather than a joy to read. Good as a historical record of the effects of AIDS on white, New York, Gay men.
Extremely slow and boring
Had to read this for a class that it didn't really even relate to. Extremely slow and all over the place style of writing. Would not recommended unless you have to read it like I do, in which case I am sorry.