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dunnadam's review against another edition
3.0
“I cannot seem to let go of every grain of detail, for each at some moment seems so important that I must scoop it up and slither it into my own voluminous vomit-out. The world must know everything!”
- [b:The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart: A Novel|22237140|The American People Volume 1 Search for My Heart A Novel|Larry Kramer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1415428897s/22237140.jpg|41610658] (Larry Kramer)
I wanted to like this book more. There are so many five-star reviews for this book and I get that it is a product of the time period it was written but it seems fitting with this 20th Anniversary edition to also look at the book in its current context and for me there was so much blame in the book it was hard to get the story. When everyone is to blame, is anyone to blame?
“In San Francisco, Bill Kraus attributed the reports of the new diseases to anti-gay bias in the press. Reporters never talked about the constructive things the gay community did, he thought, but let a few people get sick and they’re all over it.”
“The Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York had put the accumulated wisdom of homosexual physicians in one phrase: “Have as much sex as you want, but with fewer people and HEALTHY people.””
At a recent meeting of my gay book club we read a book concerning the Holocaust and one man said that he wished more Jewish people from the time were alive so he could ask them why they didn’t do more. Why didn’t they leave Germany when it became clear the writing was on the wall? I said I was reading this book, And the Band Played On, and similar questions came up. Why didn’t the gay community do more at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic? Why weren’t the bathhouses closed earlier? Why didn’t this man specifically do more?
He said at the time of the start of the AIDS epidemic there were no human rights protections for gay men. If your employer found out you were gay you could lose your job. To me the answer was clear. People were dying but you didn’t want to lose your job. It’s that simple. This is the same answer the Jewish people would give. And this is the answer that frequently appears in this book.
“The invitations were mailed out, but Kramer wondered about what would happen later, when this community really needed something and the people who were supposed to do the demanding were so ashamed of themselves that they didn’t even want their mailmen to know they were gay.”
If Shilts were alive today I would have liked some kind of addendum to this 20th Anniversary Edition acknowledging this, accepting humans as imperfect, and some forgiveness for everyone involved in the mistakes made at the beginning of the epidemic. That was really missing in this book.
So many thoughts as I was reading this, even today advertisements for AIDS medications show people climbing mountains with the attitude of “Now I can ride a bike again!” AIDSSpeak, so dominant in this book, continues to this day with people not wanting to offend People With AIDS in safe sex literature. The gay paper Xtra in Toronto this very week printed an article saying “AIDS is no less treatable than diabetes!” No one still comes out and says “This is preventable and not something you want to get. You can die. Treat yourself well and avoid unnecessary risks.” Will people 20 years from now be asking why we didn’t do more, why we didn’t speak more clearly, why we didn’t make more effort to stop the spread of this disease?
The book could also have used more focus. I remember watching a segment on cable news before Obama was elected and they cut to some guy standing in front of Walmart saying if Obama got elected he’d plant watermelon on the lawn of the White House. There will always be yokels running their mouths, it doesn’t mean you have to give them a platform and I felt too many times Shilts would include quotes from random sources of people with no power simply to sensationalize.
“For some, it appeared that donating blood was an act that could overcome their personal fears about having AIDS. Thus, blood banks occasionally became the stages for gay men living out the psychodramas of denial.”
Some and occasionally are in no way proof of fact.
Referencing my quote at the start of this review, there is too much here. Often the book gets lost in specifics, as in the following quote:
“Heckler said Weiss should proceed in a more “orderly” fashion and said she would have HHS officials help him once he outlined specific questions and areas of research. Weiss had no choice but to call Steinmetz back to Washington.”
Granted it’s taken out of context but all these names and acronyms are often impossible to navigate. There is some humour in the book, but little, and it seems most of the book is concerned with laying blame.
“At best, he tried to counsel the Elizabeth Taylor approach to sexuality and suggest serial monogamy, a series of affairs that may not last forever but that at least left you with a vague awareness of which bed you slept in most evenings.”
“Being gay in New York was something you did on weekends, it seemed. During the week everybody went back to their careers and played the game, carefully concealing their sexuality and acting like everything was okay.”
An interesting aspect that is clear from the reading though is that the Centre for Disease Control really didn’t control a thing during this crisis and was not adequately funded or staffed. Still, this is often framed in blame:
“The CDC had spent $1 million on the outbreak, compared with $9 million on Legionnaire’s disease.”
There is also the eternal struggle that exists in all mentions of US politics of the us-and-them mentality of the Democrats vs the Republicans.
“Thus an epidemic that had wholly unfolded within a Republican administration had a distinctly Democratic cast for Republicans; for Democrats, AIDS was a Republican epidemic.”
No other country that I know of puts people into groups like this and places such weight on it. This lack of ability to see people beyond their political stripes also created problems dealing with this epidemic and that is not at all explored in this book.
In the 25 years since the book was published, some things have changed and some haven’t:
“There was no one to say, “Hang in there.” Instead, there was a prevailing sentiment that was sympathetic and at times compassionate but still detached and ultimately uncaring, as if to imply that, somehow, this whole mess is your own fault.”
The blame continues to this day. At one point in the book drug trials were mentioned with the attitude that patients should be given access to experimental drugs as they had nothing to lose.
“Patients with AIDS and ARC were told to simply wait until the carefully controlled drug studies were completed before trying the experimental drugs—even though many knew they would be dead before that happened.”
Yet this isn’t the full picture. AZT when it was first prescribed was over-prescribed and many people died from the drug before the dosage was corrected. It seems you can’t win. Either you don’t give the patients the drug and they die and you are blamed or you do give them the drug and they die and you are blamed. This comes back to the start of this review, if everyone is to blame, is anyone to blame?
I would have liked acknowledgement that people were in most cases doing their best. The virus was terrible but it brought the community together in a way it never had before and once people realized the seriousness of the disease many crossed party lines to help, even Reagan. Mistakes were made and we should learn from them but the pointing fingers doesn’t let us move on to the healing. As long as “they” are to blame we don’t have to look at ourselves, just like when “they” are dying we don’t have to help as much. 600 pages of anger doesn’t make the situation better.
- [b:The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart: A Novel|22237140|The American People Volume 1 Search for My Heart A Novel|Larry Kramer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1415428897s/22237140.jpg|41610658] (Larry Kramer)
I wanted to like this book more. There are so many five-star reviews for this book and I get that it is a product of the time period it was written but it seems fitting with this 20th Anniversary edition to also look at the book in its current context and for me there was so much blame in the book it was hard to get the story. When everyone is to blame, is anyone to blame?
“In San Francisco, Bill Kraus attributed the reports of the new diseases to anti-gay bias in the press. Reporters never talked about the constructive things the gay community did, he thought, but let a few people get sick and they’re all over it.”
“The Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York had put the accumulated wisdom of homosexual physicians in one phrase: “Have as much sex as you want, but with fewer people and HEALTHY people.””
At a recent meeting of my gay book club we read a book concerning the Holocaust and one man said that he wished more Jewish people from the time were alive so he could ask them why they didn’t do more. Why didn’t they leave Germany when it became clear the writing was on the wall? I said I was reading this book, And the Band Played On, and similar questions came up. Why didn’t the gay community do more at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic? Why weren’t the bathhouses closed earlier? Why didn’t this man specifically do more?
He said at the time of the start of the AIDS epidemic there were no human rights protections for gay men. If your employer found out you were gay you could lose your job. To me the answer was clear. People were dying but you didn’t want to lose your job. It’s that simple. This is the same answer the Jewish people would give. And this is the answer that frequently appears in this book.
“The invitations were mailed out, but Kramer wondered about what would happen later, when this community really needed something and the people who were supposed to do the demanding were so ashamed of themselves that they didn’t even want their mailmen to know they were gay.”
If Shilts were alive today I would have liked some kind of addendum to this 20th Anniversary Edition acknowledging this, accepting humans as imperfect, and some forgiveness for everyone involved in the mistakes made at the beginning of the epidemic. That was really missing in this book.
So many thoughts as I was reading this, even today advertisements for AIDS medications show people climbing mountains with the attitude of “Now I can ride a bike again!” AIDSSpeak, so dominant in this book, continues to this day with people not wanting to offend People With AIDS in safe sex literature. The gay paper Xtra in Toronto this very week printed an article saying “AIDS is no less treatable than diabetes!” No one still comes out and says “This is preventable and not something you want to get. You can die. Treat yourself well and avoid unnecessary risks.” Will people 20 years from now be asking why we didn’t do more, why we didn’t speak more clearly, why we didn’t make more effort to stop the spread of this disease?
The book could also have used more focus. I remember watching a segment on cable news before Obama was elected and they cut to some guy standing in front of Walmart saying if Obama got elected he’d plant watermelon on the lawn of the White House. There will always be yokels running their mouths, it doesn’t mean you have to give them a platform and I felt too many times Shilts would include quotes from random sources of people with no power simply to sensationalize.
“For some, it appeared that donating blood was an act that could overcome their personal fears about having AIDS. Thus, blood banks occasionally became the stages for gay men living out the psychodramas of denial.”
Some and occasionally are in no way proof of fact.
Referencing my quote at the start of this review, there is too much here. Often the book gets lost in specifics, as in the following quote:
“Heckler said Weiss should proceed in a more “orderly” fashion and said she would have HHS officials help him once he outlined specific questions and areas of research. Weiss had no choice but to call Steinmetz back to Washington.”
Granted it’s taken out of context but all these names and acronyms are often impossible to navigate. There is some humour in the book, but little, and it seems most of the book is concerned with laying blame.
“At best, he tried to counsel the Elizabeth Taylor approach to sexuality and suggest serial monogamy, a series of affairs that may not last forever but that at least left you with a vague awareness of which bed you slept in most evenings.”
“Being gay in New York was something you did on weekends, it seemed. During the week everybody went back to their careers and played the game, carefully concealing their sexuality and acting like everything was okay.”
An interesting aspect that is clear from the reading though is that the Centre for Disease Control really didn’t control a thing during this crisis and was not adequately funded or staffed. Still, this is often framed in blame:
“The CDC had spent $1 million on the outbreak, compared with $9 million on Legionnaire’s disease.”
There is also the eternal struggle that exists in all mentions of US politics of the us-and-them mentality of the Democrats vs the Republicans.
“Thus an epidemic that had wholly unfolded within a Republican administration had a distinctly Democratic cast for Republicans; for Democrats, AIDS was a Republican epidemic.”
No other country that I know of puts people into groups like this and places such weight on it. This lack of ability to see people beyond their political stripes also created problems dealing with this epidemic and that is not at all explored in this book.
In the 25 years since the book was published, some things have changed and some haven’t:
“There was no one to say, “Hang in there.” Instead, there was a prevailing sentiment that was sympathetic and at times compassionate but still detached and ultimately uncaring, as if to imply that, somehow, this whole mess is your own fault.”
The blame continues to this day. At one point in the book drug trials were mentioned with the attitude that patients should be given access to experimental drugs as they had nothing to lose.
“Patients with AIDS and ARC were told to simply wait until the carefully controlled drug studies were completed before trying the experimental drugs—even though many knew they would be dead before that happened.”
Yet this isn’t the full picture. AZT when it was first prescribed was over-prescribed and many people died from the drug before the dosage was corrected. It seems you can’t win. Either you don’t give the patients the drug and they die and you are blamed or you do give them the drug and they die and you are blamed. This comes back to the start of this review, if everyone is to blame, is anyone to blame?
I would have liked acknowledgement that people were in most cases doing their best. The virus was terrible but it brought the community together in a way it never had before and once people realized the seriousness of the disease many crossed party lines to help, even Reagan. Mistakes were made and we should learn from them but the pointing fingers doesn’t let us move on to the healing. As long as “they” are to blame we don’t have to look at ourselves, just like when “they” are dying we don’t have to help as much. 600 pages of anger doesn’t make the situation better.
ruttery's review against another edition
4.0
I can only read this book in very small doses and I still haven't finished it yet, because it's a lot. It is incredibly hefty and detailed, but a remarkable feat of journalism. AIDS is/was a truly grisly and horrible way to die and a catastrophic health and political failure, I knew some detail but this book made me realise the extent of it. This combined with the show It's A Sin have left a deep impression on me. I will never stop being haunted by the thought of thousands of gay men being left to die of shame, alone, on hospital wards. Docked a star just because I probably didn't need to know the details of every single conversation between every health professional whose names I've forgotten, and also the inaccurate scapegoating of "Patient Zero", which turned out to be false. I was a bit surprised that the author, who is gay himself, chose to scapegoat one particular victim as being more promiscuous than anybody else.
starfish_angel's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
burnscjasmine's review against another edition
5.0
Read for dissertation - gorgeous and heartbreaking
mugwumpun's review against another edition
5.0
Great book that explores and ties in research that Shilts did surrounding the discovery and immediate actions in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. He really works to not vilify any of the people in the story, and you can really understand the frustration of all the different barriers at work that would have averted a serious epidemic. One can only hope that internalizing all of the perspectives will help prevent similar catastrophes.
kendallheldt's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0