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with gay literature?
recommend Eighty-Sixed and to a lesser extent its sequal Spontaneous Combus
tion. In these two books, Feinberg never forgets that his reader wants a good
The theatre'of the epidemic has been remarkable. Larry Karmer stunned
the world with The Normal Heart and Paul Kushner may have created the most
important play since Death of a Salesman with Angels in America. Even smaller
works like Jeffrey and As Is have been important landmarks in the barren field
of the literature of AIDS. One of the best works about coming out and AIDS
and life and love is Falsettos, the musical by William Finn. All of these triumphs
have a common thread. By rooting the events in the context of characters rather
than ideas, the endurance of human love and courage flower before audiences.
The technical books about HIV/AIDS have ranged from really bad stories
of how an individual survived AIDS because he or she was really better than
other people to fascinating books detailing the scientific adventure that
continues to unfold. As good as the latter books are, it is hard to try to hold an
objective distance to the political, social and medical disaster which continues
unabated.
The self help books on dealing with AIDS and HIV disease have a
tendency to become dated within a year of publication because of the shifting
nature of progress and failure in treatments.
There have been a number of interesting biographies of people with
AIDS. Paul Monette electrified the literary world with Borrowed Time, but I
found it just too upper class for words. Elizabeth Glaser wrote In the Absence
of Angels about pediatric AIDS. It's okay, but I found it a little matter of fact for
my taste. Barbara Peabody did a terrifyingly good job in describing the death
of her son in The Screaming Room. And I must mention One Boy at War by Paul
A. Sergios which is reviewed on page 23.
But these are the exceptions. Most of the biographies and autobiogra
phies of people with AIDS are dull little works cranked out with a spell checker
on a word processor which seems to have a politically correct check hidden
in its circuits. Nobody seems to have sex; they just have sexuality. If anybody
thinks I'm making this up, check out the biographies of Liberace, Rock
Hudson, and Michafel Bennett to name a few. The histories of these men seem
devoted to their "relationships." No steamy sorties into the seamier side of sex
for these three. No siree.
The big question about the literature dealing with AIDS is why it is so
dreadful. Here are the great issues of the human conditior laid out in brilliant
colors — life, death, love, sex, politics, and money. The Danorama cries out
for artists to record and interpret and to inspire and educate the world. The
answer to this failure lies in the lack of many authors in tb:ir abilities to deal
with sex. It still is primarily a sexually transmitted disease in case anyone was
wondering.
Why has there been no biography of pom star John Holmes? Here is the
great American tale—a profligate and well paid sex worker with a prodigious
endowment who ends up in the violent world of drugs and the tragedy of
immune suppresion. There is a murder trial and a cast of thousands. And it is
all true. Most of it can be documented on videotape. What reader could resist?
As a matter of some interest to gay readers would be an examination of
the pomo industry as it faces the deaths of hordes of young men.
But these books would be the exceptions to the current rules. They would
have to deal forthrightly with sex. And they would have to deal with death.
Times really haven't changed that much since a gangly teen tried to find out
about life and love thirty years ago.
Of all the fiction attempted in the age of AIDS, I can only bring myself to
fii VoumwAHD Hom-PkofitVoice of the Gay & Lesbuim Com. mnr
story about people.
Someone should remind the authors currently writing for and about the
gay and lesbian community that there are gangly little boys who need to find
books. One of the boys may have grown up, but he still finds magic in words
and hopes that some author can put them together to provide light and context
and meaning to a comer of the world. The failure of modem gay literature lies
in the small little ghetto world carved out by the current generation of authors
and publishers. Somewhere along the way, they forgot that we are a part of the
world. Somewhere along that same path, they forgot that the world can find
us just as fascinating as we find ourselves. And somewhere in some library or
classroom or bookstore, there are young people seeking their new frontiers
and looking for the leadership of artists.T
.the elusive homosexual
(Continued from Pge29)
families, so the genetic basis for homosexuality in men may be different from
the genetic basis of homosexuality in women. Preliminary data reported at the
1992 American Psychological Association Convention in Washington, D.C.
support notion that male and female homosexuality may have differinggenetic
roots. It was found that: 1) agay male has a greatly increased likelihiid of having
homosexual brothers, uncles, or male cousins than would be expected by
chance alone; 2) with the exception of having a moderately increased chance
of having lesbian sisters, a gay male does not have greater likelihood of h~ving
other lesbian aunts, nieces, or female cousins than would expected by chance
alone; 3) a lesbian has a greatly increased likelihood of having lesbian sisters,
aunts, or female cousins than would be expected by chance alone; 4) with the
exception of having a moderately increased chance of having gay brothers, a
lesbian does not have greater likelihood of having other gay uncles, nephews,
or male cousins than would expected by chance alone.
Why gay men and lesbians have an increased chance of having homo
sexual relatives of the same sex; and why they have an increased chance of
having homosexual siblings of the opposite sex, while having no increased
chance for homosexual, non-sibling relatives of the opposite sex is unknown.
However, one explanation that would account for these findings is the notion
that there are at least three genetic bases underlying homosexuality: one that
may result in male homosexuality only; one that may result in female
homosexuality only; and one that may result in male or female homosexuality.
In order to determine just how many different genetic bases that there
may be for homosexuality, the researchers conducting these pedigree studies
were hoping to identify several families with exceptionally high rates of one
pattern of homosexuality and compare them genetically with families with
exceptionally low rates of homosexuality. The goal of such a study would be
to identify the specific gene or genes that make a person likely to become
homosexual.
In July 1993, a team of scientists at the National Institute of Cancer, one
of the National Institute of Health (NIH), published the first evidence
indicating the general location of a gene suspected of causing one type of male
homosexuality in Science, a highly respected scientific journal. Y
Next time, X chromosome linked male homosexuality.
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