Kramer, Larry. Faggots (1978). New York: Plume, 1987.

Right from his choice of a title, Larry Kramer—one of the founders of AIDS activist group ACT-UP and still today a vocal, vehement critic of both AIDS policy and queer promiscuity—positions himself and his novel as a harsh critique. This won't be a glowing portrait of gay men in New York City nearly a decade after the Stonewall Riots. It probably won't even be a fair one. Instead, the book is a mix of loathing—of the self, of other gay men—and celebration, an attempt at gathering strength. Or, as Kramer attributes to his stand-in, Fred Lemish, "[D]id he not hate that word 'gay'? He thought it a strange categorizer of a life style with many elements far from zippy. No, he would de-kike the word 'faggot,' which had punch, bite, a no-nonsense, chin-out assertiveness, and which, at present, was no more self-depracatory than, say, 'American'" (31).

The novel takes place over Memorial Day weekend 1977, when the historic Everard Baths burned down, killing nine men. This event concludes the book's opening act, continuing through the death of Winnie Heinz, the Marlboro Man, during the opening of a new disco the next night, and the start of the summer season on Fire Island that culminates in the novel's climax: the public, orgiastic double-fisting of Fred's paramour, Dinky Adams, in the "Meat Rack"—an off-the-beaten-path area of the Fire Island Pines.

The amount of sex in this novel could rival all of Edmund White's autobiographical trilogy, but for Kramer, sex isn't always (actually, it's rarely) the self-affirming experience many gay men of his generation paint it to be. Instead, it's reckless, drawn here in his novel so often as a caricature. This is part of my attraction to the book; the way it quite smartly makes fun of the idea that rampant fucking is somehow intrinsic to gay identity. Here's how Richie Bronstein, the closeted son of a wealthy film executive, puts it:

[H]e knew there was a pit of sexuality out there and that he longed to throw himself into it.

I have to! I have to! he would torture himself before several hours napping in his lofted bed. Because it's part of the faggot life style—to find abandonment and freedom through ecstasy—fucking and being fucked and light s & m and shitting and pissing and Oh I want to be abandoned! and where's my copy of the Avocado... (60-61)

In watching the man he's been for years obsessed with get fisted by two strangers while dozens of leering men watch, Fred is finally able to see Dinky's inherent sadness and emptiness, and that night they amicably "break up" (quotes because Dinky can never be said to be with any one man). The final pages of the novel show gay men simply together, not fucking or fighting or both, but just sitting together on the sand as the sun rises over Fire Island, and passing from lips to ears and lips to ears is one repeated phrase: "I love you."

It's a sentimental ending to an otherwise angry novel, and it comes a little out of nowhere, but what's important about it is that it pushes Kramer's argument toward a kind of solution: less fucking, more loving. That this book was written four years before AIDS broke in the newspaper makes it all the more important.