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Faggots
Graphically sexual and one of the most all-time best-selling gay novels, Faggots is the story of Fred Lemish, who at thirty-nine has built up his body into a fatless state of being in Great Shape. Lemish is ready to find Mr. Right. But from the Everhard Baths to the Pines on Fire Island to that place of myth and story, The Meat Rack, he is looking for his dream lover in all the wrong places. Faggots is a fierce satire of the gay ghetto and a touching story of one man's desperate search for permanence, commitment, and love.
386 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 17, 1978
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11371 people want to read
About the author
Larry Kramer
33 books205 followersLarry Kramer (born June 25, 1935) was an American playwright, author, public health advocate and gay rights activist. He was nominated for an Academy Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was twice a recipient of an Obie Award. In response to the AIDS crisis he founded Gay Men's Health Crisis, which became the largest organization of its kind in the world. He wrote The Normal Heart, the first serious artistic examination of the AIDS crisis. He later founded ACT UP, a protest organization widely credited with having changed public health policy and the public's awareness of HIV and AIDS.[1] "There is no question in my mind that Larry helped change medicine in this country. And he helped change it for the better. In American medicine there are two eras. Before Larry and after Larry," said Dr. Anthony Fauci.[1] Kramer lived in New York City and Connecticut.
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May 27, 2020
RIP Larry Kramer 1935 - 2020
******
This is a pre-Aids novel which hilariously satirised fast-track New York gay life in the 70s. You laugh, you cringe, you may have to look away, and you end up really liking most of these guys. I mean - the fun they had! The drugs they took! But Larry actually wanted them to STOP! RIGHT NOW! or at least SLOOOOW DOWWWWN. He was the lone voice saying to gay men - this hectic crazy unlimited drugs&sex&discoballs lifestyle is gonna hit a brick wall soon. Larry didn't know what the brick wall would be, he just felt it in his bones. All his pals though he was just mean old party pooper Larry. Only a few short years after Faggots was published, along came Aids, and Larry was like hate to say this guys but I told you so and they were all aw shit Larry, you so did, you jerk. So Larry became a big Aids campaigner and wrote a play called The Normal Heart which was not that good but got a lot of attention and he became a polemicist, fighting several good fights.
Back to this particular novel. Here’s a quote from the author:
The straight world thought I was repulsive, and the gay world treated me like a traitor. People would literally turn their back when I walked by. You know what my real crime was? I put the truth in writing. That's what I do: I have told the fucking truth to everyone I have ever met.
If you read this novel, which I’m not sure you should, it depends, you will see why it produced such an uproar. It’s merciless. It’s excruciating. Gay men are not shown in a good light. They are shown to be shallow, vain, and like a lot of well-dressed shallow vain hedonists who’ve been reading too much Marquis de Sade for their own good. I didn’t know any of this stuff when I read it, and I can see why they might want straight people not to know this stuff. These days, 40 years on from the late 70s, maybe people do know this stuff, but maybe not as well. So it still might shock.
But it’s funny. It made me howl. And shudder. And howl. So, give it fifty pages. Page 47 might be the deal-breaker.
******
This is a pre-Aids novel which hilariously satirised fast-track New York gay life in the 70s. You laugh, you cringe, you may have to look away, and you end up really liking most of these guys. I mean - the fun they had! The drugs they took! But Larry actually wanted them to STOP! RIGHT NOW! or at least SLOOOOW DOWWWWN. He was the lone voice saying to gay men - this hectic crazy unlimited drugs&sex&discoballs lifestyle is gonna hit a brick wall soon. Larry didn't know what the brick wall would be, he just felt it in his bones. All his pals though he was just mean old party pooper Larry. Only a few short years after Faggots was published, along came Aids, and Larry was like hate to say this guys but I told you so and they were all aw shit Larry, you so did, you jerk. So Larry became a big Aids campaigner and wrote a play called The Normal Heart which was not that good but got a lot of attention and he became a polemicist, fighting several good fights.
Back to this particular novel. Here’s a quote from the author:
The straight world thought I was repulsive, and the gay world treated me like a traitor. People would literally turn their back when I walked by. You know what my real crime was? I put the truth in writing. That's what I do: I have told the fucking truth to everyone I have ever met.
If you read this novel, which I’m not sure you should, it depends, you will see why it produced such an uproar. It’s merciless. It’s excruciating. Gay men are not shown in a good light. They are shown to be shallow, vain, and like a lot of well-dressed shallow vain hedonists who’ve been reading too much Marquis de Sade for their own good. I didn’t know any of this stuff when I read it, and I can see why they might want straight people not to know this stuff. These days, 40 years on from the late 70s, maybe people do know this stuff, but maybe not as well. So it still might shock.
But it’s funny. It made me howl. And shudder. And howl. So, give it fifty pages. Page 47 might be the deal-breaker.
August 12, 2014
This book presents a satire of 1970s gay life. Through its overly complicated writing style, confusingly large cast of characters, and melodramatic and unrealistic dialog, it boils down to one impotent criticism: gay men make poor life decisions because they have daddy issues.
The book is poor quality literature even if your view of books falls into the Wilde/Nabokov school that what determines the quality of the book is the quality of the writing and not the content of its message. "Message" aside, Kramer's phrase structure is circuitously hard to follow, not a crime in itself if it weren't so flat. As a result, his attempts to shock with raunchy scenarios fail, mere strings of "bad words" attached to inadequately described locations and interchangeable characters.
He attempts to satire then-modern gay life but makes only outdated criticism--criticism you'd expect to hear from a pastor or psychologist in 1950, not from a gay man in nearly 10 years after Stonewall. But, consider the source, Larry Kramer, and the novel's place as merely the first of many of Kramer's obnoxious and artless complaints thrust at a gay culture that would not bend to his Stepford values or validate his vitriol and victim complex, and the novel's shortcomings appear inevitable. Written in response to being jilted by an ex-lover, it's another overreaction by an abrasive and vengeful Kramer.
Portraying gay men as devil-may-care sexual and pharmacological hedonists, this pulpy tragedia views gay culture with a moralistic, judeo-christian lens that cannot move beyond its own biases when confronting sexually liberated characters, pigeonholing them into a single facile typecast stock photocopied from character to character: the self-hating fag. How could gay men have so much crazy sex while seeking love? "They must dislike themselves" just doesn't cut it as cultural or literary analysis.
The book is poor quality literature even if your view of books falls into the Wilde/Nabokov school that what determines the quality of the book is the quality of the writing and not the content of its message. "Message" aside, Kramer's phrase structure is circuitously hard to follow, not a crime in itself if it weren't so flat. As a result, his attempts to shock with raunchy scenarios fail, mere strings of "bad words" attached to inadequately described locations and interchangeable characters.
He attempts to satire then-modern gay life but makes only outdated criticism--criticism you'd expect to hear from a pastor or psychologist in 1950, not from a gay man in nearly 10 years after Stonewall. But, consider the source, Larry Kramer, and the novel's place as merely the first of many of Kramer's obnoxious and artless complaints thrust at a gay culture that would not bend to his Stepford values or validate his vitriol and victim complex, and the novel's shortcomings appear inevitable. Written in response to being jilted by an ex-lover, it's another overreaction by an abrasive and vengeful Kramer.
Portraying gay men as devil-may-care sexual and pharmacological hedonists, this pulpy tragedia views gay culture with a moralistic, judeo-christian lens that cannot move beyond its own biases when confronting sexually liberated characters, pigeonholing them into a single facile typecast stock photocopied from character to character: the self-hating fag. How could gay men have so much crazy sex while seeking love? "They must dislike themselves" just doesn't cut it as cultural or literary analysis.
September 25, 2015
Larry Kramer’s eponymous 1978 novel is one whose reputation precedes it. Apparently condemned upon its publication due to its singular (and single-minded) focus on drugs-and-fucking in the New York gay scene in the 1970s, the truth is always both more. And less.
Reading the book today, especially given the international brouhaha over gay marriage, and the manifestation of strange forms of agit-prop like the Kim Davis case in the US, what I found most surprising about Faggots is how unpolitical it seems.
A good example of this is the infamous Everhard fire, with Kramer noting that “seven brothers perished”. But this becomes more of a footnote than a warning to the general refrain that “We have to disco and drug and fuck if we want to live fantastic!”
Also, and this is probably one of the side-effects of the novel that Kramer could not possibly have foreseen: Faggots today reads like an elegy to a lost age, rather than a dire warning of a pending gay apocalypse in the form of the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s.
Many gay people today come from cultures, families and countries where being gay is an exceedingly complex negotiation between societal and religious expectations and personal convictions. Many gay people have never, ever experienced the kind of totally open and life-affirming community that Kramer describes in Faggots, and which one could argue was both its artistic and personal peak.
Those detractors who argue that the book focuses on drugs-and-fucking to the total exclusion of any sense of these characters’ ordinary lives ignore Kramer’s savviness as a writer. There is an astonishing set piece early on, where Garfield’s doorman clocks in a record 80 ‘single gentlemen’ before 21:30 to his apartment.
The vast range of occupations and class status gives a tantalising glimpse into the depth that the gay community had achieved in what is an incredibly short period. Kramer lists these with a kind of journalistic fervour:
...five attorneys, three art directors, seven models, ten would-be models, twelve said-they-were models, one journalist, three hairdressers (one specialising in colour), two antique dealers, one typewriter repairman, one manager of a Holiday Inn, one garbage collector, two construction workers, one toll collector from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, three policemen, two firemen (one out of state), seven hustlers (three full-time), one elevator operator (Garfield’s landlord’s son), one bass player, five doctors, twelve students, one ethnic dancer, two restauranteurs (one fancy, one shit food), one judge (rather old, but Garfield had to remember business), one newscaster, one weather man, one football player, one folk singer, four truck drivers, twenty-nine on unemployment, eleven unidentified, and the new assistant Orthodox rabbi for a congregation in Seattle.
(The latter is part of a very funny Jewish riff running throughout the book about the fagolim and their weird proclivities, such as ‘tinkling’ on each other).
I suppose another wholly unintentional aspect of Kramer’s book is how much ammunition it gives to anti-gay detractors and protestors to decry the ‘gay lifestyle’ as utterly immoral and devoid of any meaningful social relevance or human contact.
A good example of Kramer’s refreshingly direct, and therefore scandalously provocative, approach to this issue is the following comment: “Sex and love are different and any faggot given half a choice will take the former. And probably fucked with Adolf Hitler if he’d been cute!” The implication here is that sex is the be-all and end-all of gay life, and that gay men are completely indiscriminate in service of their cocks. Kramer points out that:
...whatever prodigies the male genitals can perform, the human mind is incapable of emotional focus when it’s asked to experience so much emotional intensity with so many different objects. And when orgasmic sex ceases to constitute emotional intensity for its participants, then what remains in the realm of sensory possibility for the deadened veteran – human torture, murder, the consumption of children?
Drugs-and-fucking are still very much a mainstay of the gay lifestyle even today, post-AIDS, especially in countries where the simple act of being gay can be punished by death (simply think of vast swathes of Africa and the entire Middle East, while general intolerance and bigotry continues to simmer in countries like Russia).
This is much more an act of defiance, I think, whereas Kramer’s point is that the energy and vitality expended on drugs-and-fucking would result in a Trojan horse type of situation within the gay community itself.
Well, of course that particular dark horse was AIDS, and not even Kramer could have foreseen the subsequent decimation of the gay community that he loved, as much as its excesses and shortcomings exasperated and upset him.
Of course, detractors have drawn an arrow-straight line between the excesses that Kramer depicts and the pandemic that followed. There is no doubt that the rampant promiscuity and drug use added to the death toll (and continues to do so).
However, there is equally no doubt that the energy and vitality that found expression in such promiscuity and drug use also resulted in one of the brightest artistic and cultural renaissances we have ever experienced, and one whose light we still look to today, in tantalising wonder at both its fierceness and its warmth. And Kramer himself is a product of this renaissance.
Another very real point to be made is that the book can be read as a general reflection of Kramer’s own prudishness, despite its explicitness. There is as much laughter as there is vulgarity, but it is a gallows humour that gives the novel a frenetic energy and pace.
The fact it is also written without any chapter breaks, with short sections and short sentences almost akin to dialogue in a play, inevitably means that the characters themselves get the short end of the stick (so to speak). The names and types do tend to blur after a while, but I think this is a deliberate narrative strategy on the part of Kramer, given his subject matter.
People unfamiliar with gay history (which sadly includes many gay people themselves) tend to see Faggots in isolation, but one has to bear in mind that the equally extraordinary Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran was published in the same year, another indication of the gay renaissance that Kramer seems so curiously dismissive of.
Is Faggots as negative and bile-ridden as it has been made out to be? I certainly do not think so. While Kramer has a keen eye for the absurd, he also has a deep and abiding love for his characters, and the community they define and inhabit. The fact that the book ends so prosaically, with one of the protagonists turning 40, is an abiding affirmation of this enduring love.
Reading the book today, especially given the international brouhaha over gay marriage, and the manifestation of strange forms of agit-prop like the Kim Davis case in the US, what I found most surprising about Faggots is how unpolitical it seems.
A good example of this is the infamous Everhard fire, with Kramer noting that “seven brothers perished”. But this becomes more of a footnote than a warning to the general refrain that “We have to disco and drug and fuck if we want to live fantastic!”
Also, and this is probably one of the side-effects of the novel that Kramer could not possibly have foreseen: Faggots today reads like an elegy to a lost age, rather than a dire warning of a pending gay apocalypse in the form of the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s.
Many gay people today come from cultures, families and countries where being gay is an exceedingly complex negotiation between societal and religious expectations and personal convictions. Many gay people have never, ever experienced the kind of totally open and life-affirming community that Kramer describes in Faggots, and which one could argue was both its artistic and personal peak.
Those detractors who argue that the book focuses on drugs-and-fucking to the total exclusion of any sense of these characters’ ordinary lives ignore Kramer’s savviness as a writer. There is an astonishing set piece early on, where Garfield’s doorman clocks in a record 80 ‘single gentlemen’ before 21:30 to his apartment.
The vast range of occupations and class status gives a tantalising glimpse into the depth that the gay community had achieved in what is an incredibly short period. Kramer lists these with a kind of journalistic fervour:
...five attorneys, three art directors, seven models, ten would-be models, twelve said-they-were models, one journalist, three hairdressers (one specialising in colour), two antique dealers, one typewriter repairman, one manager of a Holiday Inn, one garbage collector, two construction workers, one toll collector from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, three policemen, two firemen (one out of state), seven hustlers (three full-time), one elevator operator (Garfield’s landlord’s son), one bass player, five doctors, twelve students, one ethnic dancer, two restauranteurs (one fancy, one shit food), one judge (rather old, but Garfield had to remember business), one newscaster, one weather man, one football player, one folk singer, four truck drivers, twenty-nine on unemployment, eleven unidentified, and the new assistant Orthodox rabbi for a congregation in Seattle.
(The latter is part of a very funny Jewish riff running throughout the book about the fagolim and their weird proclivities, such as ‘tinkling’ on each other).
I suppose another wholly unintentional aspect of Kramer’s book is how much ammunition it gives to anti-gay detractors and protestors to decry the ‘gay lifestyle’ as utterly immoral and devoid of any meaningful social relevance or human contact.
A good example of Kramer’s refreshingly direct, and therefore scandalously provocative, approach to this issue is the following comment: “Sex and love are different and any faggot given half a choice will take the former. And probably fucked with Adolf Hitler if he’d been cute!” The implication here is that sex is the be-all and end-all of gay life, and that gay men are completely indiscriminate in service of their cocks. Kramer points out that:
...whatever prodigies the male genitals can perform, the human mind is incapable of emotional focus when it’s asked to experience so much emotional intensity with so many different objects. And when orgasmic sex ceases to constitute emotional intensity for its participants, then what remains in the realm of sensory possibility for the deadened veteran – human torture, murder, the consumption of children?
Drugs-and-fucking are still very much a mainstay of the gay lifestyle even today, post-AIDS, especially in countries where the simple act of being gay can be punished by death (simply think of vast swathes of Africa and the entire Middle East, while general intolerance and bigotry continues to simmer in countries like Russia).
This is much more an act of defiance, I think, whereas Kramer’s point is that the energy and vitality expended on drugs-and-fucking would result in a Trojan horse type of situation within the gay community itself.
Well, of course that particular dark horse was AIDS, and not even Kramer could have foreseen the subsequent decimation of the gay community that he loved, as much as its excesses and shortcomings exasperated and upset him.
Of course, detractors have drawn an arrow-straight line between the excesses that Kramer depicts and the pandemic that followed. There is no doubt that the rampant promiscuity and drug use added to the death toll (and continues to do so).
However, there is equally no doubt that the energy and vitality that found expression in such promiscuity and drug use also resulted in one of the brightest artistic and cultural renaissances we have ever experienced, and one whose light we still look to today, in tantalising wonder at both its fierceness and its warmth. And Kramer himself is a product of this renaissance.
Another very real point to be made is that the book can be read as a general reflection of Kramer’s own prudishness, despite its explicitness. There is as much laughter as there is vulgarity, but it is a gallows humour that gives the novel a frenetic energy and pace.
The fact it is also written without any chapter breaks, with short sections and short sentences almost akin to dialogue in a play, inevitably means that the characters themselves get the short end of the stick (so to speak). The names and types do tend to blur after a while, but I think this is a deliberate narrative strategy on the part of Kramer, given his subject matter.
People unfamiliar with gay history (which sadly includes many gay people themselves) tend to see Faggots in isolation, but one has to bear in mind that the equally extraordinary Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran was published in the same year, another indication of the gay renaissance that Kramer seems so curiously dismissive of.
Is Faggots as negative and bile-ridden as it has been made out to be? I certainly do not think so. While Kramer has a keen eye for the absurd, he also has a deep and abiding love for his characters, and the community they define and inhabit. The fact that the book ends so prosaically, with one of the protagonists turning 40, is an abiding affirmation of this enduring love.
July 20, 2024
Kramer was the founder of the international ACT UP! movement (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), an organization founded in 1987 to end AIDS, so his contributions to social change, also with his writing, can hardly be overstated - still, he caused a lot of outrage with "Faggots", so let's dive into the controversy and see what it says about the contenders and their arguments.
Plotwise, the novel is set in 1970's New York, so it was written before AIDS, and it loosely revolves around a gay protagonist named Fred, who is about to turn 40 and longing for a long-term romantic partnership, but mainly drifts through a panorama of sex, drugs and parties that do not lead to the fulfillment of his wishes. A huge cast of secondary characters further illustrates the promiscous, hedonistic lifestyle of the gay scene depicted here. While the tone is often satirical, frequently ridiculing Fred's romantic ambitions and the sexual and substance-induced shenanigans around him, there is also a sadness running through the text, juxtaposing abandon with a kind of spiritual emptiness.
So the question arises: Is "Faggots" a testament of conservative sex-negativity? That shortly after its publication, the world it shows disappeared because AIDS ended the very possibility of sexual carelessness gives the whole work an air of impending doom, but Kramer of course could not know: At the time of publication, many read it as a satirical critique of the lifestyle. Only with the spread of HIV/AIDS, it could be newly framed as an account of gay sexual abandon that has now become equivalent to a death wish due to the AIDS pandemic (of course, this is true for all sex that can lead to HIV transmission, but Kramer writes specifically about gay men, a group that has been particularly affected and, for a long time, largely ignored in their plight).
So I should now probably say that I'm not only a cis heterosexual woman, but that I also have no conscious remembrance of the height of the AIDS pandemic, because I was a mere child. A pre-AIDS world is a world I never knew. For me, it's fascinating to research the reactions to Kramer's text, which vary widely, also among queer folks: Is "Faggots" showing a queer utopia, a cultural peak? Is it trashtalking the queer community, or is assuming that a version of harmful respectability politics? I can't say. I just think that Carmen Maria Machado is right when she says that queer people are not obliged to be model citizens in order to be accepted. And I feel like Kramer, who has written the protagonist as an alter ego to process a break-up with the dude appearing in the text as Dinky, was struggling with the divide between his wishes and what was available to him, which is very human: Neither of these options, the wish for romance or the wish for sexual abandon, are wrong, it's about what a person wants at that time. This nuance has gotten lost in some dissections of the text.
Still, I have to admit that the labyrinth of vignettes the novel is made up of became tiresome to me rather quickly, and that the language is not exactly what makes the reputation of "Faggots". IMHO, it is awfully long, but then again, it was published in 1978 and very scandalous for the time, while for today's readers, it's not particularly shocking, not even the sex scenes. All in all, this is now mostly a discussion piece, but a pretty interesting one.
Plotwise, the novel is set in 1970's New York, so it was written before AIDS, and it loosely revolves around a gay protagonist named Fred, who is about to turn 40 and longing for a long-term romantic partnership, but mainly drifts through a panorama of sex, drugs and parties that do not lead to the fulfillment of his wishes. A huge cast of secondary characters further illustrates the promiscous, hedonistic lifestyle of the gay scene depicted here. While the tone is often satirical, frequently ridiculing Fred's romantic ambitions and the sexual and substance-induced shenanigans around him, there is also a sadness running through the text, juxtaposing abandon with a kind of spiritual emptiness.
So the question arises: Is "Faggots" a testament of conservative sex-negativity? That shortly after its publication, the world it shows disappeared because AIDS ended the very possibility of sexual carelessness gives the whole work an air of impending doom, but Kramer of course could not know: At the time of publication, many read it as a satirical critique of the lifestyle. Only with the spread of HIV/AIDS, it could be newly framed as an account of gay sexual abandon that has now become equivalent to a death wish due to the AIDS pandemic (of course, this is true for all sex that can lead to HIV transmission, but Kramer writes specifically about gay men, a group that has been particularly affected and, for a long time, largely ignored in their plight).
So I should now probably say that I'm not only a cis heterosexual woman, but that I also have no conscious remembrance of the height of the AIDS pandemic, because I was a mere child. A pre-AIDS world is a world I never knew. For me, it's fascinating to research the reactions to Kramer's text, which vary widely, also among queer folks: Is "Faggots" showing a queer utopia, a cultural peak? Is it trashtalking the queer community, or is assuming that a version of harmful respectability politics? I can't say. I just think that Carmen Maria Machado is right when she says that queer people are not obliged to be model citizens in order to be accepted. And I feel like Kramer, who has written the protagonist as an alter ego to process a break-up with the dude appearing in the text as Dinky, was struggling with the divide between his wishes and what was available to him, which is very human: Neither of these options, the wish for romance or the wish for sexual abandon, are wrong, it's about what a person wants at that time. This nuance has gotten lost in some dissections of the text.
Still, I have to admit that the labyrinth of vignettes the novel is made up of became tiresome to me rather quickly, and that the language is not exactly what makes the reputation of "Faggots". IMHO, it is awfully long, but then again, it was published in 1978 and very scandalous for the time, while for today's readers, it's not particularly shocking, not even the sex scenes. All in all, this is now mostly a discussion piece, but a pretty interesting one.
May 29, 2020
MAY 2020 UPDATE: Farewell, Larry Kramer! I hate that this is my only review of any of your books. But your accomplishments and bravery and anger inspired me as a youth, and continue to inspire me. You were a giant among men.
larry kramer sure had problems with his fellow queers! a depressing and desperately unfunny read, written by someone who needed to let the love in a little. but hey, he went on to found act-up, so maybe this was a useful exorcism of sorts.
larry kramer sure had problems with his fellow queers! a depressing and desperately unfunny read, written by someone who needed to let the love in a little. but hey, he went on to found act-up, so maybe this was a useful exorcism of sorts.
April 30, 2014
I thought I was actually going to like Faggots. The mythos behind the book is irresistible for a start: shrewd lone wolf foresees impending destruction of his community and writes fiery polemic as a clarion call to action, only to be cruelly shunned by hedonists unwilling for the good times to end. Who doesn't want to stand alongside Kramer, maligned and outcast, screaming his famous line - 'We're fucking ourselves to death!' - into the forthcoming abyss?
Having read it, however, I now understand the hate. The gay community didn't turn on this novel because it spat out a few caustic home truths. Faggots was rejected because it was, and remains, a bad novel. The writing is garrulous and bombastic, relentlessly - Kramer seems to be shooting for 'manic brilliance' but comes across as lazy and unfocused instead. His characters are a litany of overcooked stereotypes - the young, dumb twink; the predatory older men - and his morality has all the subtlety of an Anita Bryant.
The obvious defense against all these charges - 'It's just satire, and you didn't get it' - doesn't really hold water. Perhaps Kramer thought satire was simply a case of imitate, exaggerate and regurgitate, but to be truly effective satire needs to go a step further, actively sympathising with and developing an affinity for its source matter. The satirist needs to get into the minds of his or her subjects and explore their serious hopes and dreams in order to finally play up the absurdity and frailty of them. Some people can do this well - Andrew Holleran is one (although I dislike Dancer from the Dance for other reasons.) But Kramer never thinks to scratch away at the surface of his characters, as Holleran does, to see what's really driving them. Ultimately he misses every punch he throws.
The only other defense of the novel - that Kramer foresaw what others couldn't - is, well, insufficient. As Reed Woodhouse puts it in his own critique of Faggots: 'I cannot like this book for that reason alone: a novel is not a prediction.' If only Kramer had stepped down from his pedestal, reeled in his pious moralising and tried to unpick what was really going on in the minds of those he lambasts, perhaps then his message would have resonated.
Having read it, however, I now understand the hate. The gay community didn't turn on this novel because it spat out a few caustic home truths. Faggots was rejected because it was, and remains, a bad novel. The writing is garrulous and bombastic, relentlessly - Kramer seems to be shooting for 'manic brilliance' but comes across as lazy and unfocused instead. His characters are a litany of overcooked stereotypes - the young, dumb twink; the predatory older men - and his morality has all the subtlety of an Anita Bryant.
The obvious defense against all these charges - 'It's just satire, and you didn't get it' - doesn't really hold water. Perhaps Kramer thought satire was simply a case of imitate, exaggerate and regurgitate, but to be truly effective satire needs to go a step further, actively sympathising with and developing an affinity for its source matter. The satirist needs to get into the minds of his or her subjects and explore their serious hopes and dreams in order to finally play up the absurdity and frailty of them. Some people can do this well - Andrew Holleran is one (although I dislike Dancer from the Dance for other reasons.) But Kramer never thinks to scratch away at the surface of his characters, as Holleran does, to see what's really driving them. Ultimately he misses every punch he throws.
The only other defense of the novel - that Kramer foresaw what others couldn't - is, well, insufficient. As Reed Woodhouse puts it in his own critique of Faggots: 'I cannot like this book for that reason alone: a novel is not a prediction.' If only Kramer had stepped down from his pedestal, reeled in his pious moralising and tried to unpick what was really going on in the minds of those he lambasts, perhaps then his message would have resonated.
May 28, 2020
Rest in Power Larry Kramer 1935 - 2020
This looms large over the last few decades of Gay Literature and intersects explosively with history and activism: but is it any good? It’s really quite a difficult one to assess, as it raises the question of what good actually is. The book was (and remains) wildly successful commercially and is now seen as uniquely capturing a moment of history shortly to be swept away by the AIDS epidemic.
I don’t think it’s well-written. To me it reads as if it were originally a private project - an in-joke perhaps - which found its way onto the desk of a publishing executive and they went for it. Kramer was Oscar-nominated for a film script, so perhaps that burnished his credibility with Random House, the original publishers in 1978.
The prose feels tossed off, sloppy, and emotionally monotonal. It does have the energy and variety of observation of Dickens, but lacks his semantic suppleness. The dialogue is extremely poor for an Oscar screenwriting nominee. There are too many characters, randomly introduced, under-developed, and placed in repetitive situations.
I feel a much better book, perhaps a masterpiece, could have emerged from a few more drafts and some rigorous copy editing.
I couldn’t help comparing this to Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. Waugh pilloried the morally vacuous Flapper generation of the 1920s, ending the book (published 1930) by predicting WWII. Kramer similarly pillories the shallow hedonism of 70s Gay New York, and predicts catastrophe. But Waugh’s story is lean and lethal, carrying not a spare ounce, and his dialogue is cuttingly sharp. Kramer by contrast randomly and energetically shoots off in all directions.
However, Kramer’s observations, no matter how outré, do ring completely true - his satire does manage to hit its targets painfully accurately again and again. The book is frequently amusing and always shocking. Some of these sexual peccadillos must be the first time described in respectable fiction. Hilariously, a gay contemporary was outraged that Kramer had “revealed all our secrets” to the straight world. Kramer mischievously now says the book is a ‘love letter’ to his husband (the model for the emotionally unattainable and sexually voracious Dinky character in the book). The controversy the novel exploded on publication can be attested by the fact Faggots was banned by New York’s only gay bookshop. And having ‘predicted’ the AIDS crisis, survived it, been burnished in the glow of Kramer’s own magnificent activism in those years, it has emerged today still highly relevant to the Grindr & chemsex generation.
Faggots’ controversial and live-wire focus on the nature and status of sex in gay men’s lives will probably, I reckon, mean this book will continue to be read long after better written ones are forgotten.
This looms large over the last few decades of Gay Literature and intersects explosively with history and activism: but is it any good? It’s really quite a difficult one to assess, as it raises the question of what good actually is. The book was (and remains) wildly successful commercially and is now seen as uniquely capturing a moment of history shortly to be swept away by the AIDS epidemic.
I don’t think it’s well-written. To me it reads as if it were originally a private project - an in-joke perhaps - which found its way onto the desk of a publishing executive and they went for it. Kramer was Oscar-nominated for a film script, so perhaps that burnished his credibility with Random House, the original publishers in 1978.
The prose feels tossed off, sloppy, and emotionally monotonal. It does have the energy and variety of observation of Dickens, but lacks his semantic suppleness. The dialogue is extremely poor for an Oscar screenwriting nominee. There are too many characters, randomly introduced, under-developed, and placed in repetitive situations.
I feel a much better book, perhaps a masterpiece, could have emerged from a few more drafts and some rigorous copy editing.
I couldn’t help comparing this to Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. Waugh pilloried the morally vacuous Flapper generation of the 1920s, ending the book (published 1930) by predicting WWII. Kramer similarly pillories the shallow hedonism of 70s Gay New York, and predicts catastrophe. But Waugh’s story is lean and lethal, carrying not a spare ounce, and his dialogue is cuttingly sharp. Kramer by contrast randomly and energetically shoots off in all directions.
However, Kramer’s observations, no matter how outré, do ring completely true - his satire does manage to hit its targets painfully accurately again and again. The book is frequently amusing and always shocking. Some of these sexual peccadillos must be the first time described in respectable fiction. Hilariously, a gay contemporary was outraged that Kramer had “revealed all our secrets” to the straight world. Kramer mischievously now says the book is a ‘love letter’ to his husband (the model for the emotionally unattainable and sexually voracious Dinky character in the book). The controversy the novel exploded on publication can be attested by the fact Faggots was banned by New York’s only gay bookshop. And having ‘predicted’ the AIDS crisis, survived it, been burnished in the glow of Kramer’s own magnificent activism in those years, it has emerged today still highly relevant to the Grindr & chemsex generation.
Faggots’ controversial and live-wire focus on the nature and status of sex in gay men’s lives will probably, I reckon, mean this book will continue to be read long after better written ones are forgotten.
September 4, 2022
Unrestrained, cheeky, forthright, deliciously satirical, shamelessly uninhibited, and thirsty af.
A bit sloppy at places perhaps, but all the more splendid for it!
_______
Reading updates.
A bit sloppy at places perhaps, but all the more splendid for it!
_______
Reading updates.
June 30, 2017
Larry Kramer is a literary and political figure who (as the founder of ACT UP) I always believe I ought to feel some sort of solidarity with, but who, when I read his work, always frustrates me in the most extreme way. Yet another example of what is perceptually Kramer's sex negative perspective and self-hating queerness, "Faggots" tells the story of lonely Fred as he traverses 1970s gay New York in search of love. Of course, because the various instantiations of gay sexuality that Kramer so methodically mischaracterizes can never align with expressions of love in a hetero-oriented, respectability politics book, Fred never finds the love he seeks - constantly being rejected by the man he seeks after because this man is always seeking the next sexual "high."
Fred - clearly an embodiment of Kramer (Kramer loves to paint himself as the victimized protagonist in all of his works) in the end is supposed to represent the lonely hero that so many gays who reject mainstream gay culture (whatever that means) desire.
Of course, in the end, this book serves only to prop up and facilitate oppressive sexual norms rooted in heterosexual repression of desire. Kramer and his narcissism strike again.
Fred - clearly an embodiment of Kramer (Kramer loves to paint himself as the victimized protagonist in all of his works) in the end is supposed to represent the lonely hero that so many gays who reject mainstream gay culture (whatever that means) desire.
Of course, in the end, this book serves only to prop up and facilitate oppressive sexual norms rooted in heterosexual repression of desire. Kramer and his narcissism strike again.
July 29, 2022
2.5, rounded down.
I read this soon after it first came out, so circa 1978-9, and had somewhat fond memories of it, mainly because as a suburban 24-year-old who had recently come out, it presented the big bad world of gay NYC to my wondering eyes - something I wouldn't witness first-hand for another decade. Coming back to it now some 40+ years later, and particularly after rereading Holleran's far superior Dancer From The Dance, it seemed very slow, messy and downbeat.
Kramer's book caused a furor for its sex-negative portrayal of the NY demi-monde, and it IS relentlessly depressing. But worse than that, it is hopelessly convoluted - overwritten and yet underdeveloped, with such a superfluity of characters (a dozen major ones and seemingly three dozen minor) that I could never keep any of them straight (no pun intended). Trash, Mikie, Dawsie, Yo-yo, etc. - we hardly knew ye.
There is virtually no real plot, but the two major strands of the narrative barely hold the book together - one being the attempt of Richie 'Boo Boo' Bronstein to kidnap himself and force his father Abe to cough up a cool million for his return; the second the abysmal attempt of the protagonist, based on the author himself, self-hating boychik Fred Lemish to either reclaim his cheating lover Dinky, or release himself from his obsession and find 'true love'.
Mainly we get a LOT of exposition about various sexual activities and parties that are so repetitious and mind-numbing as to make the book a slow, enervating slog. Also, many of the main characters, like Kramer himself, are of the Jewish persuasion and there is such a biting undercurrent of antisemitic stereotyping as to make one wince.
I considered DNF-ing it several times, as it just didn't seem to be going anywhere interesting (and didn't) - the ending (spoil alert) finds Fred renouncing Dinky as unworthy of his love after witnessing his public fisting at a Fire Island party... and accepting, or perhaps just reconciling, his sexual orientation, through some simplistic pseudo-Freudian self-analysis, blaming it all on Mumsy and Dada. Blech.
In reality, Kramer took back up with his 'Dinky' 13 years after the book was published, they married in 2013, and were together till his death in 2020. Now THAT would have made a far more interesting novel.
So a begrudging 2 stars for its ground-breaking and historical importance, and for Kramer's legacy of gay and AIDS activism - I just wish the book was as good as I recalled it in memory.
I read this soon after it first came out, so circa 1978-9, and had somewhat fond memories of it, mainly because as a suburban 24-year-old who had recently come out, it presented the big bad world of gay NYC to my wondering eyes - something I wouldn't witness first-hand for another decade. Coming back to it now some 40+ years later, and particularly after rereading Holleran's far superior Dancer From The Dance, it seemed very slow, messy and downbeat.
Kramer's book caused a furor for its sex-negative portrayal of the NY demi-monde, and it IS relentlessly depressing. But worse than that, it is hopelessly convoluted - overwritten and yet underdeveloped, with such a superfluity of characters (a dozen major ones and seemingly three dozen minor) that I could never keep any of them straight (no pun intended). Trash, Mikie, Dawsie, Yo-yo, etc. - we hardly knew ye.
There is virtually no real plot, but the two major strands of the narrative barely hold the book together - one being the attempt of Richie 'Boo Boo' Bronstein to kidnap himself and force his father Abe to cough up a cool million for his return; the second the abysmal attempt of the protagonist, based on the author himself, self-hating boychik Fred Lemish to either reclaim his cheating lover Dinky, or release himself from his obsession and find 'true love'.
Mainly we get a LOT of exposition about various sexual activities and parties that are so repetitious and mind-numbing as to make the book a slow, enervating slog. Also, many of the main characters, like Kramer himself, are of the Jewish persuasion and there is such a biting undercurrent of antisemitic stereotyping as to make one wince.
I considered DNF-ing it several times, as it just didn't seem to be going anywhere interesting (and didn't) - the ending (spoil alert) finds Fred renouncing Dinky as unworthy of his love after witnessing his public fisting at a Fire Island party... and accepting, or perhaps just reconciling, his sexual orientation, through some simplistic pseudo-Freudian self-analysis, blaming it all on Mumsy and Dada. Blech.
In reality, Kramer took back up with his 'Dinky' 13 years after the book was published, they married in 2013, and were together till his death in 2020. Now THAT would have made a far more interesting novel.
So a begrudging 2 stars for its ground-breaking and historical importance, and for Kramer's legacy of gay and AIDS activism - I just wish the book was as good as I recalled it in memory.
December 31, 2022
Impossible, while reading this book, to forget how Larry Kramer, after writing this book in 1978 and receiving such backlash for it, absorbed the abuse his vision received and when - all too quickly - his dread began to realize itself in an epidemic that has proved far more ghastly than any critic could have imagined, he turned his unsleeping insight and energy into powerful social action, into the creation of eminently practical means of combating both the plague and society’s refusal to acknowledge the plain humanity of its victims. This is for me as astonishing as it is admirable.
But regardless. Larry Kramer, the writer: yes it’s a satire and yes it’s very raunchy and absolutely hilarious and ridiculous. But really, I found this absolutely amazingly written. I devoured it
But regardless. Larry Kramer, the writer: yes it’s a satire and yes it’s very raunchy and absolutely hilarious and ridiculous. But really, I found this absolutely amazingly written. I devoured it
April 1, 2017
I first heard of this book when I read Randy Shilts' history of the AIDS crisis, 'And the Band Played On' about 10 years ago, and was aware of its controversial nature in both the straight and gay world. It came to my attention again recently when watching a PBS special on the author, so I bought a second hand copy. On reading it's easy to see what all the furore was about.
The book was published in 1978, a couple of years before the first AIDS deaths, at the height of the hedonistic lifestyle that many gay men, having found the liberation they craved, had carved out for themselves. From a 21st century perspective, even having read historical accounts and memoirs about the era, reading this novel and realising that it was written from within and isn't considered to be exaggerated, it's pretty shocking - the desire for that next high, in whatever form, driving people who in the outside world are the same as anyone else, to greater and greater extremities.
Fred, Kramer's fictional embodiment, desires something different - the love of one person, rather than the physical pleasure freely available from casual hookups, and has his eyes opened to the whole scene by the behaviour of Dinky, the object of his affection, who plays him as well as a string of others along, and is fully embroiled in the hedonism. As well as documenting the physical embodiment of the scene, through Fred, Kramer manages to lay bare the emotional wasteland that the desire for pleasure created at the time.
This is a difficult read, that to be honest became tedious about 250 pages in, due to its disagreeable characters and repetitive action, but as a social document I feel it's definitely worthwhile. Given Kramer's later work in AIDS activism, the prophetic nature of the dangers of such behaviours of the author would be ironic if it wasn't so sad.
I didn't enjoy the book but I'm glad that I read it.
The book was published in 1978, a couple of years before the first AIDS deaths, at the height of the hedonistic lifestyle that many gay men, having found the liberation they craved, had carved out for themselves. From a 21st century perspective, even having read historical accounts and memoirs about the era, reading this novel and realising that it was written from within and isn't considered to be exaggerated, it's pretty shocking - the desire for that next high, in whatever form, driving people who in the outside world are the same as anyone else, to greater and greater extremities.
Fred, Kramer's fictional embodiment, desires something different - the love of one person, rather than the physical pleasure freely available from casual hookups, and has his eyes opened to the whole scene by the behaviour of Dinky, the object of his affection, who plays him as well as a string of others along, and is fully embroiled in the hedonism. As well as documenting the physical embodiment of the scene, through Fred, Kramer manages to lay bare the emotional wasteland that the desire for pleasure created at the time.
This is a difficult read, that to be honest became tedious about 250 pages in, due to its disagreeable characters and repetitive action, but as a social document I feel it's definitely worthwhile. Given Kramer's later work in AIDS activism, the prophetic nature of the dangers of such behaviours of the author would be ironic if it wasn't so sad.
I didn't enjoy the book but I'm glad that I read it.
July 14, 2024
I can't remember when I first read this book - end of the nineties probably - so I missed all the controversies when it first came out but what I remember (and subsequent reading's - the most recent during the lockdowns in 2020/21 - confirm) was that it was a very clever, very funny and very good book. I never understood the anger the book attracted - although I had only the most fleeting encounters with pre-AIDS gay New York and unfortunately never got to Fire Island (I'll be absolutely honest and admit that I was callow and inexperienced - terrified but fascinated and sure that what I saw was what I wanted even if I wasn't ready yet) I had no problems identifying what the author wrote about with my experiences in 1980s gay London (I am not in any way making a comparison or claiming comparability between the two) and the belief in unfettered sexual indulgence and that there was nothing to apologize for in being gay or in what we did nor did we need to follow heterosexual standards or norms. I always felt that much of the criticism the book attracted was not because it was wrong or untrue but because some thought it was not right to say and write about the things he did.
I think as our whole idea of gay life and times has developed and changed as we move into greater acceptance and new generations of gays grow up and discover and change things I think this book is even more worthwhile reading and - like a lot of early gay literature I think it will be appreciated more in the future.
I think as our whole idea of gay life and times has developed and changed as we move into greater acceptance and new generations of gays grow up and discover and change things I think this book is even more worthwhile reading and - like a lot of early gay literature I think it will be appreciated more in the future.
December 30, 2024
i wanted to enjoy this book more than i did. i appreciate kramer as an activist and his ability to pack a punch with his writing is very impressive, but i don’t think his skill set translates very well into novel form. 400 pages of sex with no discernable plot is a lot, it turns out.
January 6, 2014
It isn't very well written. Sentence fragments should be consumed like trans fats, sparingly if at all. Larry Kramer, however fills this book with nothing but sentence fragments and run-on sentences. Not only that, but Kramer utilizes random capitalization in the middle of sentences and does not know the difference between when to use a versus an. Add that on to the fact that the myriad of characters in combination with a confusing plot leads to a very poorly written novel. Overall, I would not recommend this book to anyone. I had high hopes for this book, due to the fact that it was written by an acclaimed activist, not to mention the founder of ACT UP, a leading organization in the fight against AIDS; however, I was sorely disappointed.
March 15, 2023
maybe i’m…. maybe i’m dinky.
December 15, 2008
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.
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.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 7, 2024
DNF around page 270.
I just cannot seem to get behind the classic gay novels from the Violet Quill generation, especially if they follow the structure of drugs, sex, party, and repeat ad nauseaum. I abhorred Dancer from the Dance because of all its slippery haziness, and here is Faggots, taking it one notch higher, following a vast gaggle of gays living it up in New York who barely have a minute to catch their breath between the various orgies they drop by. It is very inexplicable that I do not like these novels because, on paper, they have the perfect mix of ingredients that would add up to my definition of an enjoyable read. But they offer nothing for me to hold on to as I try to enjoy the wild ride - not much in terms of storyline or likeable characters or interesting dialogue. These novels are vaporous clouds, their interest and focus drifting from one (usually scandalous) set piece to another, which is fine but I love solidity. Maybe what went on in New York in the 60s and 70s cannot be described with anything approaching conventional form of a novel (it sure does sound like a revolutionary, all-defying era that I personally find terrifying), so naturally this may be the only way to do it. I was really looking to enjoy a gay masterpiece, but now I'll look elsewhere.
I just cannot seem to get behind the classic gay novels from the Violet Quill generation, especially if they follow the structure of drugs, sex, party, and repeat ad nauseaum. I abhorred Dancer from the Dance because of all its slippery haziness, and here is Faggots, taking it one notch higher, following a vast gaggle of gays living it up in New York who barely have a minute to catch their breath between the various orgies they drop by. It is very inexplicable that I do not like these novels because, on paper, they have the perfect mix of ingredients that would add up to my definition of an enjoyable read. But they offer nothing for me to hold on to as I try to enjoy the wild ride - not much in terms of storyline or likeable characters or interesting dialogue. These novels are vaporous clouds, their interest and focus drifting from one (usually scandalous) set piece to another, which is fine but I love solidity. Maybe what went on in New York in the 60s and 70s cannot be described with anything approaching conventional form of a novel (it sure does sound like a revolutionary, all-defying era that I personally find terrifying), so naturally this may be the only way to do it. I was really looking to enjoy a gay masterpiece, but now I'll look elsewhere.
September 28, 2007
Typical Larry Kramer. Bring your own iconic "cachet" to the table, mix in plenty of defiant f-you attitude, and adopt the posture of creating "a brutally frank document of a unique time and circumstance" and presto, you are free to verbally fetishize all the astounding self-indulgence and destruction of your past, and have it called literature.
Get off the pedestal you put yourself on Larry, and remove your homemade hero medals. You're not a rebel. You're a grouchy old bipedal hard-on with a good vocabulary.
Pure crap.
Get off the pedestal you put yourself on Larry, and remove your homemade hero medals. You're not a rebel. You're a grouchy old bipedal hard-on with a good vocabulary.
Pure crap.
July 20, 2021
I thought this book would comment on homosexual culture. Instead it is a perverse and reductive comment on sado-masochistic gay sex.
March 4, 2024
Interesting because of its historical value but a total slog otherwise that bored me with every description of random sex acts and differently named clones dressed in flannel and leather.
December 10, 2015
The sloppiest masterpiece I've ever read, which (maybe) describes a lot of homosexuals I've encountered. FAGGOTS is scattershot, lyrical, multifaceted, hilarious, eternally quotable, and entirely mesmerizing. It's almost staggering in scope and touch. To call it a landmark book is to cheapen it to discount shelves across the world.
Certain storylines reach too far, but the last twelve pages summarize a zeitgeist and a city in an era that was soon eclipsed by the HIV/AIDS panic. The book is weirdly prophetic like that.
I'm not a huge fan of Larry Kramer, and while I almost wish I had never heard anything he's said in a public space because it colored the reading of the book, I can't forsake his presence in contemporary gay culture. He's an oracle.
I have never highlighted and noted a fiction book like this. I didn't know fiction could have such a sense of urgency--a total, filthy insistence--until FAGGOTS. #micdrop
Certain storylines reach too far, but the last twelve pages summarize a zeitgeist and a city in an era that was soon eclipsed by the HIV/AIDS panic. The book is weirdly prophetic like that.
I'm not a huge fan of Larry Kramer, and while I almost wish I had never heard anything he's said in a public space because it colored the reading of the book, I can't forsake his presence in contemporary gay culture. He's an oracle.
I have never highlighted and noted a fiction book like this. I didn't know fiction could have such a sense of urgency--a total, filthy insistence--until FAGGOTS. #micdrop
September 20, 2009
So, I couldn't keep an interest for more than 30 or so pages. I decided to read this book because Randy Shilts praised Larry Kramer as a revolutionary gay (and later AIDS) activist who broke through all of these boundaries and really garnered a lot of heat from all angles with the publication of this work of fiction.
However, I was ultimately disappointed. The writing was not entirely easy to follow, the prose was poorly written, and the characters were either flat or just plain un-memorable.
Perhaps in a few more years I'll give this book another try. For now I'm returning it to the library and focusing on books that can grab me in the first 50 or so pages.
However, I was ultimately disappointed. The writing was not entirely easy to follow, the prose was poorly written, and the characters were either flat or just plain un-memorable.
Perhaps in a few more years I'll give this book another try. For now I'm returning it to the library and focusing on books that can grab me in the first 50 or so pages.
February 8, 2023
This book was simultaneously too much and not enough of anything.
April 25, 2024
Wild, interesting book with a fresh voice but a bitter perspective.
The structure of this book was really interesting and did an incredible job of illustrating overlapping and intertwined relationships between extremely well developed characters over the course of (if I’m not mistaken) a single weekend. The various vignettes ripped between funny, shocking, and (more rarely) poignant. I was certainly locked in the whole time - page turner is a good description.
The story also provided a cool window into gay life pre-AIDS, which was in some ways remarkably familiar but touched with a kind of foreboding for a modern reader. This also added color to the incisive and fair critique of a common tendency of gay men to reject emotional intimacy in favor of an abundance of sexual intimacy. The value of this critique, however, was squandered at the end of the book when the author indulges in a vindictive, sadistic, and unnecessary sequence that (to me) suggests a personal romantic frustration leading to a rejection of sexual promiscuity as opposed to a more principled vision of greater emotional maturity within a community. It seems that he finds Dinky, the character used to embody intimacy foiled by promiscuity, not merely to be the product of a warped and insecure culture, but depraved to the point of sin and worthy of extreme punishment. He then goes on to seemingly attribute homosexuality to failed paternal relationships (a theory he had previously rejected in the book) by allowing Fred to self actualize only through a realization that he is the product of parental neglect (not to mention the Boo Boo and Abe fiasco).
Honestly: psycho book to give someone you’re dating
All that being said, the book is worth a read, if only to have your jaw dropped a couple times.
The structure of this book was really interesting and did an incredible job of illustrating overlapping and intertwined relationships between extremely well developed characters over the course of (if I’m not mistaken) a single weekend. The various vignettes ripped between funny, shocking, and (more rarely) poignant. I was certainly locked in the whole time - page turner is a good description.
The story also provided a cool window into gay life pre-AIDS, which was in some ways remarkably familiar but touched with a kind of foreboding for a modern reader. This also added color to the incisive and fair critique of a common tendency of gay men to reject emotional intimacy in favor of an abundance of sexual intimacy. The value of this critique, however, was squandered at the end of the book when the author indulges in a vindictive, sadistic, and unnecessary sequence that (to me) suggests a personal romantic frustration leading to a rejection of sexual promiscuity as opposed to a more principled vision of greater emotional maturity within a community. It seems that he finds Dinky, the character used to embody intimacy foiled by promiscuity, not merely to be the product of a warped and insecure culture, but depraved to the point of sin and worthy of extreme punishment. He then goes on to seemingly attribute homosexuality to failed paternal relationships (a theory he had previously rejected in the book) by allowing Fred to self actualize only through a realization that he is the product of parental neglect (not to mention the Boo Boo and Abe fiasco).
Honestly: psycho book to give someone you’re dating
All that being said, the book is worth a read, if only to have your jaw dropped a couple times.
June 15, 2020
Though the prose and dialogue often seem frozen in time, Kramer's central premise – the interplay of sex and love for gay men – remains as relevant as it ever was.
May 21, 2017
Great works of literature transcend their specific cultural context. Hamlet, for example, or Candide or Moby-Dick or The Canterbury Tales are still considered masterpieces that resonate with significance and artistic integrity hundreds of years after they were written. Perhaps it is trickier for a satire to preserve its accessibility or its appeal as time passes, since a satire often targets topical rather than timeless concerns. Brilliantly written and insightful satires, such as “A Modest Proposal” and Don Quixote, however, manage to remain relevant long after their heyday.
Sadly, Faggots, which fancies itself a satire and has been hailed as a tour de force of modern queer literature, merits none of these distinctions. In truth, in can hardly be characterized as a novel at all, since it lacks most of the defining elements of the genre on a very fundamental level—for example, a well-constructed plot or complex and thoughtfully developed characters. The story, such as it is, consists of allegedly witty vignettes or set pieces strung together with little sense of coherence or narrative veracity and populated by an unnecessarily large cast of undeveloped flat characters. A generous reading might presume that Kramer is attempting a stream-of-consciousness style, but if that’s the case, his novelistic skill is not up to the task, since such a style requires profound psychological insight into the complex thought patterns of a character who provides narrative perspective.
Upon its publication in 1978, Faggots sowed controversy due to its graphic depiction of gay sex, fetishes, drug use, incest, and other scandalous “perversities.” To be fair, as a depiction of pre-AIDS era gay culture in New York City, the novel retains great cultural value as an artifact of that specific historical moment. But it cannot be considered a work of literature. One suspects that there is good reason why Kramer, who penned the magnificent play (and later screenplay) The Normal Heart and contributed greatly to queer activism in the latter part of the 20th century, never wrote another novel.
Sadly, Faggots, which fancies itself a satire and has been hailed as a tour de force of modern queer literature, merits none of these distinctions. In truth, in can hardly be characterized as a novel at all, since it lacks most of the defining elements of the genre on a very fundamental level—for example, a well-constructed plot or complex and thoughtfully developed characters. The story, such as it is, consists of allegedly witty vignettes or set pieces strung together with little sense of coherence or narrative veracity and populated by an unnecessarily large cast of undeveloped flat characters. A generous reading might presume that Kramer is attempting a stream-of-consciousness style, but if that’s the case, his novelistic skill is not up to the task, since such a style requires profound psychological insight into the complex thought patterns of a character who provides narrative perspective.
Upon its publication in 1978, Faggots sowed controversy due to its graphic depiction of gay sex, fetishes, drug use, incest, and other scandalous “perversities.” To be fair, as a depiction of pre-AIDS era gay culture in New York City, the novel retains great cultural value as an artifact of that specific historical moment. But it cannot be considered a work of literature. One suspects that there is good reason why Kramer, who penned the magnificent play (and later screenplay) The Normal Heart and contributed greatly to queer activism in the latter part of the 20th century, never wrote another novel.
October 17, 2011
However lost on critics, not to mention members of the gay establishment at the time, "Faggots" is a brilliant Mepinnean satire that takes as the object of its satire the intellectual conceit of gay sexual liberation, and the notion that gay culture would occupy a leadership position in showing America how to overcome its sexual prudery and commitment to values such as fidelity, monogamy, and true love. In fact, Kramer explores a subculture is which nothing is taboo except for the concept of monogamous love between men, which everyone says they want and no one does anything positive to achieve.
The central protagonist in this epic sexual-cultural-historical novel is the screenwriter Ned Lemish, who is a stand in for Larry Kramer. He descends into an underground sex world in New York City, as in Fire Island, in which no position, combination of positions, times and places for sex, or sexual behaviors are off limits. The grand scene occurs when a drop dead gorgeous young man who wants to be a model comes to New York, is given drugs, and is gradually swooped upon by an army of vulturous men, who gang rape him and others until the point of unconsciousness. There is a scene, in Fire Island, of the ultimate sexual masochism, in which a man who refuses to love Fred submits himself to anal fist sex administered by a horde of men who participate in and watch this spectacle as if it has the sacred meaning of a transformational ritual. Kramer deplores the taboo on faithful love, as he deplores the situation where the only way gay men can communicate is through sex and more sex.
September 22, 2015
Funny. Shocking. Sad. A cry in the dark.
Fred Lemish is the perfect narrator to me. Neurotic, faulted, well-meaning, sentimental, awkward, determined, analytic, and goodhearted, he took me on quite a ride through the Summer of His Life.
The characters are many and it takes a bit of reading to figure out who's who, but with names like Dinky, and Dom Dom, and Winnie, and Rolla, and Boo Boo...Well, enough said. I think I enjoyed The Winston Man the most, him and Abe, the poor, clueless Abe.
There's a lot of sex. Lots of graphic sex. But the sex is the conduit, the cause, the reason, the consequence, the main character.
Fred Lemish' pursuit of Dinky Adams is heartbreaking and pathetic, but it's also transforming for Fred and across the chase, Fred reveals the Gay Landscape of the late seventies, with all its cracks and crevasses and cliffs and deserts...Where are the green meadows, he wonders.
Of course, in the end, when the sun finally rises on Fire Island, and they are all present,the boys, the ones who paved the way as best they knew and could, when they are all sitting or standing quietly, brothers now, forgetting the events of the night, but only passing on the words, "I love you", I could see the dark tidal wave mounting in the distance. We all know how the story ends.
In the words of the Pet Shop Boys....
"But I thought in spite of dreams
You'd be sitting somewhere here with me..."
Fred Lemish is the perfect narrator to me. Neurotic, faulted, well-meaning, sentimental, awkward, determined, analytic, and goodhearted, he took me on quite a ride through the Summer of His Life.
The characters are many and it takes a bit of reading to figure out who's who, but with names like Dinky, and Dom Dom, and Winnie, and Rolla, and Boo Boo...Well, enough said. I think I enjoyed The Winston Man the most, him and Abe, the poor, clueless Abe.
There's a lot of sex. Lots of graphic sex. But the sex is the conduit, the cause, the reason, the consequence, the main character.
Fred Lemish' pursuit of Dinky Adams is heartbreaking and pathetic, but it's also transforming for Fred and across the chase, Fred reveals the Gay Landscape of the late seventies, with all its cracks and crevasses and cliffs and deserts...Where are the green meadows, he wonders.
Of course, in the end, when the sun finally rises on Fire Island, and they are all present,the boys, the ones who paved the way as best they knew and could, when they are all sitting or standing quietly, brothers now, forgetting the events of the night, but only passing on the words, "I love you", I could see the dark tidal wave mounting in the distance. We all know how the story ends.
In the words of the Pet Shop Boys....
"But I thought in spite of dreams
You'd be sitting somewhere here with me..."
August 8, 2010
"Yes, sex and love were different items when he wanted them in one, and yes, having so much sex made having love impossible, and yes, sadism was only a way to keep people away from us and masochism only a way to clutch them close, and yes, we are sadists with some guys and masochists with other guys and sometimes both with both, and yes, we're all out of the closet but we're still in the ghetto and all I see is guys hurting each other and themselves. But how to get out! And yes, the world is giving us a bad name and we're giving us a bad name and one of us has got to stop and it's not going to be the world." (31-32)
"...every faggot, though I shall not use this word, considers his homosexuality as very special to him, in the sense of sacrosanct, like a pain which he has lived with a very long time. Thus it becomes a sacred pain, and one which is difficult to challenge on the one hand, or to share with another faggot on the other, whose comprehension of exactly the same pain would seem to make him the obvious choice of sharer, helpmate, lover, but which, in fact, makes him just the opposite: makes him a combatant in the same arena, fighting to see who is the victor over the same spoils - these spoils being the same Pandora's Box of pain." (63)
"...every faggot, though I shall not use this word, considers his homosexuality as very special to him, in the sense of sacrosanct, like a pain which he has lived with a very long time. Thus it becomes a sacred pain, and one which is difficult to challenge on the one hand, or to share with another faggot on the other, whose comprehension of exactly the same pain would seem to make him the obvious choice of sharer, helpmate, lover, but which, in fact, makes him just the opposite: makes him a combatant in the same arena, fighting to see who is the victor over the same spoils - these spoils being the same Pandora's Box of pain." (63)
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