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Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS
No sooner had the first generation of gay writers emerged in this country than they found themselves caught up in the violent maelstrom of the AIDS epidemic. Here are their reports from the midst of an ongoing struggle, personal dispatches from the frontlines by some of the most accomplished writers of our time.
- GenresLGBTNonfictionQueer
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
1 person is currently reading
84 people want to read
About the author
John Preston
51 books78 followersJohn Preston wrote and edited gay erotica, fiction, and nonfiction.
He grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, later living in a number of major American cities before settling in Portland, Maine in 1979. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, dealing mostly with issues in gay life, he was a pioneer in the early gay rights movement in Minneapolis. He helped found one of the earliest gay community centers in the United States, edited two newsletters devoted to sexual health, and served as editor of The Advocate in 1975.
He was the author or editor of nearly fifty books, including such erotic landmarks as Mr. Benson and I Once Had a Master and Other Tales of Erotic Love. Other works include Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (first a novel, then adapted for stage), The Big Gay Book: A Man's Survival Guide for the Nineties, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS, and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong.
Preston's writing (which he described as pornography) was part of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s toward higher literary quality in gay erotic fiction. Preston was an outspoken advocate of the artistic and social worth of erotic writings, delivering a lecture at Harvard University entitled My Life as a Pornographer. The lecture was later published in an essay collection with the same name. The collection includes Preston's thoughts about the gay leather community, to which he belonged. His writings caused controversy when he was one of several gay and lesbian authors to have their books confiscated at the border by Canada Customs. Testimony regarding the literary merit of his novel I Once Had a Master helped a Vancouver LGBT bookstore, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, to partially win a case against Canada Customs in the Canadian Supreme Court in 2000. Preston also brought gay erotic fiction to mainstream readers by editing the Flesh and the Word anthologies for a major press.
Preston served as a journalist and essayist throughout his life. He wrote news articles for Drummer and other gay magazines, produced a syndicated column on gay life in Maine, and penned a column for Lambda Book Report called "Preston on Publishing." His nonfiction anthologies, which collected essays by himself and others on everyday aspects of gay and lesbian life, won him the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. He was especially noted for his writings on New England.
Although primarily known as a gay fiction writer, Preston was also hired by a local newspaper, The Portland Chronicle, to write news articles and features about his adopted hometown of Portland. He wrote a long feature about the local monopoly newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, as well as many food articles movie reviews and other writing.
In addition, Preston wrote men's adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the "Alex Kane" adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included "Sweet Dreams," "Golden Years," and "Deadly Lies," combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth.
Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive.
Some of his last essays, found in his nonfiction anthologies and in his posthumous collection Winter's Light, describe his struggle to come emotionally to terms with a disease that had already killed many of his friends and fellow writers.
He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994, aged 48, at his home in Portland. His papers are held in the Preston Archive at Brown University.
Librarian Note: There is more th
He grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, later living in a number of major American cities before settling in Portland, Maine in 1979. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, dealing mostly with issues in gay life, he was a pioneer in the early gay rights movement in Minneapolis. He helped found one of the earliest gay community centers in the United States, edited two newsletters devoted to sexual health, and served as editor of The Advocate in 1975.
He was the author or editor of nearly fifty books, including such erotic landmarks as Mr. Benson and I Once Had a Master and Other Tales of Erotic Love. Other works include Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (first a novel, then adapted for stage), The Big Gay Book: A Man's Survival Guide for the Nineties, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS, and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong.
Preston's writing (which he described as pornography) was part of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s toward higher literary quality in gay erotic fiction. Preston was an outspoken advocate of the artistic and social worth of erotic writings, delivering a lecture at Harvard University entitled My Life as a Pornographer. The lecture was later published in an essay collection with the same name. The collection includes Preston's thoughts about the gay leather community, to which he belonged. His writings caused controversy when he was one of several gay and lesbian authors to have their books confiscated at the border by Canada Customs. Testimony regarding the literary merit of his novel I Once Had a Master helped a Vancouver LGBT bookstore, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, to partially win a case against Canada Customs in the Canadian Supreme Court in 2000. Preston also brought gay erotic fiction to mainstream readers by editing the Flesh and the Word anthologies for a major press.
Preston served as a journalist and essayist throughout his life. He wrote news articles for Drummer and other gay magazines, produced a syndicated column on gay life in Maine, and penned a column for Lambda Book Report called "Preston on Publishing." His nonfiction anthologies, which collected essays by himself and others on everyday aspects of gay and lesbian life, won him the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. He was especially noted for his writings on New England.
Although primarily known as a gay fiction writer, Preston was also hired by a local newspaper, The Portland Chronicle, to write news articles and features about his adopted hometown of Portland. He wrote a long feature about the local monopoly newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, as well as many food articles movie reviews and other writing.
In addition, Preston wrote men's adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the "Alex Kane" adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included "Sweet Dreams," "Golden Years," and "Deadly Lies," combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth.
Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive.
Some of his last essays, found in his nonfiction anthologies and in his posthumous collection Winter's Light, describe his struggle to come emotionally to terms with a disease that had already killed many of his friends and fellow writers.
He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994, aged 48, at his home in Portland. His papers are held in the Preston Archive at Brown University.
Librarian Note: There is more th
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 17, 2015
This excellent book of essays was written in 1989 in the furnace of the AIDS crisis. Edited by John Preston, it brings to life the voices of people who experienced the crisis, some of whom are now dead. Each essay is different. Some are reflective, Others are written in the form of a journal, others are memories of events. All of them speak of the crisis and the challenges of compassion, care, community and activism.
Most of all, these essays speak of life and how difficult it is to live when faced with the death of so many. Not just that there were many dying but that these were untimely deaths, deaths of the young, and deaths that would have remained unacknowledged if not for the activism and voices of the courageous. This volume of essays is part of that activism and reading it now brings the past to life and this is vital because the voices from the crisis should still be listened to and those years should not be forgotten. The voices from the past have much to tell us about the lives of people today.
Many years ago I had a discussion with a dear friend. She corrected some of the terminology I had been using. I had talked about 'the struggle/battles against HIV'. My friend told me that HIV sector organisations (in the UK) didn't like using terminology that depicted the virus as a battle (or something like that). I understood her reasoning because it is so easy to go from a battle against HIV to a battle against people who have HIV, but I then found that I lacked the language to describe the immensity of the devastation of this virus. I wasn't sure I was allowed to speak about it because after all people were no longer dying in great numbers, at least not in the global North. I was frustrated with this need for political correctness because I felt the scale of the pandemic and the swathe of death that cut down so many milions of people should be spoken about with passion and with anger, and with action and vision, and I felt as if I was being told to be 'polite'.
I could see her point but really what is politeness in the face of so much suffering and death. 33 million in 30 years - approx
And suffering was also a word I was told I couldn't use.
So it is a relief for me to read this book written during the AIDs crisis and to see the way in which the authors use war time terminology. This book faces death and suffering head on. It is immediate, it is raw in its observations and emotions and it give voice to people instead of politeness.
Don't get me wrong I love my friend but I need a terminology that gives voice to the horror and helplessness and I need the space to remember and reflect.
Even now some 30 years later from the onset of the virus, when deaths from AIDS have fallen in the global North we should still remember those who fell during the crisis, during the war because quite simply it was a war.
And the war isn't over yet. It is just being fought on different fronts. It is being fought in low income countries where access to treatment is still limited. It is being fought in countries where people are imprisoned, persecuted and killed because of their sexuality. The war is being fought against the everyday homophobia and lies that emerge in the media and other public spaces. Most of all this war is still being fought because AIDS related stigma and discrimination is alive and well in our world today. And it is being fought in our religious institutions.
So I appreciate and value this book because this book uses the language I desired to use (back then) to express the struggle for life and the way so many died. This book doesn't allow the world to forget and this book takes me back to the crisis so that I can listen to these voices from long ago and learn lessons and gather strength to fight the wars that I am now involved in.
The different essays in this book are beautiful, powerful, heart rending, passionate and intellectually engaging and they are not in anyway depressing. Yes they deal with death and loss but they also reveal the depth of courage and love that can be found.
One of my favourites is the San Francisco Diary by Laurence Tate and the way it shows the many human, weird and some times amusing responses to AIDS. Apart from the sadness some of the descriptions of the callers to the AIDS helpline are amusing. Sad but still amusing and human. I think about the person who dialled to warn about vampire bats and I smile. But then I feel sad also because I too have come across so many myths and weird stories about AIDS. Harmless in many ways fatal in others.
This is a very real book. It obliterates political correctness, it removes the need to be polite. It focuses on the lived experience of the crisis and no kid gloves are allowed. It has transported me back to the days of the crisis and through these essays showed me the darkness of those days, the fear, the courage, the life, the love and the determination and for that I am grateful. Grateful to the writers, many of whom are no longer with us and grateful to John Preston who despite his own illness managed to edit and produce these essays so that these voices are not forgotten.
Most of all, these essays speak of life and how difficult it is to live when faced with the death of so many. Not just that there were many dying but that these were untimely deaths, deaths of the young, and deaths that would have remained unacknowledged if not for the activism and voices of the courageous. This volume of essays is part of that activism and reading it now brings the past to life and this is vital because the voices from the crisis should still be listened to and those years should not be forgotten. The voices from the past have much to tell us about the lives of people today.
Many years ago I had a discussion with a dear friend. She corrected some of the terminology I had been using. I had talked about 'the struggle/battles against HIV'. My friend told me that HIV sector organisations (in the UK) didn't like using terminology that depicted the virus as a battle (or something like that). I understood her reasoning because it is so easy to go from a battle against HIV to a battle against people who have HIV, but I then found that I lacked the language to describe the immensity of the devastation of this virus. I wasn't sure I was allowed to speak about it because after all people were no longer dying in great numbers, at least not in the global North. I was frustrated with this need for political correctness because I felt the scale of the pandemic and the swathe of death that cut down so many milions of people should be spoken about with passion and with anger, and with action and vision, and I felt as if I was being told to be 'polite'.
I could see her point but really what is politeness in the face of so much suffering and death. 33 million in 30 years - approx
And suffering was also a word I was told I couldn't use.
So it is a relief for me to read this book written during the AIDs crisis and to see the way in which the authors use war time terminology. This book faces death and suffering head on. It is immediate, it is raw in its observations and emotions and it give voice to people instead of politeness.
Don't get me wrong I love my friend but I need a terminology that gives voice to the horror and helplessness and I need the space to remember and reflect.
Even now some 30 years later from the onset of the virus, when deaths from AIDS have fallen in the global North we should still remember those who fell during the crisis, during the war because quite simply it was a war.
And the war isn't over yet. It is just being fought on different fronts. It is being fought in low income countries where access to treatment is still limited. It is being fought in countries where people are imprisoned, persecuted and killed because of their sexuality. The war is being fought against the everyday homophobia and lies that emerge in the media and other public spaces. Most of all this war is still being fought because AIDS related stigma and discrimination is alive and well in our world today. And it is being fought in our religious institutions.
So I appreciate and value this book because this book uses the language I desired to use (back then) to express the struggle for life and the way so many died. This book doesn't allow the world to forget and this book takes me back to the crisis so that I can listen to these voices from long ago and learn lessons and gather strength to fight the wars that I am now involved in.
The different essays in this book are beautiful, powerful, heart rending, passionate and intellectually engaging and they are not in anyway depressing. Yes they deal with death and loss but they also reveal the depth of courage and love that can be found.
One of my favourites is the San Francisco Diary by Laurence Tate and the way it shows the many human, weird and some times amusing responses to AIDS. Apart from the sadness some of the descriptions of the callers to the AIDS helpline are amusing. Sad but still amusing and human. I think about the person who dialled to warn about vampire bats and I smile. But then I feel sad also because I too have come across so many myths and weird stories about AIDS. Harmless in many ways fatal in others.
This is a very real book. It obliterates political correctness, it removes the need to be polite. It focuses on the lived experience of the crisis and no kid gloves are allowed. It has transported me back to the days of the crisis and through these essays showed me the darkness of those days, the fear, the courage, the life, the love and the determination and for that I am grateful. Grateful to the writers, many of whom are no longer with us and grateful to John Preston who despite his own illness managed to edit and produce these essays so that these voices are not forgotten.
April 7, 2024
Some of the contributor bios were already written in the last tense by the time of printing. What else is there to say?
May 11, 2020
A bit of a mixed bag, as most anthologies are, but on the whole a moving and deeply resonant collection from talented writers exploring grief, loss, and emotion at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the United States.
“Memorial and elegy and raging against the dying of the light, the beating of breasts and the tenderest emotions of loss relate us to the eventual, the unavoidable, the natural, the inexplicable.”
“Memorial and elegy and raging against the dying of the light, the beating of breasts and the tenderest emotions of loss relate us to the eventual, the unavoidable, the natural, the inexplicable.”
January 17, 2018
These are essays that cut directly to the heart. They are profound and incredibly visceral. These people and their stories must not be forgotten.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews