The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart

The American People #1

by Larry Kramer

This rare and vintage book is a perfect addition to any bibliophile's collection

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Queer, Gay, LGBT, Unfinished, Politics

775 pages, Hardcover

Published April 7, 2015

About the author

Larry 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.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Larry Kramer's massive work has an inspiring start, with a style echoing Vonnegut and Pynchon, humorous and inventive. Unfortunately, the premise tires after about 200-300 pages. It's at its best covering pre-history, the Colonial period, and the Civil War. Figures including, for example, the truly evil Puritan leaders, then Washington, Hamilton, and Lincoln, are shown in a refreshing, new light.

When the "history" moves into the twentieth century, Kramer tackles too many threads. The sections on Hitler and German eugenics research are compelling, but more than that was needed to keep the reader's interest in the second half of the book: excess complexity and weird pseudo-science stifle the human drama. It's obvious Kramer is including real people and government agencies in the story, but nearly all are obscured by pseudonyms and satirical acronyms. It was tiring to have to figure out who and what they really were to identify the targets of Kramer's criticism.

Given it's (appropriate) unforgiving, militant attitude, one wonders how large the book's readership will be. I hope that it is widely read. With an eccentric, allegorical beginning, it stimulates enough curiosity to dive in, but ultimately not enough to sustain its length.

Volume 2 is supposed to be released in 2017, bringing American history viewed from Kramer's never-told-before perspective to the present, or nearly so.

[Douglas Wickard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathtaking. Bold. Brazen. BEAUTIFUL! Brilliant. This filthy rag is exactly what America needs to dirty up and expose its pristine Pollyanna hypocrisy! I applaud Kramer's audacity and courage ... and humor. Now, off with my balls, my tongue or ... shhh ... "my yard!"

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It is always the most threatened who turn their backs from truth." (p. 652)

"It is my life, too, that this plague and this history is all about." (p. 721)

"That's why most histories of leaders are so full of baloney. No one can ever know what the subject really had in mind, no matter how much he wrote down or said out loud or even whispered." (p. 760)

"Subtext. You've got to search for subtext. In art and in life." (p. 763)

Normally I wouldn't share several quotes at the beginning of a review - but the ones above stuck out for me.

Larry Kramer has a wide reputation for being a tempestuous big-mouth. Many love him for being one.

Personally, I have always had a leaning toward his work. I recall reading his novel 'Faggots' the first summer I was invited to Fire Island; it was my paperback 'beach book' that year. Normally, most people could care less what they see you reading. But I recall some men - on seeing me with the book - responding as though I were a traitor to the cause. The book had a rep for pinpointing the pitfalls of the total sexual freedom of men with men. (I had learned that, for most men, there were no recognized pitfalls or down sides to total sexual freedom at the time. Pre-AIDS.)

Eventually (and more recently), I finally read D.H. Lawrence's 'Women in Love' and was amazed at how well Kramer had adapted for the screen a novel that all but defied adaptation. ~that on the heels of seeing Kramer's own 'The Normal Heart' at the Public Theater in NYC - an experience that seemed to cause my spirit and soul to leave my body (the kind of thing that rarely happens when I see a play).

What all of that means is that I'm willing to go where Kramer goes in his writing. That said...'The American People' is an exhausting book. It's a large and sprawling labyrinth of chaos. And, though it's to Kramer's credit that he has created a compelling vision of utter confusion, the work is not always a particularly pleasurable read. It's unorthodox as a 'novel' - and it doesn't care that that's the case. (It's also only volume 1 - so, until the continuation with volume 2, due out next year, it may be unfair to come to a real conclusion at this point about the work's overall impact.)

The bottom line is that you have to be willing to let Kramer take you down and through a seemingly endless series of inter-connecting passageways as he relates his own history of many of the negative aspects of our country. Some may scoff at the work as 'revisionist' but that's likely to be simple condescension. Whatever may be quibbled about regarding the book's details, Kramer has an overriding truth front and center here: Not only do we not know as much as we think we know about ourselves, but we have been too scared or ashamed or ego-driven to investigate The Underbelly and reveal and share it with others.

I've read a few reviews of this book. What Kramer has written may be misinterpreted by some as "the book that claims everyone is gay". That would be missing the point. The book is largely about the history of disease in America and a history of inter-linked evil in the world, esp. as it relates to gay people.

I will admit that I was personally thrown when, at p. 524, the book suddenly becomes the polar-opposite of what it had been up to that point; it moves into the story of 'An American Boyhood' - and, for the rest of volume 1, switches gears from the general populace to one specific family. The shift makes for a daunting transition but, again, if you're in it for 'the big picture' of the work, there is a cumulative effect.

It'll be interesting to see how more readers take (or not) to this work. It has already been called 'flawed' (I wouldn't describe it as such), with weak attempts at humor (I wouldn't agree with that either). Though it's not nearly as angry a work as 'The Normal Heart', it is - in its own way - just as powerful. It has MUCH to say about the human condition and what it could even possibly mean to be human. It's also a sad book - of bewilderment and fear; a fierce, loud, John The Baptist-like cry in our wilderness.

[Jānis Lībeks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Want to read the few good parts of the book? Skip ahead to page 550, give or take 50 pages. You will have missed accusations of homosexuality against America's most reverted statesmen, bizarre narratives of gays throughout the centuries, and constant reminders that UC (Underlying Condition - presumably HIV) has been in North America sicne the whilte man arrives. Not much of value is lost by skipping those 550 pages.

The only redeeming parts of "The American People" are those that contain personal narratives of male desire, confusion, fear, and pain. Once the book arrives at Masturboff Gardens, seen from the perspective of a gay boy whose parents vanish his twin, his escapades and coming-of-age adventures seem strangely relatable. Unfortunately, this constitues only a minor sliver of the book.

Probably the most annoying aspect of this book is its faux-historicity. Let's be clear, this is a book of fiction. Kramer has some very strong gripes with how gays have been presented throughout history, and he decides to invent his own. He presents this in such a confident tone, that I had to remind me that this was a piece of fiction. Did I learn anything about the American People? I'm not even sure. Kramer seems really skilled in describing the time that he lives in, as evidenced by "Faggots" and "The Normal Heart", but this same tone does not easily extend to centuries past.

The book does not deserve to be almost 800 pages long. The many interrelated characters started to blur together, the "scientists" that seem to be the narrators, appear so rarely that I have no idea how they relate to the story. On page 722, when two paragraphs seem to be repeated almost word-by-word from page 664, I'm not sure if it is accidental or intentional. Maybe there's a grand theme that I'm too mentally lacking to comprehend, but I hope there isn't a Volume 2.

[Hank Stuever · Rating 2 out of 5]

I surrender! Made it to page 320-ish (out of 775 pp.), which I think entitles me to at least ask why FSG let itself become a vanity press. (I know, I know--it's Larry. I will say that I sometimes enjoyed the loopiness of it all, sort of like Larry Kramer does Gertrude Stein.)

As the narrator Fred Lemish (aka the Voice of Larry Kramer) reminds the reader several times, you can take it or leave it. He absolutely does not care what you think; the book is going to published anyhow. I imagine a very big remaindered pile on its way to the pulper.

[Adam Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't understand how so many people can read this book and write a one-line review. The book is so long, and says so much, surely you felt something more??

At one point I wrote: I'm 64% done with The American People: This is the time of the wade. Wade through, wade on, stop for a breath, go faster to get to the end sooner, go slower or stop, the wading through.

Andrew Holleran, in an interview with Kramer in The Advocate, April/May 2015 “…you don’t use the word like with that kind of book. Stunned is the word. It was a roller coaster of a book. There were times when I was laughing out loud, there were times when I was putting the book down, there were times when I was, “yes yes yes,” there were times when I said, “Oh this is crazy.””

I really agree with all this. There's a five-star review of this book on Amazon where the reviewer says he slogged through it, and that's the kind of book this is. It's not going to be easy. Faggots also wasn't easy and I remember slogging through that too, reminding myself that if you put one foot in front of the next eventually you will finish and I felt that often reading this. Holleran also mentions the short chapter lengths which help you get through the book and I found that too. It would say "2 minutes left in this chapter" on my Kindle and I'd think "I can do two minutes." You put enough of those together and you'll get back to an interesting part, or a coherent part, again.

It's difficult to rate this book being that it's really only half a book, I need to see what's going to happen before I can fully decide. Many people have complained the book needs an editor, but it has had one. The book is 4000 pages long. You are getting 800 in part one and say another 800 in part two, that's 2400 pages cut. Kramer says after part two is published he plans to self-publish the remaining 2400 pages. I can't see anyone on earth reading that.

There were times reading this book I lost sleep, times I was mad, times I put the book down, times I learned things and times I didn't. Faggots had some humor to make the medicine go down and this book needs a lot more of that. Kramer writes in the same satirical tone for this book but it's not a satire, it's a history and it doesn't always work. The names of people, Masturbatov for example, the letters written and answered to people that don't exist, chapter titles like “IANTHE ADAMS STRODE REPLIES TO DAME LADY HERMIA BLEDD-WRENCH’S INQUIRY”, these things don't help. Plus there's a couple points in the narrative that are so over-the-top crazy I don't even know what to say. The Rabbi who saves boy's foreskins to fertilize his garden then eats his sons 10 year-old foreskin out of a jar of formaldehyde while he burns down the house. What does one say to that? Again, this is not a book you can just say you like or not.

Going through some quotes now, I felt the book often lost focus, and found the following statement at the beginning of the book:

“I, Laurence David Kramer, in my country of death, write this history of the plague, and of The American People before and during this time of plague, and of our people who have died from this plague, and of who and what caused this plague.”

Kramer much later says:

“I cannot seem to let go of every grain of detail, for each at some moment seems so important that I must scoop it up and slither it into my own voluminous vomit-out. The world must know everything!”

Well underline everything and put some butter on it. It's hard to say what is relevant in the book and what isn't as we don't know where the book is going, we've only got the first half. I would say the sections on the gayness of past American presidents is the weakest, this may tie in later to a homophobic culture suppressing the disease, the "underlying condition", but this book itself doesn't tie it in to anything. It seems to be put there simply because Tony Kushner refused to mention Lincoln's gayness in the movie he wrote, Kramer even mentions Kuchner by name in this book.

I would agree, as Kramer says:

“There are a lot of reasons why we continue to die in droves that have nothing to do with actual physical disease.”

There is no evidence though that AIDS started in America, in fact there is evidence it didn't. The concept that the disease had evolved and has been around in some form longer than anyone thinks is interesting. The idea that the disease evolved and that people's actions helped it is I think the point of the book, but it's really not explored fully or well. So many side tangents to wade through it's often hard to see the forest for the trees.

“Everyone has been infecting everyone else since the Garden of Eden. Of course we are all connected! Alas, it is up to us to figure out how and who. And few of us really want to sort all that out.”

Kramer often himself acknowledges the impossibility of the scope of the book and the many side-steps he's taking:

“Who is ass-feeding you all this manure? This is not history!”

“OK, back to the proverbial grindstone in attempting to sort out who’s who and what’s what and who did what and when and why are we here today, if we are here today, if we are anywhere today. I must be of firmer faith that eventually we shall get ourselves somewhere!”

“Where are your notes that would speed the narration of this horrid tragedy along while you keep clip-clopping around without a plan of action? At this rate we shall never get to The Underlying Condition!”

While at the same time talking to and answering himself:

“You continue to raise excellent questions, my dear old friend, Fred.”

Kramer calls the book non-fiction but then makes up sources where they don't otherwise exist. I've often thought there should be a book on bathhouses in America, the Everhard in NYC was open more than 100 years, there has to be a story there! So when Kramer references the book “Norbert and Noreen Curlue, A Handbook to America’s Most Welcoming Bathhouses, 1990” I looked it up, doesn't exist. Some of the other references to Yale I looked up and they do exist, so how can you keep any of it straight?

Also the book has many pseudonyms and it's almost impossible to keep them going in your mind as well. The book says “I Read in the Monument that Senator Vurd had 112 men fired for being homosexual.” So I Google Vurd, don't find him, and assume Vurd is a pseudonym for McCarthy. But then later the book says, “This was in 1949, not far from McCarthy and Vurd and Sam Sport and that gang.” Did I miss Vurd on my first search, is he made up, is he a combination of McCarthy and someone else, who knows.

Add to this confusion Kramer's own agenda and hyperbole:

“Henry Ford would destroy any place on earth as long as there was a Jew still living in it. The world will never know or believe this, that Henry Ford hates Jews even more than Hitler does.”

More than Hitler. It becomes clear that this non-fiction history is not going to be easy, or like any that have come before.

All this being said I liked how gay the book was, a line that I liked:

“I notice that when I think about his penis my own penis feels warmer, as if it wants to meet a friend.”

There's something here. The idea that AIDS evolved and was around earlier than we suspect. The concept of homophobia through the ages and how that relates to the spread of AIDS when it does eventually come out. The history of the study of disease in the United States, specifically sexually-transmitted diseases. There's also a lot of factors working against it, the view from Kramer's sometimes opaque lens and the fact that we only have half a story. I can't really form a final opinion until I see the rest.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four months to read. Not from boredom or frustration. Okay. Maybe a bit of both. So many voices. Characters and shadows. History was never a strong point for me, and American history to boot. But take all of this with a grain of salt. This is Larry Kramer at his consummate best. His anger and frustration permeates each and every page. He might sound to some like a raving lunatic with his conspiracy theories, his outlandish assumptions, his 'the whole world is gay' mantra, and frankly if only one third of these assumptions are true, I fear that he still hasn't managed to get his point across.

Thankfully there is to be a Part Deux. Every word that falls from this man's lips is one that has brought the plight of gay men (not to mention the AIDS activism) from marginalized near invisibility, to the forefront of a battle that needs, no, make that demands a voice that is as loud and audacious, as angry and scathing, yet as fragile as only Larry Kramer's will ever be.

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me three months to wade trough Larry Kramer's dense, rambling opus, and at the end of it I came out understanding less than when I started. Ostensibly this book is meant to be the first part in his exploration of the history of the U.S. as it relates to homosexuality and the spread of AIDS, what he refers to here as "The Underlying Condition". But there is little to no structure or mounting of a cogent argument to make me believe his assertions. Nearly everything he writes about is either patently bullshit or shrouded in so many layers of irony and subtext that the reader comes away not really knowing what Kramer's point is. Why does he spend so much time on Jewish history and WW2 spies? What's the significance of the Dridge Ampules and the Jerusalem family? What does any of this have to do with the history that Kramer is supposedly "uncovering" about "our people"? On top of that, this novel is thick, and goes on for long stretches that digress from the main narrative, making the journey a slog to get through. It's hard not to occasionally get swept up in Kramer's righteous anger and passion, and there are even several passages of beauty and horror that bring home the long, storied history of homophobia to life. Unfortunately, this gigantic, overwrought text is simply too ponderous and pretentious to really have any lasting impact.

[Rambling Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The worst book I've loved reading. Both genius and claptrap, I will come back to portions of this book time and again and I just wanna give Mr. Kramer a great big hug for writing it!

[Leben Norrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very interesting yet convoluted read. I think the best way to describe this would be an ‘anti-novel’ (much like Timequake by Vonnegut) - by that I mean the book often sidelines itself with discussions about how the book was meant to be written and how it differs from how they wanted it to be written. This is done to the effect that the ‘multiple narrators’ are in constant discussion of the content as it’s being laid out.

To be honest, at one point early in my reading, I put this book down and read a whole mess of others. It is a very ‘hard going’ read at a lot of times. But it is worth it.

What was amusing was after a long hiatus, picking up the book, I had forgotten it was a work of SATIRE and started trying to find references and sources. I got really frustrated, to the point where I was like, “this guy is making all this up, it’s not credible!” D then I reread the jacket and remembered it was satire and really kicked myself for getting so worked up.

The book is really well written in the sense that it borders on believability at all points, even at its most solicitous and morbid. I would recommend this book, but strap yourself in for the ride.

[Lila Bakke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't put this book down. It is an amazing, fascinating read; a wonderful, hilarious, astonishing, maddening, challenging, deeply affecting book. It leaves me still with such deep sadness for us, a people still in deep trauma from our beginnings. I realize that Mr. Kramer is not writing a historical document ... and yet.

It is not in dispute that this country has committed evil on itself as well as others. There is always an effort to disguise the true intent. This or that policy/law/subjective interpretation of administrative regulation is to make us safe, secure, protect others from themselves. It NEVER goes well. It ALWAYS results in more trauma: systemic racism, systemic misogyny, systemic discrimination, systemic poverty, institutionalized torture, trafficking, child marriage, medical experimentation, death, genocide, ecocide.

And so I ask, what in any of this book is more surprising or less believable than the truth?

This book should be read far and wide. It should be read and discussed with Kiese Laymon's "How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America", an amazing set of essays as remarkable for the writer's stylistics as the content; Sven Lundqvist's "Exterminate All the Brutes", a gut punching truthtelling of colonialization; and Ursula le Guinn's "Left Hand of Darkness" and Octavia Butler's ... everything she wrote!, which give us other worlds in which to see (and question) the truth of ourselves.

We MUST question ourselves, and our history. If we can't readily document a history different from that which Mr. Kramer proposes, we should ask ourselves why. We have to have a society that thinks critically, that questions. It is our responsibility to do so. We live or die together. We like to think that what affects one does not affect another. But the truth is so very different. Tribes, while nice; do not obviate our need to eat, sleep, pee, love and be loved.

So many reviewers speak with intimate knowledge of Mr. Kramer and his work. I regret this is my introduction to him. A year after first reading it, the words he scored into my psyche still prowl in heart and mind, agitating me to ... what? Perhaps to speak up, to write this. I wish I had read him earlier. I look forward to Volume 2, but will need to wait a bit. I know I will not be able to put it down either, and it's an intensive journey.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, what a slog that was - 755 pages!!! Part 2 is better than Part 1, and there are moments of pure genius in this book, but so much of it just sounds like crazy rambling. I did have a fever for about ten days of reading this - and that was the perfect state to be in to read the first part of this book. And it's Volume 1 - there is definitely more, because it stops in the mid 50's. I love Larry Kramer, but man oh man, this was a a tough read.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While overly long, this is a fascinating book. And it's about time someone wrote a gay history of America. That names names. Some of it was hard to listen to--lots of very detailed descriptions of (to me) unsavory practices and, much worse, Nazi medical torture--but it was well worth it to re-imagine what has really been going on in the centuries old war against us LGBTTTQ folk.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

Torture. It was a book club pick for a meeting I won't be able to attend, and I'm sorry I won't be able to discuss it with others. Strident and painful to read (not difficult, just painful). It needed an editor.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging, complicated, ambitious, horrifying, compelling, tragic, ironic, infuriating... I can't wait for Volume 2.

[Mike Horton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just too much. Has lots of potential but turned into a disorganized mess. Material is thought-provoking, but much of that got lost.

[Joey Gremillion · Rating 1 out of 5]

Simply dreadful. I couldn't get past the fourth chapter. Narrative doesn't make any sense and is full of vitriol and farbishkeit. FEH!!!!

[Chloë Fowler · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried. I failed. I tried again. I got annoyed. I wasted my money.

[John Ferreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me five months to the day to finish this book. It wasn't out of boredom, or lack of interest. When I did sit down to read it, I was humored, interested, intrigued, fascinated, informed. It took so long because of a weird habit of mine that the time spent reading the first half of a book is double of that of the second half. I find this especially true with books of over 200 pages for some reason.

I should start making it a habit of set aside an hour to read, or get through 20 pages a day, whichever comes first.

I started reading this book when the shelter places orders were called, and I started working from home. I figured the weight of the book wouldn't do much harm to my back when carrying it from a table to a chair, as it would when carrying to work (or out somewhere), to home, and back again. I also think that the long time reading this book may have had to do with our current plague not going away anytime soon. I figured, "I don't have to rush. It's not like I have other things to do. I can watch TV, and get to reading when the spirit moves me."

I found as I read it, there were parallels to the current goings-on in the world. The history of mankind is all just re-runs, and revivals of what came before. The characters don't change. Just the names of the characters. And the actors.

Since it took a while to read this book, I don't remember clearly all that I thought of it at the beginning. I do remember though that I had trouble figuring out which narrator was speaking. Eventually that was no longer a problem. I also remember the story of the monkeys. The stories of historical male figures being gay is nothing new to me.

I did get myself caught up with trying to figure out the real people that Kramer was satirizing. I did figure out The Mormons, and Ronald Reagan, for example. As I go through Volume 2, I think I'll just let the book wash over me without getting into the weeds of who is who. Especially since there are made up characters that put a damper on my sleuthing.

[Rango]

A Great Piece of (F)art

Imagine for a moment how boring of a book Larry Kramer could have written: as a decades-long activist against AIDS who got to know many prominent people in politics, at the end of his life, he could have easily written a boring non-fictional retrospect of his life. You know how it goes: some person writes about his life reassessing himself, waging about his own decisions with critical comments toward the presidents that were in charge since Reagan to Obama, along with other prominent people like Dr. Anthony Fauci. But no. Larry Kramer is too big of an artist for that and, even more, too big of a victim.

So, instead, he charges straight ahead and gives us this fat book of vignettes. You could almost call them funny short stories, but you can clearly see they were written in sweat and blood of a person who is so out of his mind with the anger of how he and his fellow human beings were treated like they were nothing more than a piece of shit.

He wrote them for himself to filter his anger, as well as for other people as a warning how society can be heartless and how its instruments can easily turn against you and treat you also as nothing more but a piece of shit.

[David Robison · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, Larry Kramer earned the right to write whatever the hell he wants and have that published. America has ignored its "others" (gays, Jews, women, Blacks, Native Americans—all included here, though the focus is on Gays/Jews) for too long and Kramer has the chutzpah, deep knowledge, literary chops, and righteous anger to write this kind of epic. Yes, sometimes this book is a bit confusing and poorly edited (one small section appeared twice—a mistake?), sometimes very disturbing, often funny, sexy and outrageous. Given the short attention span our culture has, this really is an important reimagining of American history and its people.

If you're gay and Jewish, it's a must-read. I myself will take a break with some other books before returning to volume 2.

[Tony McMahon · Rating 3 out of 5]

God bless Larry Kramer. He was justifiably frustrated at the homophobia and pent-up attitudes of mainstream historians. I share that frustration. The denial that LGBT people existed in American history, let alone occupied high office. Mentioning no names, but certain historians seem to think LGBT people were only ever hairdressers and waiters. But...Kramer's fury is his undoing in this book. Clearly nearing the end of his life, he let rip with a mix of fact and fiction that only served to undermine real evidence that exists, for example, to show that two 19th century American Presidents were more than likely either gay or bisexual. I sincerely believe this book set back LGBT history by several years. And I know that view is shared by current LGBT historians in the United States.

[Kyle Kerr · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's very rare that I give up on a book, but after 65 pages, I just couldn't do it anymore. Hats off to the people who could at least find a bit of humor in this, because I couldn't see it at all. Waste of $10.

[Pan Ellington · Rating 2 out of 5]

dense & challenging. a bold experiment, but a total slog to read. glad that i did, though, given kramer's place as both an lgbtq activist & elder. got about six hundred pages in before putting it down...

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Big, gross and ridiculous. O hey, America.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The word that comes to mind is audacious. It's freewheeling and messy but absolutely exhilarating and original which, to me, is the best kind of fiction.

[Alex Rogers · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dear God this was tedious.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough read for me. The characters were very one dimensional and served only to tell the story so I had trouble engaging in them for the book's entirety. I am also not extremely interested in American history.... So maybe I should not have pick up the book to begin with, I just love Larry Kramer. It read more like a bunch of strung together monologs, rather than a novel which it advertises itself as. Some of these monologs were easy to imagine being preformed, such as the potty-mouthed, lesbian "sister", who I quite enjoyed. I think I have a new found hatred for the word "hushmarked" thanks to this book. There was a grueling attention to grimy detail that was about the only thing that kept me reading.

[Jacob Daley · Rating 2 out of 5]

^*^ This book is not for the feint-of-heart!
You would not be able to tell from the outside cover, but this book is chocked full of blood, sex, dirt, and disease. With 20 years of dedicated work this novel has been Larry Kramer’s biggest project, which you can quickly figure out based on the formatting, content, and the 750+ pages of attentive detail, Unfortunately the amount of work put in does not help the reading experience that is Larry Kramer’s: Volume 1, A search for my heart.
As a member of the LGBT community with a fascination of books, LGBT culture, and anthropology this book should have been a lifelong favorite of mine. I saw this book as attempting an LGBT Roots (Huxley), but in both of these regards American People, unfortunately, fell short.
Starting from early primates, Larry Kramer explores how the AIDS grows and develops to be an epidemic. His historical fiction approach pulls the reader through multiple point-of-views on how the virus grew over the millennia. With it being such a mystery Kramer was able to stretch his creative writing legs and go for quite a trek through the grimier parts of American history. Oh his little adventure he adds heaping helpings of creative licensing to push this story along and keep the reader engaged (obviously not enough for the average reader). To even further engage the audience, the author brings in a hefty gang of historical….celebrities (?) and reveals the close roles they played in the development of AIDS; revealing secret lives that the history books forgot to mention.
Props must be given to Kramer for understanding how to appeal to the general audience by bringing their favorite historical figure and making them integral to the story. We encounter everyone from Alexander Hamilton, to Abraham Lincoln to even FDR, and many more. Kramer assuredly knows the art of developing a voice for a character, and shows this skill throughout American People with over 50 different characters’ perspectives heard from.
The story is, fundamentally, a blame game (for the AIDS virus) with no real winner and a whole lot of losers.
In the end however, this was a bit of a let down. It is clear that Larry Kramer’s American People is for a niche audience with a long attention span. I applaud his attempt to appeal to mass appeal, but I cannot tell a lie; this was a very difficult novel to get through.
I wish good luck on those