Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise

by Paul Monette

With Borrowed Time and Becoming a Man-the 1992 National Book Award winner for nonfiction-this collection completes Paul Monette’s autobiographical writing. Brimming with outrage yet tender, this is a “remarkable book” (Philadelphia Inquirer).


Puck --
Gert --
My priests --
3275 --
The politics of silence --
Mustering --
A one-way fare --
Getting covered --
Sleeping under a tree --
Mortal things --
Some afterthoughts

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, LGBT, Gay, Queer, Biography Memoir

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Online Guide to Paul Monette's papers at UCLA:
http://findaid.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/...

In novels, poetry, and a memoir, Paul Monette wrote about gay men striving to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a lover to AIDS.

Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after graduating from Yale. For eight years, he wrote poetry exclusively.

After coming out in his late twenties, he met Roger Horwitz, who was to be his lover for over twenty years. Also during his late twenties, he grew disillusioned with poetry and shifted his interest to the novel, not to return to poetry until the 1980s.

In 1977, Monette and Horwitz moved to Los Angeles. Once in Hollywood, Monette wrote a number of screenplays that, though never produced, provided him the means to be a writer. Monette published four novels between 1978 and 1982. These novels were enormously successful and established his career as a writer of popular fiction. He also wrote several novelizations of films.

Monette's life changed dramatically when Roger Horwitz was diagnosed with AIDS in the early 1980s. After Horwitz's death in 1986, Monette wrote extensively about the years of their battles with AIDS (Borrowed Time, 1988) and how he himself coped with losing a lover to AIDS (Love Alone, 1988). These works are two of the most powerful accounts written about AIDS thus far.

Their publication catapulted Monette into the national arena as a spokesperson for AIDS. Along with fellow writer Larry Kramer, he emerged as one of the most familiar and outspoken AIDS activists of our time. Since very few out gay men have had the opportunity to address national issues in mainstream venues at any previous time in U.S. history, Monette's high-visibility profile was one of his most significant achievements. He went on to write two important novels about AIDS, Afterlife (1990) and Halfway Home (1991). He himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

In his fiction, Monette unabashedly depicts gay men who strive to fashion personal identities that lead them to love, friendship, and self-fulfillment. His early novels generally begin where most coming-out novels end; his protagonists have already come to terms with their sexuality long before the novels' projected time frames. Monette has his characters negotiate family relations, societal expectations, and personal desires in light of their decisions to lead lives as openly gay men.

Two major motifs emerge in these novels: the spark of gay male relations and the dynamic alternative family structures that gay men create for themselves within a homophobic society. These themes are placed in literary forms that rely on the structures of romance, melodrama, and fantasy.

Monette's finest novel, Afterlife, combines the elements of traditional comedy and the resistance novel; it is the first gay novel written about AIDS that fuses personal love interests with political activism.

Monette's harrowing collection of deeply personal poems, Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog, conveys both the horrors of AIDS and the inconsolable pain of love lost. The elegies are an invaluable companion to Borrowed Time.

Before the publication and success of his memoir, Becoming a Man, it seemed inevitable that Monette would be remembered most for his writings on AIDS. Becoming a Man, however, focuses on the dilemmas of growing up gay. It provides at once an unsparing account of the nightmare of the closet and a moving and often humorous depiction of the struggle to come out. Becoming a Man won the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction, a historical moment in the history

Reviews

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

...I've been visiting my own grave for years now--pre-need, as they call it--and I don't require any further vigil from anybody. Unless it is some kind of safety zone. And as long as there's no piety in the gesture. I don't like flowers, but the deer do. Keats and Lawrence and Stevenson all died of their lungs, robbed by a century whose major products were soot and sulfur. We queers on Revelation hill [in Forest Lawn Cemetery], tucking our skirts about us so as not to touch our Mormon neighbors, died of the greed of power, because we were expendable. If you mean to visit any of us, it had better be to make you strong to fight that power. Take your languor and easy tears somewhere else. Above all, don't pretty us up. Tell yourself: None of this ever had to happen. And then go make it stop, with whatever breath you have left. Grief is a sword, or it is nothing. (115)

Last summer, I went on a bit of a book binge: at the monolith flagship Powell's, I bought (among maaaany other things) Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir and this volume, having been so deeply moved the previous year by Monette's 1992 National Book Award Winner, Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story. This last title became so important to me and my own coming out, that I felt that these two books could do nothing but help me grow.

Well, ONE YEAR LATER, I finally read them, and I can safely report that the entirety of Paul Monette's autobiographical writing is irreplaceable in the LGBTQ movement, and the fight against AIDS.

And yes, I think they did help me grow.

I regret feeling this way, but I think Monette's abysmal prospects at the time of writing Last Watch of the Night eradicated some of the problems I was having with Borrowed Time: the delicate, precious (read: uncomfortable) style of writing I found in the latter is replaced by a sense of immediacy in the former, as if Monette had to record his rage as quickly as possible before succumbing to his infection. I wasn't distracted by his "fauxhemian" lifestyle awash with Hollywood big shots; rather, I get erudite, impactful, and occasionally terse glimpses of Paul Monette's final thoughts and his enduring passions.

I think the variegated nature of this volume helped as well. While centering on homophobia, AIDS, and death, Monette's stories span across his lifetime, and run in the order that he wrote them rather than the chronology of their subjects; he waxes elegiac on Roger's deathbed in one chapter, and resurrects him for a jaunt in Europe in the next, and I enjoyed the unpredictability. Furthermore, I was able to learn more about Stevie and Winston, his post-Roger partners, than I was allowed to learn in his earlier works. Paul Monette died a little with Roger, but the rest of him went on to love again and again, until the very end.

But the heart transformed in the process [of loving another person], no longer just a thing that ticks and no longer simply mortal, though half in shadow already. There's a cautionary tale in there as well, perhaps, involving a soul-deep self-delusion--but not worth the caution anyway. Something lasts, firm as the pen in my hand. Jackals and buzzards cannot get at it. Its price doesn't translate into dollars. Saved as it is in the spending, till nothing's left in the vault. Invisible in the blinding shine of the setting sun, weightless as a mid-ocean breeze. To have greatly loved is to sail without ballast--with neither chart nor cargo, not bound for the least of kingdoms. Nothing remains, except this being free. (300)

Buy this title from Powell's Books.

[Dennis Holland]

This collection of very intimate, personal and anecdotal essays often sucked the life out of me. Like all of Monette’s autobiographical writing, this forced me to have my own difficult reflections on life while he, too, looked back on his own—the people, the pets, the places, the poetry and politics of living that stuck out to him as AIDS continued to take so much away from him. I felt all the weight of living and dying Monette felt. As sad as all of this was, it did make me consider my own existence and showed me that it is ok to just exist—that there is meaning and context when you look for it and there is some hope in knowing that.

Even though we, the gay community, have much to celebrate in regards to the battles and wars we continue to fight, these essays made me wonder if we, perhaps, lost the most important battle of all—the war against AIDS—and with it’s unfortunate defeat, we not only lost so much life but all the voices, stories and experiences along with it. And as we continue the fight for the future of our community, are we fighting for ourselves, for one another or for who and what we have already lost?

[Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confession: I've actually never finished this collection (the two last essays and afterthoughts remain unread), because I know that when I do, I'll have read everything Paul Monette wrote from the 1980s on. And I'm not emotionally prepared for that yet. But I've read the majority of it, and it's just. so. good. Almost every single essay is a knockout, though I'm particularly partial to "Puck" and "A One-Way Fare." It's almost unbearably sad to think how much more beautiful writing we might have had if he were still around.

[Darkm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays that Monette wrote the last years of his life, while he was fighting against AIDS.

Various are the themes he discusses, each more important than the other.

There is "Puck", named from his dog. Here he describes how the simple core of walking the dog at night has somehow helped Paul and Roger during a very difficult moment in their relationship. At the same time, when Roger is gone, the dog will be the loyal companion and a sort of "family" who has to "approve" as well the lovers Monette brings in the house, first Stephen and then Winston.
It's a beautiful description of how beautiful and precious are the simple things in our life, the one we tend to take for granted.

In "My priests" Monette unleashes his rage against the catholic and religious people who condemned gays and suggested that AIDS was more than deserved for them. He doesn't let his rage blind him though, and his priests are all the good religious people he met during his life. Those who are not afraid to help nor to love, and whose faith is in their deed more than in their prayers.

There is no God, I'm sure of that. But the more they've sought me out, the more I am convinced that there are holy men and women. So I send blessings, such as they are, to all my priests who constitute the Resistance. Down with the fur and the edicts. And if they like, they're welcome to include me in their prayers. Can't hurt. None of us will free the world of intolerance alone. We need people of God, especially if He isn't here.

"3275" is heartbreaking. This is the number of the grave where Monette will be buried after his dead, near Roger and later near Stephen as well. It contains his thoughts about his grief as a two time widower and as someone who already knows death his waiting for him (this is a theme for "One way fare" as well).

It contains a beautiful quote:
“We queers of Revelation hill...died of the greed of power, because we were expendable. If you mean to visit any of us, it had better be to make you strong to fight that power. Take your languor and easy tears somewhere else. Above all, don't pretty us up. Tell yourself: None of this ever had to happen. And then go make it stop, with whatever breath you have left. Grief is a sword, or it is nothing.

In "Gert" talking about a friend who was of the previous generation of gay people, the one who never left the closet, allows him to analyze the changes in the life of gay people that his generation was able to do, coming out and fighting for their rights.

The strong belief that they will never have to be silent again and will have to fight against who says that they have to hide (it was the period who will have spawn the "Don't ask, don't tell" as well) is a common thread in "The politics of Silence" as well as in "Mustering" (where he talks about "The March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation" who took place in 1993), and "Sleeping under a Tree" where insomnia is the pretext of some reflections about time and the need to fight until our last breath for what we believe is right.

Strong is as well the theme of AIDS, where the indifference of the press and the government alike has silently allowed a lot of people to die in the most horrible way, and more often than not, if there weren't true friends near them, alone as well.

"Getting covered" is about the press. On one side there is the fact that journalists mostly ignored the drama that was AIDS, on the other there was the difficult times writer sometimes have with the reviews of their works. All being more difficult if the work is from a gay writer ( You have to understand that I spent twenty years being turned down because my work was considered "too gay". Which I came to regard as a compliment, and proof I was on the right track.)

"Mortal Things" is a reflection on our consumeristic ways, when in the end we aren't going to bring any of the things we have accumulated during our life in our grave.

I see the difference now between mere baggage and what the heart possesses. Not that the latter is any less stolen goods-the brimming of love and the joy of a comrade-requiring every bit of a pirate's brazen stealth. And no less snatched in the end by the icy clutch of Death than all the baronies and all their rummage. [...] To have greatly loved is to sail without ballast-woth neither chart nor cargo, not bound for the least of kingdoms. Nothing remains, except this being free.

The last essay is somehow a conclusion, who explain this book choices as well as his opinion about the other Gay movement that would like to keep things more discreet.
He concludes with this:

I give them fair warning I for one am taking it all personally-too personally, in fact. Keeping a file of mealiness, of pandering to creeps, of accommodation with the enemy. I don't really have the choice to ignore it, because it's happening on my watch.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Borrowed Time came out in 1988, I was deep into my life as a librarian, wife, mother. I was expecting my second child and I believed like so many others that AIDs was a disease that would never touch my life. However, for whatever reason, I read Monette's memoir Borrowed Time, of his life with Rog and found the book touching and the events tragic.

More than 25 years later, I was reading about the books published by Open Road Media and there was Paul Monette's name. I had not thought of him in years. So I looked to see what my library had by him and this is the only book. I may have read it back in 1994, but it was time to revisit those years. The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer has finally made it to television and I am reading Paul Monette.

The only problem with this was I am angry all over again. Too many good people died before everyone found some answers. Our country really did treat AIDs and HIV as if only gay men were ever going to be affected. (My anger has extra fuel now, thanks to the Supreme Court and the Hobby Lobby.)

I know change can be slow, but it often does arrive. I was just sad that we lost a writer like Monette. His essays were all wonderful - he made me look at life and love in new ways. I am very grateful to him - I just wish our society could pay more attention to radial justice, good medical care for all, enough food, women's bodies, etc., etc., etc.

[Loren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this collection of essays because it contains my favorite essay about visiting a grave: "3275." That is the number of the author's own grave, beside the first love of his life, whom he lost to AIDS, and beneath the grave of the second, lost several years earlier. Monette wanted his own epitaph to read "Died of Homophobia, Murdered by His Government." It's the only essay I've read written by a dying man contemplating the hole that will swallow him.

Monette didn't believe in life after death. He visited his own grave for years "pre-need," lying on the turf beside his lover's plot. He didn't encourage others to make the pilgrimage to visit him unless it was to steel themselves fo the struggle to love whom they must, and to win equality in the larger world. "Grief," Monette wrote, "is a sword, or it is nothing."

Sometimes, rarely, you read a book that wounds you. This is such a book.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

These essays by my second favorite writer ever were written right before he died. They are angry, funny, moving, elegiac. He reaches in and grabs your heart and doesn't let go until you are transformed. Corny? Sue me, I am madly in love with this writing.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just re-read the short story, Gert from Paul Monette's Last Watch of the Night. I think it's one of the best short stories ever written. The fact that its memoir makes it even more intimate and important. What a beautiful voice in Paul Monette which we lost during the AIDS crisis.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Paul,

I’m pretending that you gaze over my shoulder and peruse this piece about you and Last Watch of the Night. On pages 267-8, you discuss your hoarding of books, and I’m so glad to learn that I’m not the only one who does this. In recataloging my library of 1,300 books I realize that 300 of them remain unread, and, until now [during COVID I am endeavoring to catch up], yours has been one of them. I feel disgusted that I didn’t read it when it came out, but that was the first year of teaching AP English in high school, and my reading tasks were to stay at least one chapter ahead of my five classes of bright bulbs. So now to why I love this book and why it will never be dated.

Your essays, at times, seem long and meandering, but readers, make no mistake, they are ordered; they have organization. I believe it is a nonlinear order in which, for example, in an essay about travel, you mention sojourning with all three of your long-term relationships: Roger, Stevie, and Winston. What I like about this sort of organization is it allows the essayist to discuss bigger pictures, larger topics. In the first essay entitled, “Puck,” ostensibly about yours and Roger’s Rhodesian ridgeback-Lab mix, the piece spans out, in which this “noble beast” (28) is the glue holding you two lovers together until Roger succumbs to AIDS.

In another essay, “Gert,” you bring to light your first relationship with a lesbian, in this case, Gertrude Macy, a “maiden great-aunt” of one of your pupils. After she reads your novel manuscript, Gert asks, “Does it have to be so gay?” You answer:

“Oh, indeed it did. The gayer the better. I launched into my half-baked credo, invoking the name of Forster [E. M. Forster], the writer to whom I was most in thrall, and the one who had failed me the most as well. When Forster decided he dare not publish Maurice, for fear of the scandal and what his mother would think; when he locked that manuscript in a drawer for fifty years until he died, he silenced much more than himself. He put up a wall that prevented us, his gay and lesbian heirs, from having a place to begin” (43). I tend to agree, but one must think about the consequences for Forster if he had released Maurice. Lost revenue? Loss of a career? His life?

A fallen Catholic, in fact a defiant ex-Catholic, you discuss your relationship with several different “priests.” You cover gravesites and “The Politics of Silence.” “A One-Way Fare,” your paean to travel, becomes a metaphor for the one-way trip we all make through life. I love how you move from Mont-Saint-Michel to Noel Coward’s Private Lives, to a ten-line excerpt from that play, and on to Greece, all within a page—yet all connected.

Young gays need to read you, just as we read Forster and Isherwood, our forebears, so that they may know from whence they come. They must realize that the fight for freedom and equality is never over. It just shifts from one opponent to another. You fought to bring AIDS into a national focus, and perhaps the young will see that the COVID-19 battle is much the same: unless we change our national leadership COVID will be with us forever, just like AIDS is still with us. One must thank you for your fight, which ended all too soon. You would just now be enjoying a long-deserved homage at the ripe age of seventy-five.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays as Monette deals with the final stages of AIDS. Nicely captures the March on Washington.

[Bethany Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a gorgeously sad, well-written memoir in essay form. It’s the third memoir by Paul Monette, documenting different parts of his life. The things he commented on, even in the early 90s, are still so relevant in the last 15 years. The abuse in the Catholic Church, discrimination, the non-separation of church and state, gay rights… so many things. I don’t really have better words other than Paul’s for this so I’ll leave you with some quotes (swipe through for more).

“When I die, don’t come, I wouldn’t want a leaf to turn away from the sun—it loves it there. There’s nothing so spiritual about being happy but you can’t miss a day of it, because it doesn’t last.”

“It was my job to persuade him that we could fall in love anyway, embracing between the bombs.”

“Oh, that. The fear of getting too attached to the things of life, till you sometimes feel you’re better off lying in bed with the shades all down, no visitors welcome.”

““Can’t you just call him your friend?” she wondered aloud on more than one occasion. “Lover sounds so …” She paused, at a rare loss for words. “Don’t you think friend is more intimate?” As a matter of fact, I do, today.”

“You grow attached to goodness when you know it’s the real thing.“

“Meanwhile, no one seems capable of drawing the line between freedom of religion and the naked politics of hate.”

“You may forget but Let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us.”

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monette's voice will move you to a reality that will awaken your soul.

[Hank Stuever · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sort of like a sad epilogue to "Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story" -- in a sense "more" from an author you wanted to read much more of, knowing, tragically, the rest of it was never to come.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read three in a row by Monette, with this one coming last. Loved it. Reading all three together made it feel like reading a really comprehensive memoir.

[Susan Emmet · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than two months into self-quarantine in Maine, with the library closed and the downtown shut down, we are mining our small home library. COVID led me to decades of memories of friends lost to AIDS which led me to Monette again. Decided to begin with the last essays which choke me and release so much.
As so many have said, things have changed, but the truly entrenched forces, religious and political and corporate, remain in place. This is true for so many (yet and still) marginalized "others."
What stands forth for me is that networks of people cobble together responses that don't all take root in the same fashion, but they can feed each other in terms of racial and sexual identity, climate, workers' rights, legal/judicial/voting rights, global crises - especially in brain dead Trump Time.
Today I turn 71 and I choose the light of Paul Monette today.

[Josiah Gagosian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I genuinely wanted to like this more than I did. Monette played an important role during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis and while I acknowledge and respect him as one of our venerable LGBTQ leaders, without whom we would never have made any progress, I found the writing mostly tedious, overdone, meandering, and disorganized. (With some brief exceptions scattered throughout) Based on other reviews I had read of his work, I expected higher caliber writing. I haven't yet read any of his other books, so perhaps this isn't indicative of his work as a whole.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read about one essay a day every few days--sometimes with a week or so in between--because each one is so much to stew in, I honestly should have gone to review them each individually as I finished them. Of course they'd each be 5 stars. If Monette were still alive in the time of smartphones I'd be hankering to read his notes app, frankly.

The Politics of Silence is one that stuck out to me in particular as something deeply relevant to the state of the world, and as something that I think literally every gay and trans person NEEDS to read.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Reading this in mid 2018, it's sobering that the religious and political anti-gay forces of the early 1990s have changed so little. I guess the upside is that the book still feels very current. Or, now that I think about it, maybe that's a downside—but if so, it's a negative reflection on society itself, not on the book.

[Randy Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A re-read of this book I found while cleaning out an old box. Transported me back to a terrible time that so few remember. His writing is beautiful, brilliant and still meaningful in its bitingly critique of hypocrisy and silence.

[Lara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still written beautifully, still full of love and rage.

[Tristan Prather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply impactful.

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this third book by Paul Monett in a row I find myself becoming a huge fan of his work. This volume of essays is a third, I've not read the first two volumes, but loved reading this after reading his two memoirs. It fills in parts left out of the memoirs and weaves through during and after the time when his first partner, Roger, died of AIDS. His writing is deep, wide, and smart. He writes about his travels, which to some extent were driven by the great writers Keats or Edmond Wilson. He is a supreme writer of place and weaving history of place with historic figures.

In the essay "The Politics of Science," he addresses many of my underlying fears, writing, "It is simply not enough to be an artist, unengaged. If you live in political times, if the lightning rod of history quivers with fire on your root, then all debt is political."

And, "I've learned in my adult life that the will to silence the truth is always and everywhere as strong as the truth itself. So it is a necessary fight we will always be in: those of us who struggle to understand our common truths and those who try to erase them. The first Nazi book burning, I would have you remember, was of a gay and lesbian archive."

And, "We will have no test for freedom of speech if the passion for it atrophies. If we are content with sound bites and TV bullshit, there will be no words to stir our hearts or even to tell us what our hearts are for. The outsider always knows that..."

And, "Don't let anyone tell you that the truth can't disappear." "...whatever speaks the truth of our hearts can only make us stronger. Can only give us the power to counter the hate and bigotry and heal the addled world."

In the essay "Sleeping Under a Tree" he writes, "...the city of golden promises is falling to pieces as surely as my body is: Beirut meets Calcutta. ...And I am as powerless to stop the civic collapse as I am the corporeal one. You want the world to flourish even as you lose it, if only to give you a context worth the fight to stay above water. Or a certain altruism comes to wrap you like a lap robe, nudging you toward acceptance of your fate as you bequeath the rivers and the mountains, the Rembrants and the Beethovan string quartets, to generations yet unborn. The future of the spirit."

And, "All well and good unless you were born with a congenital bad case of reality to begin with, indelible as your thumbprint."

And, "That we as a tribe will come together to heal the eart with a passion equal to the death squads of our fundamentalist foes. And that those who come after never forget those of us who died from AIDS—who took care of one another and, even when our strength had dwindled to a fevered shadow, still fought the implacable agents of our dispensabiltiy."

[Neil Mudde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another wonderful and well thought out book, by Paul Montette, having been involved in being a volunteer in palliative care, sitting besides bed-sides of persons who had barely begun to live dying, back in the nineties I can so relate, to the pain and sorrow, and often being abandoned by their own family,watching other friends die, I am amazed this plague passed me by ( now being 72) as I certainly did not take any of the precautions, and am amazed at the lack of care many of today/s gay active me, by having protective sex.
Paul's essay's in this book deal with aids, I do have trouble seeing the word capitalized, since too me it stands for something ugly and cruel.
"Puck" the essay about Paul's dog stands out. Being an avid animal lover,his description of the dog, the love he had for him, the important place Puck took in their lives. I believe a persons relationship with their animals tells me a great deal about who they are.
This being 2012 the gay community needs to constantly be reminded as to our history, Paul speaks of writing for 20 years, that his writing was rejected due to the fact it was considered "too gay". I believe we need to understand that some of the hard fought issues are never a given, and could be taken away, especially if the gay community is not vigilant. Today we stand again before our Toronto Gay Pride festivities, and there is nothing wrong by celebrating Pride, however we need to be reminded of those who were the trailblazers. Personally the Aids Vigil is the most important part of the festivities, remembering those who had to go through this horrific disease..
I would recommend this book and the other books in this series to anyone, Paul writes from the heart, does not sugar coat issues, and gets to the point in a often very poetic manner.

[Clayton Greiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subtitle is the key to why I ranked the book only three stars. Some of the chapters are too personally related to Mr. Monette's life; they do not engage a reader who was not an intimate acquaintance or a current seeker of a Paul Monette autobiography. A chapter devoted to a re-telling of a friend's encounter with Greta Garbo. An account of travelling to obscure ruins. I kept reading for the clinical details of HIV, of the early struggles to get a grasp of the disease; however, I found I regretted continuing to the book's end after being confronted by so many unnecessary side paths.

I want cite one passage I took exception with, and I hope it is a credo that is rejected by anyone who reads this review or Mr. Monette's book.

"I come from a generation of queers who valued carnal freedom at all costs, to whom faithfulness was the rankest sort of bourgeois folly. Faithfulness to what? The riddled vows of heteros?"

This was from a man who was lying down to sleep with the professed love of his life. I have never understood infidelity. It is anathema to me. Yet, throughout this book, Mr. Monette never fully owns up to the fact that infidelity was the origin of his HIV positive status.

Instead, there is railing at: the FDA, former presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, the pope, organized religion. All, according to Mr. Monette, the sustainers of AIDS as an epidemic.

Sometimes, the hardest reality to accept is the one in the mirror.

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays written by Monette in '92 and '93, Last Watch of the Night chronicles his thoughts on family, spirituality and the church, health and disease, writing, and AIDS, primarily as connected to being gay in America in the 1970s and 1980s. All personal and heavily anecdotal, the essays veer between being sorrowful, angry, and celebratory, though Monette's sarcastic humor often comes through as well. While a few of the essays come off as being overly self-indulgent, most of them are both thoughtful and entertaining, well worth the time for any interested reader. It's worth noting, also, that readers needn't be familiar with Monette's other works in order to get something out of the collection--most of the references to his own writings are general, his primary focus being on more memoir-and-history based interests.

On the whole, the collection is well worth reading for any interested parties, though perhaps not as historically or personal telling as readers might wish.

[Teaghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this and I am interested to read more of Paul Monette's work. It's very honest which is quite refreshing. Being all short stories/essays it is easy to put down and pick up again when you're ready to read a bit more, without feeling like you're leaving something behind. Being written in the 90s it also shows us how far we have come as a society in regards to challenging homophobia and understanding HIV/AIDS. We still have a long way to go, and it feels like things are moving slowly in relation to tolerance and acceptance, but this book reminded me how much worse it was a couple of decades ago.

[Keith Bernardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, some of the best prose you will ever read...

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humorous, serious, touching, deeply moving

[Brian Rodriguez]

Good. Sad book about AIDS.

[Inge Bukit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful & poignant book