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Facing It: A Novel of AIDS
Facing it - A novel of AIDS
217 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1984
1 person is currently reading
58 people want to read
About the author
Paul Reed
50 books2 followersHe was born Paul Hustoft to Sigurd William and Melva Hustoft in San Diego, California on May 28, 1956. Reed, whose biological father died when he was five months old, also had a sister, Karen Hustoft, and a stepfather, who was a Baptist preacher. Reed legally changed his last name in 1969.
As a child and adolescent, Reed studied the organ and harpsichord, and as an adult, he obtained a B. A. in Sociology from California State University, Chico in 1978 and an M. A. in Social Anthropology from the University of California at Davis in 1981.
Reed attended his first gay pride parade in San Francisco in 1980, and moved to the city in July 1981. He remained in the Bay area for the remainder of his life.
Reed's move to San Francisco occurred one month after the Centers for Disease Control published "Pneumocystis Pneumonia: Los Angeles" in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the report that introduced the medical world to what would become known as AIDS.
Reed entered the Castro gay urban subculture as post-Stonewall gay liberation zeal gave way to the sobering realities of the AIDS epidemic. The sense of this change is reflected in his somewhat autobiographical novel Longing (1988), which narrates its protagonist's similar move to San Francisco. The specter of the epidemic looms within the novel and, indeed, permeates all of Reed's writing. This consciousness is a direct result of Reed's life experiences, for in addition to writing during the emergence of the HIV virus, Reed also survived the transformation of AIDS from an acute to a chronic condition.
Reed claims in The Redwood Diary: A Journal (1995) to have known he had AIDS at least as early as 1981. Reed's understanding may well be retrospective, however, since AIDS was not named until midyear 1982; nonetheless, Reed HIV-seroconverted during the early years of the epidemic.
Surviving until 2002, Reed lived to witness and benefit from progressive advances in antiretroviral therapies. More specifically, when Reed's T-cell count dropped to 120 in late 1987, he benefited from the Federal Drug Administration's approval of AZT, the reverse transcriptase inhibitor he credited for his recovery. Similarly, when Reed's viral load (the amount of HIV in the bloodstream) rose to an incredible 1.1 million in early 1996, his health was restored through the use of Saquinavir, the first protease inhibitor to receive FDA approval in 1995.
In addition to being a person living with AIDS, Reed participated in experimental HIV treatments, such as the Compound Q trials, which he recorded in his diary The Q Journal (1991).
Reed also experienced the waves of AIDS bereavement common to the early years of the pandemic, having lost his lover Tom in 1990 and several acquaintances, peers, and friends--notably his intimate long-term friend Cap in 1996. This personal history and epidemiological context informs all of Reed's writings, as they document the changes and challenges facing a writer living with AIDS.
Reed himself succumbed to complications of AIDS on January 28, 2002.
As a child and adolescent, Reed studied the organ and harpsichord, and as an adult, he obtained a B. A. in Sociology from California State University, Chico in 1978 and an M. A. in Social Anthropology from the University of California at Davis in 1981.
Reed attended his first gay pride parade in San Francisco in 1980, and moved to the city in July 1981. He remained in the Bay area for the remainder of his life.
Reed's move to San Francisco occurred one month after the Centers for Disease Control published "Pneumocystis Pneumonia: Los Angeles" in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the report that introduced the medical world to what would become known as AIDS.
Reed entered the Castro gay urban subculture as post-Stonewall gay liberation zeal gave way to the sobering realities of the AIDS epidemic. The sense of this change is reflected in his somewhat autobiographical novel Longing (1988), which narrates its protagonist's similar move to San Francisco. The specter of the epidemic looms within the novel and, indeed, permeates all of Reed's writing. This consciousness is a direct result of Reed's life experiences, for in addition to writing during the emergence of the HIV virus, Reed also survived the transformation of AIDS from an acute to a chronic condition.
Reed claims in The Redwood Diary: A Journal (1995) to have known he had AIDS at least as early as 1981. Reed's understanding may well be retrospective, however, since AIDS was not named until midyear 1982; nonetheless, Reed HIV-seroconverted during the early years of the epidemic.
Surviving until 2002, Reed lived to witness and benefit from progressive advances in antiretroviral therapies. More specifically, when Reed's T-cell count dropped to 120 in late 1987, he benefited from the Federal Drug Administration's approval of AZT, the reverse transcriptase inhibitor he credited for his recovery. Similarly, when Reed's viral load (the amount of HIV in the bloodstream) rose to an incredible 1.1 million in early 1996, his health was restored through the use of Saquinavir, the first protease inhibitor to receive FDA approval in 1995.
In addition to being a person living with AIDS, Reed participated in experimental HIV treatments, such as the Compound Q trials, which he recorded in his diary The Q Journal (1991).
Reed also experienced the waves of AIDS bereavement common to the early years of the pandemic, having lost his lover Tom in 1990 and several acquaintances, peers, and friends--notably his intimate long-term friend Cap in 1996. This personal history and epidemiological context informs all of Reed's writings, as they document the changes and challenges facing a writer living with AIDS.
Reed himself succumbed to complications of AIDS on January 28, 2002.
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April 6, 2025EARLY DAYS OF THE AIDS EPIDEMIC
Paul Reed was only twenty-eight-years-old when his first novel, Facing It: A Novel of AIDS, was published. Reed is quoted in various sources as saying that at the time the novel was published, he did not know anyone who had AIDS. That quickly changed, however. Every time I read Facing It, I marvel at how much it personally hits home for me, as I assume it does for many people “who were there.” I cannot imagine what my reaction to the novel would have been if I had been fortunate enough to read it when it was originally published in 1984.
Every time I read Facing It, it’s as if I’m reading about my own life. I’m sure other people feel the same way when they read the novel. Like Andy and David in the novel, my partner and I were together four years before he came down with pneumocystis pneumonia in January 1996. Unlike Andy, and mercifully, depending on how you look at it, he died barely two months later.
The sense of foreboding of the first sentences of Facing It will stay with me for a long time: “Had it been some other season of the year, Dr. Walter Branch wouldn’t have given the hospital morgue a second thought. But now, in the heat of early summer late on a Friday afternoon, he remembered that there was, somewhere at least, one cool spot to which he could retreat should the heat get much worse.” Dr. Branch doesn’t know how prominent a role the morgue, or death, will play in his life.
The following are memorable lines spoken by various members of the cast of characters of Facing It. The quotations are listed without attribution in the order in which they appear in the novel.
“Let’s just deal with it and get you well.”
“It would have to be straight people getting sick before anyone would care.”
“This plague is a freak.”
“Jump on it while it’s hot, man.”
“There will be a role for dykes to play here.”
“I see dead fags will make good copy.”
“I assume it’s a virus.”
“If this thing gets bigger, so will the industry that springs up around it.”
“It’s become our illness.”
“Andy died a long time ago.”
“Did you ever think it would be this bad?”
“The man had turned medicine into politics.”
“I can’t ignore the fact that he is dying just because of his perversion.”
“I am confident that the disease is sexually transmitted . . . by contact with blood and semen.”
“Andy Stone’s lung has collapsed from the pneumonia.”
“I love you.”
Paul Reed masterfully portrays the internal reflections of all of his characters. The love relationship between Andy Stone and David Markham is heartbreakingly rendered. On page 22, Reed gives a beautiful description of Andy Stone’s physical perfection before his illnesses ravage him. The passage on page 62, told from David’s point of view, in which Andy sexually approaches David breaks me down every time I read it because it is so goddamn true. It’s amazing how insightfully Reed describes this scene: “He didn’t know how to get out of it without making Andy feel more isolated than ever. And so he went through with it, for Andy’s sake, not his own.”
Andy’s parents treat him horribly. His mother never defies his father and goes to see Andy. At the conclusion of the novel, the virus has not yet been identified.
Paul Reed indelibly, humanely, and nonjudgmentally describes what gay men thought and felt and experienced during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Paul Reed was lost to AIDS on January 28, 2002, at the age of 45.
Kudos to the Library of Homosexual Congress, an imprint of Rebel Satori Press, for their reissue of Facing It: A Novel of AIDS on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2024, with an introduction by Jerry Rosco. This important novel is now in print again and easily accessible.
Paul Reed was only twenty-eight-years-old when his first novel, Facing It: A Novel of AIDS, was published. Reed is quoted in various sources as saying that at the time the novel was published, he did not know anyone who had AIDS. That quickly changed, however. Every time I read Facing It, I marvel at how much it personally hits home for me, as I assume it does for many people “who were there.” I cannot imagine what my reaction to the novel would have been if I had been fortunate enough to read it when it was originally published in 1984.
Every time I read Facing It, it’s as if I’m reading about my own life. I’m sure other people feel the same way when they read the novel. Like Andy and David in the novel, my partner and I were together four years before he came down with pneumocystis pneumonia in January 1996. Unlike Andy, and mercifully, depending on how you look at it, he died barely two months later.
The sense of foreboding of the first sentences of Facing It will stay with me for a long time: “Had it been some other season of the year, Dr. Walter Branch wouldn’t have given the hospital morgue a second thought. But now, in the heat of early summer late on a Friday afternoon, he remembered that there was, somewhere at least, one cool spot to which he could retreat should the heat get much worse.” Dr. Branch doesn’t know how prominent a role the morgue, or death, will play in his life.
The following are memorable lines spoken by various members of the cast of characters of Facing It. The quotations are listed without attribution in the order in which they appear in the novel.
“Let’s just deal with it and get you well.”
“It would have to be straight people getting sick before anyone would care.”
“This plague is a freak.”
“Jump on it while it’s hot, man.”
“There will be a role for dykes to play here.”
“I see dead fags will make good copy.”
“I assume it’s a virus.”
“If this thing gets bigger, so will the industry that springs up around it.”
“It’s become our illness.”
“Andy died a long time ago.”
“Did you ever think it would be this bad?”
“The man had turned medicine into politics.”
“I can’t ignore the fact that he is dying just because of his perversion.”
“I am confident that the disease is sexually transmitted . . . by contact with blood and semen.”
“Andy Stone’s lung has collapsed from the pneumonia.”
“I love you.”
Paul Reed masterfully portrays the internal reflections of all of his characters. The love relationship between Andy Stone and David Markham is heartbreakingly rendered. On page 22, Reed gives a beautiful description of Andy Stone’s physical perfection before his illnesses ravage him. The passage on page 62, told from David’s point of view, in which Andy sexually approaches David breaks me down every time I read it because it is so goddamn true. It’s amazing how insightfully Reed describes this scene: “He didn’t know how to get out of it without making Andy feel more isolated than ever. And so he went through with it, for Andy’s sake, not his own.”
Andy’s parents treat him horribly. His mother never defies his father and goes to see Andy. At the conclusion of the novel, the virus has not yet been identified.
Paul Reed indelibly, humanely, and nonjudgmentally describes what gay men thought and felt and experienced during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Paul Reed was lost to AIDS on January 28, 2002, at the age of 45.
Kudos to the Library of Homosexual Congress, an imprint of Rebel Satori Press, for their reissue of Facing It: A Novel of AIDS on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2024, with an introduction by Jerry Rosco. This important novel is now in print again and easily accessible.
December 5, 2023
The quality of the writing is poor to mediocre, weighted down with redundant or pointless adjectives, adverbs, and whole sentences, and some aspects of the plot strain credulity -- for example, the lame blackmail subplot. Worse, the characters in several of the (frequently clunky) conversations are all too often obviously not speaking to each other but to the reader. Then there's that final scene, in which Andy, collapsed lung and all, manages to speak entire paragraphs without as much as a cough: one is reminded of corpulent Violettas whom we're supposed to regard as dying of consumption (tuberculosis, that is, not cream sauces). Then there are those annoying little details: David seems too nice a guy to be engrossed in reading *Atlas Shrugged*, and if Reed is going to name-drop *Ludus tonalis* then certainly he shouldn't be calling it a sonata.
So *Facing It*, arguably the first novel to be published concerning the AIDS crisis, is no masterpiece. But perhaps it shouldn't be: the shock and horror of the epidemic was still so new that works of art that displayed as much polish as outrage might reasonably be seen as trivializing the matter. So three stars; four "in pectore" for those readers interested in literary responses to the crisis.
So *Facing It*, arguably the first novel to be published concerning the AIDS crisis, is no masterpiece. But perhaps it shouldn't be: the shock and horror of the epidemic was still so new that works of art that displayed as much polish as outrage might reasonably be seen as trivializing the matter. So three stars; four "in pectore" for those readers interested in literary responses to the crisis.
January 16, 2018
Decent book that looks at a personal
Angle on the AIDS CRISIS, but too much info-dump and preaching about how screwed we were during this era. Could have been shown better--too much telling at times.
Angle on the AIDS CRISIS, but too much info-dump and preaching about how screwed we were during this era. Could have been shown better--too much telling at times.
April 12, 2022
FEAR AND LONELINESS
Paul Reed’s Facing It: A Novel of AIDS, published in 1984 by Gay Sunshine Press, is one of the earliest novels about AIDS. On the verso of the title page of Facing It, Paul Reed asserts, “Aside from the news articles excerpted herein and the reality of the AIDS crisis itself, this work is fiction.” It is the reality and the fear that it caused that Reed masterfully portrays in this novel. Through the story of Andy Stone and his lover, David Markman, Reed unflinchingly depicts the early months of the AIDS epidemic.
The sequence on pages 79-81 during which Andy has what can only be called an epiphany is a masterpiece. Andy’s mental journey from “overpowering fear and loneliness,” then to “terror,” then to “bland acceptance” is beautifully and devastatingly rendered. At the beginning of Andy’s illness, David realizes he must be “supportive and helpful.” He also has a “sudden fear he couldn’t name.” He doubts that he can hold up, but he will not leave Andy. And David, who is young and only human, wonders if, after Andy is gone, anyone would want to be with him knowing that his lover had died of AIDS. The strength that Andy and David develop together is inspiring: “Together they buried their heads and slept; together they held hands and said nothing; together they began the difficult task of facing it.” Each of the three parts of the novel concludes with Andy thinking. But he is never alone. David is always right there with him.
In an article in the Advocate in 1988, Paul Reed says, “When I wrote that book [Facing It}, I was just an observer. I did not know anybody who had AIDS.” Remarkably, nothing rings false in Facing It.
In an essay titled “Early AIDS Fiction,” published in 1993, Reed writes: “To alert people to the calamity of AIDS by telling a story, to explore multiple facets of the epidemic and its wider meanings, to educate the general readership and influence public opinion through vivid imagery—these are all valuable and very real products of AIDS literature . . . That was the early challenge of AIDS for fiction writers, and, unfortunately, it remains the challenge for fiction writers today.” In Facing It, Paul Reed superbly meets this challenge.
Paul Reed was lost to AIDS on January 28, 2002 at the age of 45.
Paul Reed’s Facing It: A Novel of AIDS, published in 1984 by Gay Sunshine Press, is one of the earliest novels about AIDS. On the verso of the title page of Facing It, Paul Reed asserts, “Aside from the news articles excerpted herein and the reality of the AIDS crisis itself, this work is fiction.” It is the reality and the fear that it caused that Reed masterfully portrays in this novel. Through the story of Andy Stone and his lover, David Markman, Reed unflinchingly depicts the early months of the AIDS epidemic.
The sequence on pages 79-81 during which Andy has what can only be called an epiphany is a masterpiece. Andy’s mental journey from “overpowering fear and loneliness,” then to “terror,” then to “bland acceptance” is beautifully and devastatingly rendered. At the beginning of Andy’s illness, David realizes he must be “supportive and helpful.” He also has a “sudden fear he couldn’t name.” He doubts that he can hold up, but he will not leave Andy. And David, who is young and only human, wonders if, after Andy is gone, anyone would want to be with him knowing that his lover had died of AIDS. The strength that Andy and David develop together is inspiring: “Together they buried their heads and slept; together they held hands and said nothing; together they began the difficult task of facing it.” Each of the three parts of the novel concludes with Andy thinking. But he is never alone. David is always right there with him.
In an article in the Advocate in 1988, Paul Reed says, “When I wrote that book [Facing It}, I was just an observer. I did not know anybody who had AIDS.” Remarkably, nothing rings false in Facing It.
In an essay titled “Early AIDS Fiction,” published in 1993, Reed writes: “To alert people to the calamity of AIDS by telling a story, to explore multiple facets of the epidemic and its wider meanings, to educate the general readership and influence public opinion through vivid imagery—these are all valuable and very real products of AIDS literature . . . That was the early challenge of AIDS for fiction writers, and, unfortunately, it remains the challenge for fiction writers today.” In Facing It, Paul Reed superbly meets this challenge.
Paul Reed was lost to AIDS on January 28, 2002 at the age of 45.
August 11, 2016
I really loved this book! It is one of the first American AIDS novels and written at a time when there were still a lot of uncertainties and political problems connected to the AIDS crisis. This book must have helped spread knowledge about the development of the crisis and bring focus to this very important subject. It is indeed one of the best novels concerning the epidemic that I have read so far. It questions the development of the epidemic and the institutions (researchers, media, government etc) involved in this.
However, I do have one thing that annoys me in this otherwise very believable presentation - and that is the fact that it starts using the AIDS acronym in the novel at a time that is supposed to be fall 1981 - but the acronym was not actually used until late summer 1982.
However, I do have one thing that annoys me in this otherwise very believable presentation - and that is the fact that it starts using the AIDS acronym in the novel at a time that is supposed to be fall 1981 - but the acronym was not actually used until late summer 1982.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews