Tim and Pete

by James Robert Baker

Sexy, gripping, and utterly unrepressed, Tim and Pete is a freewheeling symposium on the themes of sex, art, homophobia, and radical gay terrorism". A nihilistic joyride through post-apocalyptic L.A. full of love gone bad, bitter humor, AIDS activism, and sex, drugs, and rock & roll".--David B. Feinberg, author of Eighty-Sixed.

Genres: Fiction, Gay, Queer, Gay Fiction, LGBT, Classics, Romance

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 1 out of 5]

oh no she didn't!
oh yes she did!
oh no she didn't!
oh yes she did!
oh no she didn't!
oh yes she did!
oh no she didn't!
oh yes she did!
oh no she didn't!
oh yes she did!
oh no she didn't!
oh yes she did!

that's a pretty good encapsulation of this novel, except throw in some bullshit attempts at being topical and controversial with some callow AIDS & post-L.A. Riots type commentary. yawneroo! please, if you're going to be political, try to be intelligent first. i would rather just jack off to old Marky Mark videos than be forced to read another lame gay book like this one.

okay, one extra star For Trying To Say Something About The State Of The Gay Community.

okay, one star removed for reminding me of Gregg Araki's horrid, smarmy, woman-hating film The Living End. two pieces of trashiness all done up in Bitingly Satiric and Surprisingly (yet Unconvincingly) Violent Drag. exhibits A & B in the 90s Wing of the Gay Museum of Horrors.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when it first came out, and it so well expressed the hatred I had at that time for what society did to us during the 80s. It wasn't just the right-wingers, it was everyone. President Bush Sr., when asked why the Reagan administration hadn't taken stronger action against AIDS, stated that there was too much of a 'giggle-factor' associated with the disease. And that was one of the nicest things I think I heard from that era. I lived in Southern California in the 80s and my friends were dying faster than I could even keep track of. So when I read other reviews that state this book was extreme or not truly expressive of the era or whatever - BULLSHIT. I can promise you that's EXACTLY how a lot of us felt at that time. I'm still messed up in the head because of what I went through during the AIDS crisis. So many wonderful, amazing people dead, so many beautiful lives ended. I was never insane enough to take action, but I vicariously enjoyed the actions taken by the characters in this book. And I absolutely loved The Living End, as well.

[Blake Fraina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is kind of a schizophrenic book. I tried to enjoy it for the romance between two ex-lovers, a filmmaker and a rock musician, who are thrown together and, over the course of one eventful night in L.A., must come to terms with their lingering feelings for one another. Even though, for me, the fate of this love affair was the most engaging aspect of the book, it's obvious that the late author, James Robert Baker, had another agenda in mind. This very black comedy/satire is primarily concerned with communicating the level of rage felt by the gay community against the right wing conservative powers-that-be during the height of the AIDS crisis in the early nineties. Set against, and certainly finding parallels in, post-riot Los Angeles, the story follows the eponymous ex-lovers as they traverse the city looking for one of Pete's fellow AA members who has fallen off the wagon...hard.

Along the way they meet a recovering alcoholic movie star, a reactionary Republican congressman, a pair of feuding, mismatched lesbian lovers, an AIDS sufferer newly converted to Christianity and ready to renounce his "sinful" ways and, most significantly, a band of artists-cum-terrorists plotting to bomb the La Jolla church attended by a popular Republican ex-President.

I very much enjoyed this book on one level because, as with all my favourite LGBT books, the two leads aren't mincing stereotypes. Both are attractive, complicated, unique individuals. Plus, as a rock music and film lover, the glimpses into their respective careers was definitely cool. And, with the exception of a few lengthy, didactic speeches, the copious dialogue is convincingly written.

On the downside, I found most of the secondary and minor characters (although not necessarily poorly drawn or wooden) were not fully realized individuals, but merely props used to justify the author's anger against particular societal ills. I was also majorly turned off by the violence. Although most of the violence doesn't actually happen on the page, it's still omnipresent - in the bitter, angry lyrics of Pete's songs, in the deliberately offensive, provocative artwork of the radical queer terrorists (who also orchestrate a wholesale massacre on a conference of conservative bigwigs that takes place sometime shortly after the book's denouement) and in the elaborate gore-filled revenge fantasies shared by the two leads as they drive through bombed out L.A. While I certainly agree with the book's politics, most of this stuff, played for laughs, struck me as nothing more than impotent bombast.

My recommendation - read Tim and Pete for the love story. If you're anything like me, you can stop in the middle of Chapter Ten and have your happy ending without the huge side order of implied and impending violence.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly a period piece at this point, but one of the best things the late James Robert Baker ever wrote, "Tim and Pete" belongs to the early 90s new queer cultural movement that also produced Gregg Araki's film "The Living End." 24 hours pass in the lives of Tim and Pete, a currently on-the-outs couple (one's a punk rocker; one's a film historian) who somehow become embroiled with a plot to kill the President, various L.A. dissidents, traffic jams, apocalyptic queer terrorists and who might--just might, if they can navigate it all--get back together. This was a toned-down version of the author's earlier "Adrenline," written under the pen names James Dillinger.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is odd or maybe even ironic that this novel, which was apparently immensely controversial at the time it was published and ended Baker's publishing career, is the novel most easily and inexpensively available today and which has been published in the most numerous editions. Unfortunately I don't think it is his best novel, I haven't read all of his oeuvre but I much prefer 'Anarchy' and 'Testosterone' (and hope to post soon on 'Boy Wonder'). I admire the passion but for those of us who lived through and experienced the horrors of the emergence of AIDS outside the USA it is impossible not to feel a vast cultural gulf. I have no intention of pretending everything was good on this side of the ocean but we didn't have a president like Bush senior who found it difficult to concentrate on the AIDS issue because of the 'giggle-factor' (?!) and various churches and religious leaders pronouncing jerimands against those who refused to accept their versions of old testament morality (in the UK and the rest of Europe religious leaders, although for many of us still given way too prominent a place in public debate, just do not have the sort of following of their US counterparts).

For me and many in the UK it was inexplicable that the Gay activism and the AIDS crisis in the USA did not forge a link with others to create a real political/revolutionary push for change (there was nothing comparable in the USA to the UK gays who joined the striking miners on the picket line in 1984). The fact that a piece of speculative fiction could get so many people, gay and non gay, upset and ruin the career of the author shows how completely insular and non aggressive the gay movement in the USA was. Writing a novel which has a song calling for gays to act like the Baader Meinhof gang is not a call to action or revolution. It is a cri de coeur of someone who knows that there is no real passion for engagement - no one is going to man any barricades or storm any citadels of power. This was not Paris in 1789, 1848 or 1968; or St. Petersburg in 1917 or Munich in 1919 - it wasn't even Paris in 1830.

I write this as someone from the outside looking in, I do not mean to diminish what we gays in the rest of the world owe to the gay movement in the USA but there is a terrible sadness to see that the anger felt back then never coalesced into serious questioning of economic structures as they affect politics and power, nor did it result in any serious bridge building or approaches to any other powerless groups. While obsessed with their own access to medical resources even the most engaged never identified with all the other poor and powerless who were without health care and treatment. I cannot forget that the anger, the whistle blowing, the sit-ins, etc. all gradually faded away as HIV/AIDS ceased to be 'our' problem and became exclusively the preserve of foreigners and minorities.

This novel is readable and, in parts brilliant, Baker is an author who I like and admire greatly but as a novel of the AIDS era (the definitive one according to the blurb on my copy) it is a fantasy that reveals the failures of the time. That so many gay readers and spokespersons got their knickers in a twist because it might upset some straights or because it wasn't a gay positive portrayal is just an early sign that, given a chance, way to many gays were waiting to become 'Log Cabin Republicans' and suck up to the clergymen and power structures that had kept them oppressed for so long. It is sad that gays never asked themselves why were they now being welcomed? For their money and their willingness to stamp on the faces of all the others still without money or power, gay or straight and, dare we whisper it, who did not acquire their lustrous bronze skin tones on a sunbed in a salon but were born that way?!.

[Jess Tell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reads like a guide of how to be a hip Cali queer in the 80s. But beneath the catty calls & pop culture references id a documented account of life where paranoia comes head to head with lust & love.
This book is also hot in a gritty trashy way that i enjoy.

[John Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic! Channeling a similar anger to that of EIGHTY-SIXED by David Feinberg, except that Feinberg is NYC and Baker is LA. I can’t believe it took me 30 years to get around to reading it, though. Loved it.

[Sean Meriwether · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tim and Pete is a testament of what it was like to live as a gay man during the AIDS crisis, before effective treatment was available to those with insurance. Back when a diagnoses was a death sentence. A generation of mostly gay men were sick and dying with no cure in sight. In the U.S. the Reagan and Bush administrations, with the vocal support of Republicans, took no action to stop the plague because the “right kind of people” were dying (gay men, Haitians, and drug users). The religious right claimed it was their god’s punishment against the heathens. ACT UP was a vigilante group battling against discrimination, for accelerated drug treatments from the FDA, and literally fighting for their lives. They were living a war that no one else acknowledged. There was a lot of fear and justifiable anger. This is the world I came of age in when I moved to NY in 1989.

This book is about that era of rage…

Tim is an emotionally conservative film archivist, Pete is a radical fronting an all gay alternative rock band. They dated for six months and have been broken up for a year when they bump into each other as the novel starts, but the wounds are still raw. Over the course of a frenetic evening, they rehash their relationship, state (and restate and restate) various political points, discuss sex, drugs and rock and roll, and tour various neighborhoods of 1990s L.A., which will appeal to people of a certain age who lived there in the years before the riots. There is anger, a lot of it, where decapitating public officials as political performance art is a running macabre joke. All of this gets buried under a landslide of dialogue that frequently does not advance the story but does maintain a level of anger that becomes exhausting. The novel is littered with dozens of ideas for songs, artwork, and activism, which are often touched upon and never developed. I admire Baker for putting two non-mainstream (albeit cisgender and white) gays at the center of this tumultuous and increasingly surrealistic (and exasperating) novel, and for reminding me of this decade of fear, guilt and rage of that era.

[Sean Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A satirical book filled with angry truth, it perfectly encapsulates a certain era.

[Jo Quenell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a lot of thoughts about this book, some of which will take a while to fully form. I was a big fan of Baker's posthumous novel 'Testosterone', and have meant to read more of his work. I've been intrigued by 'Tim and Pete' for a while--while a romance novel on the surface, it's more of a testament to queer anger, one which effectively destroyed the writer's career and led to his suicide. 'Tim and Pete' is written with the rage of a gay man who survived the '80s AIDS epidemic, during a time where the right wing still controlled the mainstream narrative of homosexuality. Needless to say, it's not a cheery book. This is LGBTQ fiction with teeth.
The most controversial take of 'Tim and Pete' is that Baker wrote the novel to advocate for the murder of right-wingers. While this is a prominent part of the novel, I don't agree that this was Baker's intent. Instead, he shows humanity in a group of individuals who had lost so much, they no longer see nonviolence as an option. If we look at noir as a desperate people doing fucked-up things to improve their circumstances, then 'Tim and Pete' makes for a brilliant noir novel.
I do have some reservations about the book, which may involve my own positionality and perspective. Like 'Testosterone', I feel like Baker's writing gets muddled with a bit too much pop culture analysis, which slows down a story that should be moving at a fast pace. This may be the fact that I'm not a gay man living in the '90s, so much of this analysis is lost on me. Regardless, this book is only 250 pages, but I feel like it could have still been trimmed down. I'm also cautious to read too much into this, but from the few mentions, Baker's opinions on trans people seem to leave more to be desired. Again, this could be a sign of time and culture, but as a trans person, it was hard not to feel a bit bummed out by characterization in this front.
Despite that, I enjoyed this book, and I'm glad I read it. Baker is an important and tragic voice in the crime/noir genre, one who I feel gets overlooked too often. His contemporary view of Los Angeles is just as important as Ellroy and Chandler's, and his writing proved that queer fiction can be as masculine and brutal. He should be celebrated as such.

[Nicolas Chinardet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not quite what I was expecting. This is in fact an AIDS novel with a difference.

While it deals with the emotional hurt experienced by individuals and the repercussions of the disease on relationships, this urban "road-movie" set in the course of 36hrs (with a lot of flashbacks) has another, uncommon angle: that of anger. Anger at the injustice of the disease and anger at the response and lack thereof from right-wing political figures.

I liked how Baker portrayed the way Tim and Pete relate to each other (although they are perhaps even more flawed than they first appear and less sympathetic) and there is a number of quite colourful secondary characters along the road. What I could have done without perhaps was the protagonists' violent in-jokes. I get that this is a way to show their intimacy but there were lots of them throughout the book, all more or less in the same vein. My issue however is not directly with the violence of those jokes itself. I'm not against dark humour but for me to enjoy jokes they have to be funny. These aren't. They aren't even amusing most of the time, even though the characters appear to find them to be hilarious indeed.

There is also the wider question of radicalisation. In a way, 20 years after publication, this has become topical again but while the theme takes up a large section of the book, I felt the moral and ethical repercussions of militant violence weren't explored properly. The anger experienced by most go the characters, at the rampant homophobia and more specifically at the response (social and political) to the AIDS epidemic, is quite understandable but Baker never really seems to give us the tools (or the fruit of his reflection on the subject) to decide whether violent action should be justified or not (I'll stick to my view before reading the book: As tempting as it might seem, it shouldn't be).

Other than that the book is well written and the plot engrossing within its enclosed little world. It is however also a little unsettling. Don't expect too much of the love story the title might suggest, though.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim and Pete is seriously dated by today's standards and a bit extreme in the message Baker is trying to get across (as a result this novel essentially ended not only his writing career but also his life). I was 23 when this came out (I also "came out" around the same time) and it was very relevant to the gay zeitgeist of the time. I had never read anything like it and it became an instant favorite (and still is).

Upon re-reading it, what I love the most about this novel is the never ending barrage of pop culture references, the breakneck pacing, and the breezy writing. There's also some pretty graphic sex in places but it's more gross than sexy in my opinion. Yet, at its core, it's a simple love story:

A year has passed since Tim and Pete broke up. Through a weird stroke of luck Tim, still carrying a torch for Pete and abstaining from sex due to the relatively new disease AIDS, is stranded in Venice Beach and runs into Pete. Reluctantly, Pete agrees to give Tim a ride home but first they have to stop at his mother's house. From that point on they embark on a 24 hour adventure navigating punk rockers, man-hating lesbians, the aftermath of the Watts riots, evil politicians, a deserted bathhouse, and a gang of gay militant meth head artists who will stop at nothing to make a point. Along the way Tim and Pete realize they still have feelings for each other.

Tim and Pete, like most of Baker's other novels, reads like it would make a great movie. I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a quick, over-the-top, mindless read.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Robert Baker's novel was controversial when it came out in the 1990s, but today it reads almost like a sweet little love story about two flawed, angry, petty, volatile, but ultimately human gay men who re-find each other after a year apart attempting to get over a six month love affair that changed their lives. Tim and Pete argue, make out, smoke cigarettes, and reminisce while going on a trek around Los Angeles to find a missing speed junkie from Pete's support group. In the process they become involved with a gang of gay terrorists out to kill conservative Republicans and the book transcends from pulp to political manifesto as it contemplates when, if ever, an act of violence becomes necessary to save the world for the side of good. Deeply unsettling, very romantic, Baker's novel is certainly readable, if not for the faint of stomach, and he captures a decade of transition and torment for gay male Americans right at the turning tide of the AIDS crisis. That it reads as authentic is indisputable, but for exactly that reason it's not for everyone (though maybe required reading for gay men of a certain age, and those too young to understand just how bad it was).

[Robert Fontenot · Rating 5 out of 5]

In some ways this is woefully dated. The book is very much rooted in the pop culture of the day and the text is littered with allusions to music/movies/stars/etc. from the fifties to the early nineties. It can be exhausting at times and a careful read requires frequent trips to google and youtube to understand what the book is talking about.

This book is also rooted in the AIDS crisis and while the worst of the plague years may have come and gone, there is something about the queer rage that burns here that is timeless. It can be hard to remember the despair and nihilism that gripped the gay community in this period and which this book is steeped in. Still, as the right wing has recently started to increase their attacks on all that is queer, it's hard to not to feel a bit of that rage again.

This book is dark and funny and very strange but it ends on a rather hopeful note. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Nikolas Koutsodontis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Μιλάμε εδώ για το τελευταίο έργο του James Robert Baker, το Tom&Pete (1993). Ποπ Αρτ αισθητικής γραφή, μεταμοντέρνο σχεδόν γουορχολικό στον τρόπο που φτιάχνει ένα παρακμιακό αμερικανικό σύμπαν με νυχτερινά liquor store και mall, διυλιστήρια και παρατημένα gay bathhouses, στον τρόπο που χωνεύει και επαναμυθοποιεί την αμερικανική πολιτιστική βιομηχανία από το κλασικό Χόλιγουντ ως την mainstream μουσική.

Συνίσταται να ακούσεις, κατα την ανάγνωση, τα ίδια τραγούδια με τους ήρωες, να ψάξεις από περιέργεια τους ηθοποιούς και τις ταινίες που η αχαλίνωτα ειρωνική camp φαντασία του Baker αναμυγνύει σε αυτό το νιχιλιστικό πεσιμιστικά κυνικό pop -έως και pulp- βιβλίο. Και λέμε pulp καθώς, όπως και παλαιότερα gay μυθιστορήματα (The Lord won't mind, του Γκόρντον Μέρικ), αγγίζει την πορνογραφική λογοτεχνία, με την πυκνή περιγραφή γαμησιών, καθώς συχνά οι ήρωες συζητάνε με τον ίδιο ακριβώς τρόπο που βιώνουν εκείνες τις στιγμές του ανώνυμου, ψυχρού άνιωθου σεξ, του tearoom trade, σε πάρκα και παραλίες. Γι αυτό και πολλοί χαρακτηρίζουν το βιβλίο trashy.

"Pete's door was ajar. He was on the bed with his back to me, in his grey jockey shorts, wearing a walkman, writing in his notebook, a poem or a song. I couldn't help looking at him a moment, his pale, smooth back, the black hair on his legs, remembering how he'd looked when i woke up beside him, put my arms around him from behind, my hard morning cock against his hairy butt"26

Το βιβλίο ξεκινά εξαιρετικά. ο Μπέικερ μας συστείνει στη σχέση του Τιμ με τον Πητ, στους φόβους, στο ξεγλίστρημα όταν η σχέση σοβαρεύει, στις ταξικές τους διαφορές

"not everybody has a cushy fucking job watching von Sternberg films all day. You spend more on one stop at the fucking salad bar at Gelson's than i do on food in a week" 75

Αυτό είναι και το πρώτο μέρος του βιβλίου, όπου γνωρίζουμε τους χαρακτήρες. Και είναι εξαιρετικό. Έπειτα κάπως το φορτώνει με απανωτά περιστατικά για να αποδείξει το πόσο τυπικό καλλιτεχνικό παιδί των early 90's είναι. Η αισθητική του είναι στο κλίμα του New Queer Cinema, του Γκας Βαν Σαντ, αλλά ειδικά του Γκρεγκ Αράκι -Totally fucked up(1991), Doom generation(1993), Nowhere(1997) και ειδικά το Living End του 1992 με το οποίο το βιβλίο έχει τρομερή θεματική και αισθητική συγγένεια. Η πολιτική στον Αράκι είναι παρούσα στο camp, στην επιφάνεια, παρότι γίνεται συνειδητά κι έτσι είναι μισοcamp, πιο πολύ ιδεολογικό camp. Εκεί η παρακμή έχει χρώματα έντονα, έχει όμορφα πρόσωπα, έχει βια απο media, εκκλησία και φυσικά έχει πολύ εξιδανίκευση του εμπορευματοποιημένου καλλιτεχνικού προιόντος. Είναι ένα αμάγλαμα από αισθητική ταινιών gay porn, από περιοδικά και pulp μυθιστορήματα, από βιντεοκλίπ του Mtv και όλα αυτά φυσικά βρίσκονται μέσα στον δημιουργικό κόσμο του Μπέικερ εξίσου. Ένας κόσμος μεγαγχολίας, όπου ενίοτε έφτανε στα όρια ενός μεταμοντέρνου νιχιλισμού.

Η σκληρότητα του βιώματος της απώλειας φίλων και εραστών από το AIDS, η βια της οικογένειας, των συγγενών, των δεξιών πολιτικών, οδηγεί στο τυφλό μίσος. Παρότι το βιβλίο στο δεύτερο μισό του είναι φορτωμένο από συμβάντα και εγκυβωτισμένες μικροιστορίες ίδιας κατάληξης και περιεχομένου, παρότι κλωτσάνε οι σκηνές εύκολου σεξ, καθόλου ερεθιστικού και σκοτεινού, μέσα στο πλαίσιο της αγωνίας για επιβεβαίωση, της μοναξιάς, της αυτοκαταστροφής, της αυτολύπησης, της αντικειμενοποίησης του αντρικού σώματος, παρότι όλα αυτά βαραίνουν και το κείμενο, τελικά ο Μπέικερ παραμένει αισιόδοξος. Η στάση των ηρώων, ο έρωτας τους που παλεύουν να επιβιώσει από το φορτίο των τραυμάτων τους και το φορτίο μιας γενιάς που αποδεκατίζεται από την αρρώστια, είναι τελικά με τον δικό του τρόπο όμορφος και ανθρώπινος.

Η οργή του Μπέικερ είναι γνήσια.

"This isn't therapy
this isn't art
make this real
go out and start
pick up a gun
kill a right wing pig
kill as many as you can
kill someone big"

Μάλιστα δήλωσε και δημόσια πως αν μάθαινε οτι σκότωσαν τον Ρήγκαν ή άλλους πολιτικούς και επιχειρηματίες που ευθύνονται για την κωλυσιεργεία στην ανεύρεση λύσης, στη χρηματοδότηση της μελέτης για την θεραπεία της αρρώστιας (βλέπε την εξαιρετική ταινια And the band played on, 1993) ο ίδιος θα χαιρόταν. Κι έτσι το βιβλίο θεωρήθηκε ανεύθυνο από κάποιους κριτικούς και ότι προμοτάρει την πολιτική βία, συμβουλεύοντας να πυροβολησουμε τα κεφάλια των ακροδεξιών πολιτικών. Μα μιλάμε βέβαια για τη χώρα που δολοφονήθηκαν εργάτες στο Ludlow, τη χώρα που σκότωσε τον Λούθερ Κίνκ, τον Μάλκομ X, που μπήκε μαφιόζικα και εκτέλεσε τον Φρέντ Χάμπτον, τη χώρα που μόνο οι λάθος άνθρωποι δολοφονούνται.

"i'm sick of watching the wrong people die
with a victim's whimper instead of a bang
what i'd like to see
what this country needs
is a Baader- Meinhof gang" 131

Ο Μπέικερ δεν είναι μηδενιστής αναρχικός. Το βιβλίο του δεν βαθαίνει την ανάλυση του στον άδικο, κεδροσκοπικό κανιβαλισμό των μεγάλων φαρμακευτικών εταιριών ή στις βαθύτερες αιτίες που ισχυροί αστοί πολιτικοί του συντηρητικού ακροδεξιού χώρου κυνήγησαν και καταδίκασαν με τις πολιτικές τους πολλά λοάτκια άτομα. Δεν βαθαίνει στην ουσία της κοινωνίας αυτής που είναι η ανθρώπινη εκμετάλλευση ανθρώπου και η ιδιοκτησία, το κέρδος. Ο Μπέικερ γράφει κάτι άγριο για τον άγριο φόβο, τον τρόμο, τη φρίκη των ανθρώπων, που πεθαίνουν και βλέπουν την αδιαφορία του αστικού κράτους, των μηχανισμών του, την σκόπιμη υποχρηματοδότηση και καθυστέρηση, τελικά όλα αυτά που πυροδότησαν το κίνημα του ACT UP.

Το βιβλίο έχει να κάνει με το επανασμίξιμο του Τιμ με τον Πιτ μετά από ένα χρόνο χωρισμού. Το βιβλίο είναι ειλικρινές πως θέλει να πληρώσουν με τη ζωή τους οι υπεύθυνοι της δυστυχίας τους. Πονεμένο βιβλίο. Δεν το συγχώρεσαν ποτέ.

Ο συγγραφέας Μπέικερ δεν κατάφερε μετά από αυτό να ξαναβρεί εκδότη. Ήταν ο βασικός λόγος που αυτοκτόνησε τελικά το 1997.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An AIDS Activist classic, funny and bitter and trashy.

[sedge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Death and love, and movies and terrorism, AIDS and bigotry. I love this book like *soup*.

[Beatrix M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely not for the faint of heart, but beautifully written, like a feverish Genet in the last half. A portrait of a moment in time and a political feeling that many have lost.

[Epiphani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn I wish I had been born earlier sometimes. Like while reading this book.
Funny how many times lately I've wondered what the third option is when I don't want to believe violence is the answer to the violence committed against people like in this book, or people like me, and yet being peaceful has not stopped us dying.
This book makes me question that again...as well as the true impact that what an artist creates to express their pain and anger might have on someone who's also angry and hurting and reading/watching/hearing what they created.

If only I had the kind of mind that could answer my questions.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very graphically well written in 1993. It dates a little bit but the gay anger stemming from the Reagan Administration mishandling the AIDS epidemic left many people angry and anti- establishment. Such is the case of two ex lovers Tim and Pete who reconnect during a long weekend and have multiple adventures protesting and carrying on. They have a long run-in with some very violent people and were held prisoner at one point. The book is exciting, funny and heartbreaking and the language still shocks but in an amusing way. This book was a commercial failure and lead to the author;s later suicide,

[KJ Shepherd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Battery acid genius. The meets in both tone and plot. The conversations baked into this book and the ensuing furor haven't gone away, really--which remains depressing as ever. It's June: are we even transgressing anymore? Can we? It is amusing that, amid everything in the book, the most scandalous thing a character can do is want to munch a butt. 5 stars, po-faced wimps be damned.

[William Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book o its time unflinching

[Nick Melloan-ruiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written as always at a Breakneck speed with James Robert baker Rest in power to a true 👑

[Ren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had really high hopes for this book and Baker. I had heard about the race and violence controversies (which amount to a bunch of PC bullshit if you've read the book). I had read all this stuff about his work being really 'angry' and 'alternative' perhaps for the time it was what I found was that it was all talk: literally.

The book consists mostly of catty/petty/stupid/pornographic dialogue between Tim and Pete, on and again off again boyfriends who can never quite get a long. I'm not sure if we are supposed to sympathize with the uptight, upper middle class insecure Tim or the emotionally indulgent yet passive-aggressive Pete.

The book progresses as P and T wander through LA bitching about AIDS and dishing about Hollywood movies. Every once and a while they talk about campy fantasies about violence. On occasion, Tim talks about his ex-boyfriends, his years of being celibacy and his paranoia about AIDS.

Frankly, I found this book to be insular, petty and tasteless (in the sense that it was bland rather than it being in bad taste).

In the end, I felt it was just an other fluffy book about fags with hot bodies doing 'cool' stuff, oh and there is some stuff about AIDS and race too. And some violence.

Baker gets an A for effort in the history department. His description of post-AIDS L.A. seems pretty spot on as is both haunting and scary. You get somewhat of a sense about how it damaged the gay community and gay men in general. That aspect of the book, the anger and the violence, resonates.

Baker touches on some themes on one wants to talk about and makes comparisons between racial violence (the LA riots) and the fictional violence (or lack there of among gay men in real life). That's cool and all, were the writing better, this novel would be really powerful but the writing is just lackluster. It's not confusing it's just bland.

If you are interested in charged anecdote about AIDS in LA to read on the John or if you are a film queen and wants all kinds of witty film jokes, I'd suggest Tim and Pete. If you are looking for something with actual literary merit look elsewhere.

[Jody Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read Tim and Pete by James Robert Baker shortly after it was first published in 1992. I liked it very much then and I like it perhaps more now on second reading.
I was inspired to reread it because I am rereading all of Jody's novels as I scan them to safeguard from any possible loss (we had a wildfire evacuation here last September and it was scary to think that the bulk of her writing could have been lost forever), and prep manuscripts for upcoming publication. One of Jody's novels reminded me of Tim and Pete, and in another amusing coincidence, the servo-robots in her soon-to-be published SF satire Devil May Care are Nancy Reagans (see below).
Like much good satirical writing, Tim and Pete is fueled by a righteous anger at the hatred and discrimination experienced by gay men in the aftermath of AIDS, and skewers the hypocrisies of American society in a riproaring 24 hour odyssey through LA's gay underbelly.
'Not all fags are nelly pacifists' warn the PWA anarchists intent on blowing up Ronald and Nancy Reagan. They're damn mad and they aren't gonna take it anymore!
But lest you think this is a heavy read, it most decidedly is not! Tim and Pete are likable well-drawn protagonists, Baker is a superb writer, and the novel is funny as hell! Provided you dig black humor of course.
Through the art and music scene of the day; through swanky Santa Monica and the riot-ravaged South Central; hidden backroads off Mulholland Drive and memory-haunted crumbling bath houses, Tim And Pete is an iconoclast's tour-guide love letter to the city and the times that I happily let seduce me. I recommend you do the same.
-Mary Whealen

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tim and Pete by James Robert Baker is a short, angry novel about a pair of opposites who are thrown back together after breaking up. Their whirlwind day together leads to trouble and death.

I wanted to like this book. I should have. It's set in areas I know well and like to read books populated by characters like Tim and Pete. What I mean is, I try to avoid slash fiction; it's not my thing. I want to read books populated by real characters with real problems, quirks, flaws and so forth. I appreciate the authors own troubled life and his suicide but a book has to stand on its own and Tim and Pete didn't for me.

Time and Pete has some of the same problems as Sue Grafton's Alphabet Mystery series does. Both are aimed at Boomers and populated by Boomers. For Tim and Pete that means characters who are straddling both sides of recent gay history, Stonewall, free love, drugs and the early days of AIDs. Though published in 1993, Tim and Pete as characters haven't managed to move on from the darkest days of the 1980s.

Some of their emotional turmoil and reckless behavior can be attributed perhaps to Baker's own troubled life. But frankly there was so much anger in the novel that there were no nuances nor quiet moments to reflect. The anger robs the characters of their dimensionality. Instead of a debate, the novel presents a diatribe.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best part of this book was the romance between the title characters. The author excels at portraying a relationship that has ended, but the love between the former lovers refuses to die. The big distraction was the extremist political craziness that is involved as the story progresses. The novel starts really falling apart toward the end, and the ending is really a cop-out.

The novel is definitely gritty in its portrayal of the early 90's gay culture that was devastated by the AIDS virus and the fear of the unknown. I grew up in a time when the AIDS virus was "relatively" understood, but the idea of not knowing how and what was transmitting the virus is really awful. The paranoia and fear must have been palpable.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A year after they broke up, Tim still isn't over his ex-boyfriend Pete. When a date goes wrong and he's left stranded in Laguna Beach with nothing but his swim trunks, sandals, and sunglasses, Tim uses that as an opportunity to look Pete up, hoping that if he can beg a ride home, maybe it will lead to something more. And it does, but not exactly in the way Tim had hoped. [return][return]I loved this so much! Though I will say, it's a story about white gay guys, so watch out for racism, transphobia, and sexism. :-/

[Freyja Vanadis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone says Pete is passive-aggressive, which he is, but he's the likable one out of Tim and Pete. Tim is pushy, aggressive, obnoxious, and utterly unsufferable. No matter how many times Pete practically begs him to stop or shut up or quit doing what he's doing, he refuses to stop. He's lucky someone doesn't knock him down a peg or two, because he deserves it. Still, this was a good story that told about California gay life in the early 1990s and in reminiscences all the way back to the 1960s.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the few books that is gay-themed and obviously targeted at a gay audience that actually has literary merit beyond what it's ostensibly about. And while I generally HATE too many pop cultural references that date a text, these were very skillfully integrated and felt necessary. Hot and pornographic at times, but also very smart.