Midnight Run

by Paul Monette

Bounty hunter Jack Walsh must track down Jonathan Mardukas, a fugitive from the Feds, the mafia, and his bail bondsman, a search complicated by the arrival of another bounty hunter, Max Dorfler

1 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

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

[Thrillers R Us · Rating 5 out of 5]

In terms of books, MIDNIGHT RUN is a midnight run. Stemming from a time when movies still touted novelizations as reminders of the material and to deepen the fandom, MIDNIGHT RUN invites you to enter the world of payphones, spare change, phone booths and doing things the hard way before smartphones and the internet. It's 1988 and Jack Walsh plies his trade as a bounty hunter, taking his charge from New York City to Los Angeles before 5 days are up, with the Vegas Mafia, the FBI and competitive skip tracers on his tail in what is probably one of the most hilarious movies that is not an outright comedy. If you haven't seen MIDNIGHT RUN (1988), the book won't even scratch the surface of how good it is. Again, it's merely a reminder of the good time watching this different turn on a buddy film. You may claim aviophobia, claustrophobia, and acrophobia trying to dodge this book but you'll have a solid case for fistophobia if you don't get a hold yourself, watch your cigarettes, get some donuts & get on this Midnight Run.

[Vhrai · Rating 3 out of 5]

20-25 évvel ezelőtt, emlékeim szerint, nagy divatja volt ezeknek a filmátiratoknak. Ennek megfelelően nem is vártam tőle, hogy egy alapregénynek megfelelő részletességgel rendelkezzen. Ha szabad ilyet írni, ez a tipikus ponyva: egyszer olvasós, klisékből építkező történet. A főszereplő, Jack Walsh egy fejvadász, aki szökevényeket üldöz pénzért. Rögtön az elején kapunk egy akciódús ízelítőt, majd a fő megbízást, ami köré a történet íródott. Walsh-nak el kell juttatnia a maffia könyvelőjét az ország egyik végéből a másikba. Mivel a regény nincs 250 oldal, néhány közjátékot leszámítva nem igen adódik alkalom üresjáratra. Végig lendületes a cselekmény, de nincs túlbonyolítva, akár egy ’80-as, ’90-es évekbeli akciófilmben. Ezek azonban még mindig jobban lekötnek, mint a „limonádék”. Mindent összevetve egynek elment.