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Spontaneous Combustion
"A funny, often moving book about being single, Jewish, gay, and HIV-positive . . . both urgent and convincing."--The New York Times Book Review
In this sequel to David Feinberg's national bestseller Eighty-Sixed, B.J. Rosenthal navigates life with an HIV-positive diagnosis amidst the "constant tide of deaths" in New York City during the AIDS crisis.
In this sequel to David Feinberg's national bestseller Eighty-Sixed, B.J. Rosenthal navigates life with an HIV-positive diagnosis amidst the "constant tide of deaths" in New York City during the AIDS crisis.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
2 people are currently reading
219 people want to read
About the author
David B. Feinberg
7 books13 followersDavid Feinberg was a novelist, essayist, and AIDS activist who also worked as a programmer and a linguist.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 2, 2016
A time capsule from the nadir of the AIDS crisis, this book still manages to be amusing and bubbly thanks to Feinberg's rapid-fire joke-after-joke prose style. Most of the jokes aren't quite funny, but enough are that you get to chuckle inwardly in almost every paragraph... even as you inwardly cringe at the description of physical decay or wail at the heart-rending subject matter. If you're looking for a book about what it was like to be a gay man living in a gay ghetto during the height of the plague years, this is a good one.
July 19, 2012
DBF is an engaging narrator, bound to annoy the both the politically correct and the bigot with his hilarious account of the impact of the aids epidemic on the gay community."Why does dying make evryone so irritable?" he wonders, even after getting his own HIV positive diagnosis.
This is not a superficial account.There are deep questions asked lightly.
"I suppose all love involves the willful suspension of disbelief and rational thought." he concludes at one point,realizing that "With no one to confide in,my exploits and adventures lacked substance and
solidity; with no one to recount my tales to,they appeared to be inventions,fantasies,hallucinations."
"What the fuck should I do? Tape the edges of my mouth up into the rictus of a smile?"
What he does is to compose some universal Rules of Attraction that could help us all, no matter what our gender status.
This is not a superficial account.There are deep questions asked lightly.
"I suppose all love involves the willful suspension of disbelief and rational thought." he concludes at one point,realizing that "With no one to confide in,my exploits and adventures lacked substance and
solidity; with no one to recount my tales to,they appeared to be inventions,fantasies,hallucinations."
"What the fuck should I do? Tape the edges of my mouth up into the rictus of a smile?"
What he does is to compose some universal Rules of Attraction that could help us all, no matter what our gender status.
April 10, 2009
Read years ago - follow up to Eighty-Sixed. Both books are.. well, comedies.... and they're all about.. well, neurotic Manhattan gay guys in the middle of the Aids crisis in the late 80s. David Feinberg wasn't a great writer but he was a beautiful writer, he wrote two and a half funny and sorrowful and bitter and impossible not to love books and then he died of aids.
November 12, 2021
Spontaneous Combustion is a unique one, a product of its time. David B. Feinberg himself has said that B.J. Rosenthal, our narrator, is essentially his alter-ego, where they're both gay, Jewish, and HIV positive, but B.J. has a bigger dick whereas he has a bigger heart. That's really exactly how this book feels, like the author channeling those dichotomies. B.J. is a constantly sassy, bitchy, and funny urbanite with an elaborate imagination and has every right to be. As a gay single Jewish man with AIDS living in an ever-changing late 80s-early 90s New York City being ravaged by a disease with no cure, the way he navigates his world is going to naturally be very different from even his own gay counterparts. He might have his flaws, but he's definitely a character that you can instantly love for how he gets lost in his own thoughts and does so very passionately as an escape from such a harrowing reality.
My issue with this novel is mostly in its execution. The story is told through pretty dramatic time-jumps that go from 8 months to a whole year with no explanation as to why. We get to know a lot about B.J.'s platonic, sexual, and almost-romantic or made-believe romantic exploits, most which are very amusing and sometimes touching, but the problem is that these vignettes go on for far too long. No matter how much the writing is amusing and entertaining, it does get tired and repetitive pretty quickly, not to mention, the chapters go on forever. A book with 12 chapters shouldn't have chapters that go on for that long, such as Chapter 3 where he visits a weird and yet charming intolerably good-looking potential lover who has a few boyfriends and a live-in boyfriend on the side and two Doberman pinschers that he calls Marie Antoinette and Josephine (even though possibly those aren't even their originally given names), that was entertaining to a point, until it went on for what felt like most of the book, like, we get it! It was one of those scenes where you could tell that the author had fun writing it, but it doesn't necessarily make it enjoyable to read for the reader. It was only funny for so long until you wanted the author to just MOVE ON to something/someone else. And to be honest, from there that was when the novel lost me, and I started to gain less and less interest in it. Chapter 3 was a lot of stoppage in narration to focus on a quirky character for a super-long chapter, and sadly, the book lost momentum for me since. It felt like a lot of the same thing. B.J. focuses on another guy that he has dated or had sex with, or maybe didn't actually date or didn't actually have sex with, until that "relationship" ends and he moves on to the next, and it all just feels and reads like a ramble that takes so much away from the parts of the story that are way more interesting. B.J.'s personal medical struggles and uphill battle at fighting the virus inside him were done with so much honesty, depth, and humor that worked so well in juxtaposition with B.J. seeing so many of his friends and ex-lovers dying from the very virus that he's fighting. That was when the author's writing shined the most. It felt (and was most likely) autobiographical at that point, and it was truly illuminating. It's when the author has B.J. center the narrative on his fuck dudes that the novel falls apart and loses focus.
The writing itself also sells itself short sometimes. It's not that David B. Feinberg was a brilliant writer, but he was a good writer. The writing was promising, but if only it was just more tightly edited? I can live with Spontaneous Combustion being a character-study, but did we really need almost 100 pages worth of the same anecdotes of another more-or-less-the-same character? Not that I wanted the story to only focus on the AIDS crises, because after all, B.J. is more than his disease, and us knowing a bulk of his dating life is essential to his lived experience, but the sections where we see his heart, his wisdom, his empathy, and his vulnerability were just oh so delicious and wonderful, and I think this novel would have been tighter, more focused, and ten times better if it had more of that instead of relying too much on jokes, sarcasm, humor, and attitude that to be honest, quickly felt like a crutch, and after awhile was exhausting. Yes, there were many one-liners and crafty sentences that will literally make you laugh out loud, gasp, and scream because they were THAT funny, which is pretty rare for even most books to get that out of you these days, when it was comical, ooh boy isn't it comical, but a lot of it was also dated and just way too excessive.
David Feinberg only wrote 3 works before he himself passed away from AIDS. You can tell that this was an author writing with so little time. That sense of urgency is also what makes this book so special and worth reading at least once. B.J. as a character was overall so enjoyable that I do look forward to getting my hands on Eighty-Sixed, Feinberg's first novel with the same character, and his last work, an essay collection called Queer and Loathing. His woefully short writing career represents 80's and 90's New York City and a piece of HIV/AIDS history that will always remain nostalgic as it is a sobering reminder of how we should never forget those who have lived in the early days of the AIDS epidemic who are no longer with us. David Feinberg was also an important ACT UP activist as well, so in reading his work, he will never be forgotten, and his 3 books will forever be significant.
If you can go into Spontaneous Combustion with that context in mind, you will have at least some appreciation for it, or at least a good laugh despite the tragic subject matter. If all else, one thing's for sure, this book, the character, this author, deserves our respect.
My issue with this novel is mostly in its execution. The story is told through pretty dramatic time-jumps that go from 8 months to a whole year with no explanation as to why. We get to know a lot about B.J.'s platonic, sexual, and almost-romantic or made-believe romantic exploits, most which are very amusing and sometimes touching, but the problem is that these vignettes go on for far too long. No matter how much the writing is amusing and entertaining, it does get tired and repetitive pretty quickly, not to mention, the chapters go on forever. A book with 12 chapters shouldn't have chapters that go on for that long, such as Chapter 3 where he visits a weird and yet charming intolerably good-looking potential lover who has a few boyfriends and a live-in boyfriend on the side and two Doberman pinschers that he calls Marie Antoinette and Josephine (even though possibly those aren't even their originally given names), that was entertaining to a point, until it went on for what felt like most of the book, like, we get it! It was one of those scenes where you could tell that the author had fun writing it, but it doesn't necessarily make it enjoyable to read for the reader. It was only funny for so long until you wanted the author to just MOVE ON to something/someone else. And to be honest, from there that was when the novel lost me, and I started to gain less and less interest in it. Chapter 3 was a lot of stoppage in narration to focus on a quirky character for a super-long chapter, and sadly, the book lost momentum for me since. It felt like a lot of the same thing. B.J. focuses on another guy that he has dated or had sex with, or maybe didn't actually date or didn't actually have sex with, until that "relationship" ends and he moves on to the next, and it all just feels and reads like a ramble that takes so much away from the parts of the story that are way more interesting. B.J.'s personal medical struggles and uphill battle at fighting the virus inside him were done with so much honesty, depth, and humor that worked so well in juxtaposition with B.J. seeing so many of his friends and ex-lovers dying from the very virus that he's fighting. That was when the author's writing shined the most. It felt (and was most likely) autobiographical at that point, and it was truly illuminating. It's when the author has B.J. center the narrative on his fuck dudes that the novel falls apart and loses focus.
The writing itself also sells itself short sometimes. It's not that David B. Feinberg was a brilliant writer, but he was a good writer. The writing was promising, but if only it was just more tightly edited? I can live with Spontaneous Combustion being a character-study, but did we really need almost 100 pages worth of the same anecdotes of another more-or-less-the-same character? Not that I wanted the story to only focus on the AIDS crises, because after all, B.J. is more than his disease, and us knowing a bulk of his dating life is essential to his lived experience, but the sections where we see his heart, his wisdom, his empathy, and his vulnerability were just oh so delicious and wonderful, and I think this novel would have been tighter, more focused, and ten times better if it had more of that instead of relying too much on jokes, sarcasm, humor, and attitude that to be honest, quickly felt like a crutch, and after awhile was exhausting. Yes, there were many one-liners and crafty sentences that will literally make you laugh out loud, gasp, and scream because they were THAT funny, which is pretty rare for even most books to get that out of you these days, when it was comical, ooh boy isn't it comical, but a lot of it was also dated and just way too excessive.
David Feinberg only wrote 3 works before he himself passed away from AIDS. You can tell that this was an author writing with so little time. That sense of urgency is also what makes this book so special and worth reading at least once. B.J. as a character was overall so enjoyable that I do look forward to getting my hands on Eighty-Sixed, Feinberg's first novel with the same character, and his last work, an essay collection called Queer and Loathing. His woefully short writing career represents 80's and 90's New York City and a piece of HIV/AIDS history that will always remain nostalgic as it is a sobering reminder of how we should never forget those who have lived in the early days of the AIDS epidemic who are no longer with us. David Feinberg was also an important ACT UP activist as well, so in reading his work, he will never be forgotten, and his 3 books will forever be significant.
If you can go into Spontaneous Combustion with that context in mind, you will have at least some appreciation for it, or at least a good laugh despite the tragic subject matter. If all else, one thing's for sure, this book, the character, this author, deserves our respect.
April 2, 2022
David B. Feinberg once again follows the life and times of B.J. Rosenthal - now diagnosed with HIV. Much more formally daring than its predecessor (this feels like a novel-in-stories, with chapters-in-flash), it retains its wit and its rage.
April 28, 2023
Review first published in Queerlings Magazine, issue 7
Spontaneous Combustion by David B Feinberg: a hilarious history of pandemic activism
I picked up a tattered copy of Spontaneous Combustion, David B Feinberg’s 1991 Aids novel-memoir in May last year on my first trip back to London since the Covid pandemic. For the first time in nearly three years, I strode into Gays the Word bookshop in Bloomsbury a few minutes after opening. Fighting through the mothers looking to snatch the last Heartstopper for their children, I stuck to my favoured second-hand shelves, where the lost classics of gay literature lie waiting to be found.
It’s been well over a decade now since my own HIV diagnosis, and I felt apprehensively ready to dive headlong into an Aids book, although girded with much caution as these trauma-heavy stories can often leave me feeling like a bag of used needles. As David B Feinberg might say, I approached reading this book like being cruised on a subway platform. We both know what will happen, the question is, do I want to follow this author I don’t know into the cubicle when I know we’ll never meet again?
Spontaneous Combustion turned out to be the read of my life. The novel squares its subject matter front and centre: the Aids epidemic and how a witty, urbane and utterly fabulous young Jewish man charts his way through the unfolding horrors of the late 80s. Every page is funny. There are moments of sheer joy and hilarity in the oddest of things. Having a crush on his Aids doctor. Learning past lovers have died by reading the obituaries of the New York Times. He perfectly encapsulates the nauseous reality of a straight ‘ally’ taking the test, writing obtusely about taking said test, and the inevitable negative end of the column designed to make the everyday reader feel a little bit better about themselves.
Through the unapologetically Jewish and gay character of BJ, who was also the narrator of Feinberg‘s critically acclaimed debut Eighty-Sixed, we’re given a detailed excursion into how one man stays fabulously witty as the apocalypse grinds on. Over ten years into my own diagnosis, I’ve found myself reaching back into those difficult days and drawing solace from them. We as a community experienced horrendous collective trauma, and it can’t all be shooed away in PrEP campaigns and U=U placards. We need to remember. Spontaneous Combustion leaves you with a story you will never forget.
I started the novel in mid-summer of 2022, just as we were sliding from Covid into a new epidemic: Monkeypox. There’s a passage from the book that’s worth quoting in full, because it’s quite a wonderful reminder of the cyclical nature of gay time.
“My boss was on the way out. My social life was a shambles. I hadn’t had a date since the Early Mesozoic era or the discovery of personal grooming, whichever came first… My gym membership expired… I was a thirty-year-old male homosexual living in the epicenter of the worst epidemic of the century… and I had yet to decide what I was going to do with my life if I grew up. In short, things were a mess.”
Page 63, Spontaneous Combustion, David B Feinberg, Viking, 1991
Move over Nostradamus. Feinberg lays out, in touching, hilarious detail the minutia of living through a pandemic. Aids, Covid, Monkeypox, or whatever one comes next. The lessons are universal. The lives, the fears, the worries, the impact on our community, are all broadly similar. Of course, Monkeypox precipitated no lockdowns or masking. Two pandemics, months apart, but laying the gulf of queer health inequalities brutally bare for us all to see.
In the latter half of the book, BJ turns his diagnosis into activism, just about the only way to survive among the government inaction and shrugged shoulders of society. Through his ACT UP meetings, the posters, the storming of churches, the rising up of a community being left to die by the rest of the world, Feinberg sketches out the edges of a movement which eventually, eventually, turned the tide.
He describes a thing I have never read before: how to manage AZT dosing and hooking up. So often, HIV positive people in literature and media are not allowed to love, let alone have casual sex, yet Feinberg never lets a four-hourly dosing schedule with attached alarm clock get in the way of sex and boyfriends. Without fear or judgment, just fun. God knows we kept on dating and hooking up; during Aids, during Covid, during Monkeypox. Feinberg writes the unvarnished truth. Gay life isn’t all milkshakes and video games, and we do ourselves no favours in forgetting.
I finished reading Spontaneous Combustion as I waited to receive my own Monkeypox vaccine. It was a poignant moment, to finish the novel with Feinberg’s own manifesto for a post-Aids future. One he so desperately longed for, but would not live to see.
I always wondered if, from the years and decades of Aids activism, we actually learned anything. With Monkeypox, I think we might have done. I can imagine Feinberg nodding along to the spontaneous protests and burgeoning activism led by incensed queer people. Fighting against fatigue and indifference from the public, but getting to limited vaccines within months, not years.
Clearly the circumstances are not the same, but the lesson perhaps have echoes. As Feinberg taught us, complacency is our enemy. And silence equals death. He had that badge pinned to his coat.
When Aids crops up in other, shall we say, straighter media, it can feel like a trauma slog. Yet what Feinberg achieved with Spontaneous Combustion is a miracle in itself. We laugh along with the absurdity of the situation he finds himself in. Share the indignity of learning about a former lover’s death in a national newspaper. Shriek with glee when he’s more than willing to strip naked for doctor, dentist, community nurse, or anyone that will have him.
Within the journey of Spontaneous Combustion is an activist’s handbook. An oral history of how queer society and allies came together to fight, fight, and never give up. But Feinberg’s wit and talent provide that little bit extra. Not just an outline of activism, but how to be an activist, one fully impacted by the horrendous situation he finds himself in. Yet approaching it all with wit, humour, open desire, self-awareness, and love.
As I sat in the waiting room, summer outside, gays trickling in for their appointments, I held my head high. With Feinberg in my mind and the book closed in my lap, I sashayed behind the curtain and offered my arm in a sleeveless top.
“This one will go a bit deeper,” the nurse said to me, readying the needle for the intramuscular injection.
“Oh don’t worry about that, darling, I’ve been practicing.”
Holding Spontaneous Combustion tightly, I realised the overarching lesson Feinberg taught me from this novel. Pandemics will come and go, but an amusingly inappropriate comment delivered sharply, even at the unlikeliest of moments, should, like the works of David B Feinberg, live forever in our minds.
Spontaneous Combustion by David B Feinberg: a hilarious history of pandemic activism
I picked up a tattered copy of Spontaneous Combustion, David B Feinberg’s 1991 Aids novel-memoir in May last year on my first trip back to London since the Covid pandemic. For the first time in nearly three years, I strode into Gays the Word bookshop in Bloomsbury a few minutes after opening. Fighting through the mothers looking to snatch the last Heartstopper for their children, I stuck to my favoured second-hand shelves, where the lost classics of gay literature lie waiting to be found.
It’s been well over a decade now since my own HIV diagnosis, and I felt apprehensively ready to dive headlong into an Aids book, although girded with much caution as these trauma-heavy stories can often leave me feeling like a bag of used needles. As David B Feinberg might say, I approached reading this book like being cruised on a subway platform. We both know what will happen, the question is, do I want to follow this author I don’t know into the cubicle when I know we’ll never meet again?
Spontaneous Combustion turned out to be the read of my life. The novel squares its subject matter front and centre: the Aids epidemic and how a witty, urbane and utterly fabulous young Jewish man charts his way through the unfolding horrors of the late 80s. Every page is funny. There are moments of sheer joy and hilarity in the oddest of things. Having a crush on his Aids doctor. Learning past lovers have died by reading the obituaries of the New York Times. He perfectly encapsulates the nauseous reality of a straight ‘ally’ taking the test, writing obtusely about taking said test, and the inevitable negative end of the column designed to make the everyday reader feel a little bit better about themselves.
Through the unapologetically Jewish and gay character of BJ, who was also the narrator of Feinberg‘s critically acclaimed debut Eighty-Sixed, we’re given a detailed excursion into how one man stays fabulously witty as the apocalypse grinds on. Over ten years into my own diagnosis, I’ve found myself reaching back into those difficult days and drawing solace from them. We as a community experienced horrendous collective trauma, and it can’t all be shooed away in PrEP campaigns and U=U placards. We need to remember. Spontaneous Combustion leaves you with a story you will never forget.
I started the novel in mid-summer of 2022, just as we were sliding from Covid into a new epidemic: Monkeypox. There’s a passage from the book that’s worth quoting in full, because it’s quite a wonderful reminder of the cyclical nature of gay time.
“My boss was on the way out. My social life was a shambles. I hadn’t had a date since the Early Mesozoic era or the discovery of personal grooming, whichever came first… My gym membership expired… I was a thirty-year-old male homosexual living in the epicenter of the worst epidemic of the century… and I had yet to decide what I was going to do with my life if I grew up. In short, things were a mess.”
Page 63, Spontaneous Combustion, David B Feinberg, Viking, 1991
Move over Nostradamus. Feinberg lays out, in touching, hilarious detail the minutia of living through a pandemic. Aids, Covid, Monkeypox, or whatever one comes next. The lessons are universal. The lives, the fears, the worries, the impact on our community, are all broadly similar. Of course, Monkeypox precipitated no lockdowns or masking. Two pandemics, months apart, but laying the gulf of queer health inequalities brutally bare for us all to see.
In the latter half of the book, BJ turns his diagnosis into activism, just about the only way to survive among the government inaction and shrugged shoulders of society. Through his ACT UP meetings, the posters, the storming of churches, the rising up of a community being left to die by the rest of the world, Feinberg sketches out the edges of a movement which eventually, eventually, turned the tide.
He describes a thing I have never read before: how to manage AZT dosing and hooking up. So often, HIV positive people in literature and media are not allowed to love, let alone have casual sex, yet Feinberg never lets a four-hourly dosing schedule with attached alarm clock get in the way of sex and boyfriends. Without fear or judgment, just fun. God knows we kept on dating and hooking up; during Aids, during Covid, during Monkeypox. Feinberg writes the unvarnished truth. Gay life isn’t all milkshakes and video games, and we do ourselves no favours in forgetting.
I finished reading Spontaneous Combustion as I waited to receive my own Monkeypox vaccine. It was a poignant moment, to finish the novel with Feinberg’s own manifesto for a post-Aids future. One he so desperately longed for, but would not live to see.
I always wondered if, from the years and decades of Aids activism, we actually learned anything. With Monkeypox, I think we might have done. I can imagine Feinberg nodding along to the spontaneous protests and burgeoning activism led by incensed queer people. Fighting against fatigue and indifference from the public, but getting to limited vaccines within months, not years.
Clearly the circumstances are not the same, but the lesson perhaps have echoes. As Feinberg taught us, complacency is our enemy. And silence equals death. He had that badge pinned to his coat.
When Aids crops up in other, shall we say, straighter media, it can feel like a trauma slog. Yet what Feinberg achieved with Spontaneous Combustion is a miracle in itself. We laugh along with the absurdity of the situation he finds himself in. Share the indignity of learning about a former lover’s death in a national newspaper. Shriek with glee when he’s more than willing to strip naked for doctor, dentist, community nurse, or anyone that will have him.
Within the journey of Spontaneous Combustion is an activist’s handbook. An oral history of how queer society and allies came together to fight, fight, and never give up. But Feinberg’s wit and talent provide that little bit extra. Not just an outline of activism, but how to be an activist, one fully impacted by the horrendous situation he finds himself in. Yet approaching it all with wit, humour, open desire, self-awareness, and love.
As I sat in the waiting room, summer outside, gays trickling in for their appointments, I held my head high. With Feinberg in my mind and the book closed in my lap, I sashayed behind the curtain and offered my arm in a sleeveless top.
“This one will go a bit deeper,” the nurse said to me, readying the needle for the intramuscular injection.
“Oh don’t worry about that, darling, I’ve been practicing.”
Holding Spontaneous Combustion tightly, I realised the overarching lesson Feinberg taught me from this novel. Pandemics will come and go, but an amusingly inappropriate comment delivered sharply, even at the unlikeliest of moments, should, like the works of David B Feinberg, live forever in our minds.
April 19, 2022
“I WILL SURVIVE”
David B. Feinberg’s Spontaneous Combustion is a collection of interlinked stories. B.J. from Eighty-Sixed, Feinberg’s alter ego, returns as narrator. He decides to take the test after he reads in the Times that two former sexual partners of his have AIDS. B.J. tests positive. His life becomes an endless merry-go-round of illnesses, doctors, and medications. He participates in the ACT UP “Stop the Church” demonstration at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in December 1989 and is arrested. The cops take away his AZT. “I was in a tiny cell with two other guys. They were lovers. We took turns playing Susan Hayward on Death Row.” Spontaneous Combustion concludes with an appendix titled “After the Cure: 1996” in which B.J. indulges in wishful thinking and, again, as in Eighty-Sixed, breaks your heart: “There were times back in the dismal eighties when we thought that the crisis would never end . . . Were it not for the inspirational bass beat of Miss Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” reverberating through the antechambers of our collective unconsciousness, many would have given up in despair. But the nightmare is now over. The disease has been vanquished.”
Spontaneous Combustion is an essential work about the AIDS experience. David B. Feinberg was lost to AIDS in 1994 at the age of 37.
David B. Feinberg’s Spontaneous Combustion is a collection of interlinked stories. B.J. from Eighty-Sixed, Feinberg’s alter ego, returns as narrator. He decides to take the test after he reads in the Times that two former sexual partners of his have AIDS. B.J. tests positive. His life becomes an endless merry-go-round of illnesses, doctors, and medications. He participates in the ACT UP “Stop the Church” demonstration at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in December 1989 and is arrested. The cops take away his AZT. “I was in a tiny cell with two other guys. They were lovers. We took turns playing Susan Hayward on Death Row.” Spontaneous Combustion concludes with an appendix titled “After the Cure: 1996” in which B.J. indulges in wishful thinking and, again, as in Eighty-Sixed, breaks your heart: “There were times back in the dismal eighties when we thought that the crisis would never end . . . Were it not for the inspirational bass beat of Miss Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” reverberating through the antechambers of our collective unconsciousness, many would have given up in despair. But the nightmare is now over. The disease has been vanquished.”
Spontaneous Combustion is an essential work about the AIDS experience. David B. Feinberg was lost to AIDS in 1994 at the age of 37.
January 25, 2017
B.J. Rosenthal: "Lloyd had been extremely abusive to me when he had taught me that I was a size queen the hard way, at the tender age of twenty-six... Lesbians had invented, patented, and codified the term "politically correct"... I wanted to give them a suitable gift: a private concert with k. d. lang? a weekend with Martina? a bubble bath with Madonna? Alas, I was out of my element." (155, 164)
August 27, 2018
This sequel was just as riveting as the first book, for very different reasons. Highly recommend reading Eighty-Sixed and this back to back!
October 13, 2024
Feinberg's second novel (the follow-up to Eighty-Sixed) has his alter ego, BJ Rosenthal, continue to deal with the AIDS crisis as the 1980s draws to a close, and he receives a positive diagnosis for the virus. Some of the humor doesn't land quite as deftly, although it is still an excellent novel and worth reading, as a time capsule for the era if nothing else.
December 14, 2023
that last chapter really hits hard knowing that david feinberg died two years after this book was published and two years before that futuristic prediction of 1996 “after the cure”
as ever, full of humour and deeply heartbreaking
as ever, full of humour and deeply heartbreaking
October 23, 2017
Interesting look at a character loving through the AIDS epidemic, but a few of the stories included in this series of interlocking narratives run long. A few are quite good, such as the last one.
January 16, 2025
A very real look at the emotional life of the AIDS crisis thru a humorous lens
August 10, 2014
Reminiscent of the movie Jeffrey, this book is a sequel to the book Eighty-Sixed. The author has a fun time with the snarkiness of his main character, BJ, who is a gay man in New York City in the mid-1980's. He is trying to date during the early AIDS epidemic and eventually ends up HIV positive himself. Of interest to me as an HIV care physician in the descriptions of what it felt like early in the epidemic and the devastation it had in some communities as people's lives were drastically changed as well as the way people felt when medications were initially being tested for efficacy against HIV.
October 12, 2007
I'm skcepticle of older gay books, I'm sure a lot of them were groundbreaking or whatever at the time they were written but sometimes they just seem antiquated and I find they dont really speak to my experiance. This collection of short stories set in New York and San Francisco and written around AIDS themes doesn't really speak to my experiance either but the writting is solid and the stories are funny, sometimes sad and still seem relevant.
Want to read
October 17, 2007Jay just sent me this book and I am psyched to dive in.
January 21, 2025
the narrator is LOUD and also that appendix…damn
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews