Customer Reviews

Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone

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It has become almost a cliche. Whenever a book or movie contains humor that is any edgier than standard, mushy fare, critics rush to say the piece's humor is "savage" or "brutal." This book, however, redefines what it means to use brutal satire and mockery. David Feinberg rips into the systems in society that allow people to die without hope or dignity, in the process creating a highly-charged history text of the fight against AIDS as the 1980s gave way to the '90s.

Feinberg is at his best in his shorter pieces. Although the opening essay, a description of the ACT-UP takeover of Federal Drug Administration offices, has power, it is not as punchy as his later, shorter essays and lists. However, he takes no prisoners in his opening, showing exactly how disorganized and catch-as-catch-can ACT-UP meetings were, in addition to castigating the FDA and other institutions that inflated drug prices to unattainable levels.

Some of the highlights of the rest of the book are "Sex Tips for Boys," "Miss Letitia Thing's Excruciatingly Correct Guide to Etiquette for the Dying," and "Regrets." Feinberg also creates list-essays of tremendous power, like "100 Ways You Can Fight the AIDS Crisis," which includes 10 suggestions for how to eradicate Jesse Helms.

Targets, including gays who deny the gravity of the crisis ("Nam-Yo-Ho-Renge-Kyo"), politicians who ignore the dying ("100 Ways You Can Fight the AIDS Crisis"), and insensitive, product-pushing companies ("Lifestyles Urns"), are shredded with unerring accuracy and equal force. There are no sacred cows in this work. There are no areas of the crisis which don't get a critical overview from Feinberg. His final words in the book, sarcastically thanking the various companies, politicians, individuals, and institutions that contributed and still contribute to the dying, are devastating in their emotional force. The reader is constantly aware that Feinberg is about to die, and his ability to create black humor is amazing.

As he says in one essay, "You can't wear a red ribbon when you're dead." This book is Feinberg's legacy, one of only a very few books that should be required reading on the AIDS epidemic.

Feinberg says in this book that he wants to reach age 40 and write 5 books. It's our great loss that he didn't get to do either but at least we have 2 novels and this. I'd say that if you're going to read anything that's real about AIDS, read this.

I can't believe he made such a funny book about a heartbreaking subject. I am in shock that this even happened. If only I could have one more book from him. However, it is too damn late. I can not believe I am wanting to cry and laugh at the same time.

I read this book for the first time when I was about 8(I found it in my parent's bedroom and snuck and read it under my bed and in the laundry room).
Feinberg was such a superb writer,bravely tackling the issue of AIDS and introducing it to the public from a first person kind of view. I was saddened that I didn't get a chance to read his work until 5 years after his death. This novel was ironicly hilarious, devastating and powerful. A work of pure genius.

If Silence=Death, then David Feinberg would still be here forcing us to look at what life was/is for those suffering with AIDS. He's the traffic accident you can't help but look at as he forces us to laugh at what is by definintion, not funny. He's the bad joke at a funeral, the one we are all grateful for but would never own. RIP, David... MJ.

Mr. Feinberg's words are spectacular. The reader is certainly transported to another time and place . Sometimes the place isn't where one wants to be, however, one learns how a person copes with living with HIV.

I laughed, cried and worried throughout. I believe this book is good for anyone to read and I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a clue about HIV.

Enjoy!!

Queer and Loathing was a great book. David Feinberg is a great person, very strong and a great personalit. I urge everyone to read this book.

This is the book that made Mr. Feinberg my #1 hero. His writing is sometimes wrenching, sometimes enormously funny, but always clever and striking.

This book effortlessly transcends the epidemic, perhaps the best testament to its greatness; while writing about living and dying with HIV/AIDS, Mr. Feinberg tells a compelling story about life and death and the politics of sameness and difference.

I found this book remaindered and, seduced by the breathless reviews on the back, decided to give it a try. It may be bad form to criticize this last book by a writer who succumbed to the very disease around which the subject matter revolves, but I'm afraid that's what one must do to be honest.

It's surprising that someone of such obvious intelligence could write a book that epitomizes Fran Lebowitz's remark that one should not detain a fleeting insight. Most of the essays cry out for the patient pen of a competent copy editor, and there is very little here that hasn't been said with more grace, insight and craft elsewhere. Fans of Feinberg's novels will no doubt want to investigate this, but the self-indulgent prose and pretense to outrageousness will probably get old fast for almost all other readers.