Customer Reviews

Reports from the Holocaust: The Story of an AIDS Activist (Stonewall Inn editions)

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Although his message may seem harsh, when someone has watched an entire population dwindle, when your best friends and lovers are dead, intensity becomes a way of life, this book contains a passionate and clear voice of someone struggling against a society and culture that wants the message tempered so as not to offend, I say offend away, get their attention....

Larry Kramer is so central to the formation of contemporary gay activism in the United States (and in particular the response to the first years of the AIDS crisis) that this book is absolutely indispensable to anyone who cares about gay politics and gay identity. His commitment to activism is unquestionable, and his ability to become furious (on the political level) with any kind of quietism or acquiescence should be inspiring to every gay man who has been affected by homophobia or the AIDS/HIV epidemic. The portrait of the private Kramer that emerges from this book in such great detail (there is no distinction between private and public for Kramer in this collection) is often a hard one to take: uncompromising and demanding in private life as he is in public life, he comes across as berserkly egocentric and impossible (you keep feeling sorry for his poor relatives who have to deal regularly with his explosive furies and tantrums). And his unwillingness to be reasonable often causes him to overstate his cases (his regular practive of comparing the AIDS crisis to the Nazi Holocaust--and to the Koch and Adminstrations and the NYTimes as the moral equivalent of the Nazis--has been repeatedly and justly criticized). Still, for all of that you're glad you've read him, and you're glad that someone like him has been around to lead the gay response to the AIDS crisis.