Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America [Hardcover]

John-Manuel Andriote (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0226020495 | ISBN-13: 978-0226020495 | Edition: 1

There is no question that AIDS has been, and continues to be, one of the most destructive diseases of the century, taking thousands of lives, devastating communities, and exposing prejudice and bigotry. But AIDS has also been a disease of transformation—it has fueled the national gay civil rights movement, altered medical research and federal drug testing, shaken up both federal and local politics, and inspired a vast cultural outpouring. Victory Deferred, the most comprehensive account of the epidemic in more than ten years, is the history of both the destruction and transformation wrought by AIDS.

John-Manuel Andriote chronicles the impact of the disease from the coming-out revelry of the 1970s to the post-AIDS gay community of the 1990s, showing how it has changed both individual lives and national organizations. He tells the truly remarkable story of how a health crisis pushed a disjointed jumble of local activists to become a nationally visible and politically powerful civil rights movement, a full-fledged minority group challenging the authority of some of the nation's most powerful institutions. Based on hundreds of interviews with those at the forefront of the medical, political, and cultural
responses to the disease, Victory Deferred artfully blends personal narratives with institutional histories and organizational politics to show how AIDS forced gay men from their closets and ghettos into the hallways of power to lobby and into the streets to protest.

Andriote, who has been at the center of national advocacy and AIDS politics in Washington, is judicious without being uncritical, and his account of the political maturation of the gay community is one of the most stirring civil rights stories of our time.

Victory Deferred draws on hundreds of original interviews, including first-hand accounts from: Virginia Apuzzo, Reverend Carl Bean, Marcus Conant, M.D., John D'Emilio, Anthony Fauci, M.D, Fenton Johnson, Larry Kramer, Lawrence D. Mass, M.D., Armistead Maupin, Walt Odets, Torie Osborn, Eric Rofes, Urvashi Vaid, Timothy Westmoreland, and Reggie Williams.

"[Victory Deferred] is a richly textured account of the rise of the AIDS sector, that though detailed and comprehensive, reads quickly. The thematic organization of the book works especially well. The clear chronology of the events reveals how competing models of service delivery, treatment activism and private-public cooperation were subsumed into a national AIDS movement. The book should prove excellent for teaching or recreational reading."—Jose Gabilondo, Washington Post

"[A] fine history of the epidemic. . . . Andriote shines with chapters on less-covered but no less important subjects, including the multibillion-dollar 'AIDS industry' and private fund-raising groups. He brings together in one place many facts and figures heretofore unsynthesized."—Joe R. Neel, Boston Globe

"While many books have explored aspects of the impact of AIDS, Victory Deferred is among the most comprehensive. Andriote's adroit integration of the personal and the historical results is an illustrative, analytical account of the disease and its impact on the gay civil-rights movement. His depiction of the poignant struggles, heroic responses and resultant social and political gains emanating from AIDS is a perceptive document for our time—relevant to all readers, regardless of their sexual orientation."—John R. Killacky, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"[A] well-researched and nuanced portrait of the many lives on which this grave disease has wrought both destruction and transformation."—Publishers Weekly

"Andriote combines broad strokes and telling details in this engaging history of the complicated war against both disease and bigotry."—Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

AIDS may have become a manageable disease syndrome, at least in Western countries, at the end of the 1990s, but the crisis has hardly run its course; as HIV continues to mutate, doomsayers predict even worse epidemics closely resembling AIDS in their etiology and social ramifications. Likewise, despite a large extant body of commentary--what Paula Treichler has called the "epidemic of signification"--work continues apace on the syndrome's history, a chronicle of devastating physical consequences and troublesome politics that for years prevented government and health officials, to say nothing of religious leaders and media pundits, from responding in the most effective, compassionate manner. But, given all the plague chronicles from historians, artists, musicians, and literati, how can one construct another comprehensive history of equal necessity? That was the question facing journalist John-Manuel Andriote when friends encouraged him to emphasize the effects of the syndrome on "the nation's hardest hit community, gay men." As such an account, intercutting personal testimonies with Andriote's straightforward, though righteously indignant, narrative, Victory Deferred serves a very useful purpose.

Andriote sets the stage for the identification of AIDS as a distinct political issue and disease syndrome by describing U.S. gay life of the 1970s, an era inaugurated by Stonewall and characterized by parallel increases in political activism and promiscuity. As the one fueled the other, he argues, gay men were rehearsing for the struggle that their sexual behavior would, in a sense, later require. Unfortunately, Andriote makes mistakes common to certain forms of AIDS reportage and thoroughly deconstructed in AIDS theory--calling it an STD that men "contract," for example--that go hand in hand with stereotypical foreshadowing ("little did they know") and foresight ("this would help in the fight against AIDS"). He admirably strives to avoid political correctness, however, and makes good use of his varied sources, ending with the precarious but hopeful '90s. Victory Deferred in no way supplants the indispensable work of predecessors such as Dennis Altman and Douglas Crimp, but Andriote has nevertheless written a fine overview of the 20th century's last major epidemic. --Robert Burns Neveldine

From Publishers Weekly

The AIDS pandemic has been chronicled in numerous books, from Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On to Steven Epstein's Impure Science, many of which have focused specifically on the disease's political, social, psychological or medical aspects. In his first book, Andriote, who has covered AIDS and gay politics in the gay and mainstream press, offers a comprehensive survey of the many ways AIDS has transfigured gay social and political life. With a mix of straightforward journalism, cultural analysis and personal reminiscence, his study focuses on the period from the early 1980s, when AIDS first surfaced in gay urban neighborhoods, to the 1996 visit of President and Hillary Clinton to the AIDS quilt in Washington, D.C. Much of the book is devoted to histories of AIDS service organizations, organized political initiatives and grassroots activist endeavors through which Andriote creates a detailed panorama of the impact of AIDS and the waves of lesbian and gay civil rights organizing. He is best at sketching in the cultural context, as when he explicates the long-standing psychological misunderstandings of homosexuality or quotes writers such as Andrew Holleran and John Preston to illustrate the literary response to AIDS. He is also careful never to whitewash gay in-fighting and deals sensitively with the complicated race politics of AIDS funding, resulting in a well-researched and nuanced portrait of the many levels on which this grave disease has wrought both destruction and transformation.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 494 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226020495
• ISBN-13: 978-0226020495
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #987,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John-Manuel Andriote began reporting on the AIDS epidemic while he was a graduate journalism student at Northwestern University in the mid-1980s.

An updated and expanded second edition of Victory Deferred, Andriote's award-winning history of AIDS in America, will be available in paperback and e-book format in October 2011.

Kirkus Reviews called the original University of Chicago Press hardcover edition of Victory Deferred, "The most important AIDS chronicle since Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On."

The Washington Post said, "In his nearly two decades of reporting on AIDS, Andriote has interviewed every major player, and it shows."

A regular contributor to the Washington Post, a columnist for The Bulletin in Norwich, Connecticut (Andriote's hometown, to which he returned in 2007, after 22 years in Washington, DC), and a featured speaker at universities and conferences, Andriote has shown his ability to tackle a variety of subjects with a depth of research and clear, literate writing that Publishers Weekly has called "excellent."

Besides Victory Deferred, Andriote is the author of Hot Stuff: A Brief History of Disco (HarperEntertainment), The Art of Fine Cigars (Bulfinch/Little Brown), and a privately published history of The Metropolitan Club of Washington, one of the capital city's oldest and most prestigious private clubs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Victory Deferred: AIDS Inside the Gay Community, September 18, 2000

By 

James L. Holm (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America (Hardcover)

We have waited for a voice within the gay community to relate what AIDS has done and continues to do to our souls. Andiote bares that soul to the scrutiny of a verteran journalist and writer. He descibes the gay community's response to the AIDS epidemic. He outlines the growth the community made in the process. He isn't afraid to criticize where appropriate.

He tells the stories of the heroes of and the commentators on the epidemic. He delves, for example, into the internal machinations of a community trying to deal with safer sex and outlines both successes and failures. He indentifies the ongoing crisis and politics of promoting behavior change in the most intimate aspect of our lives. Through this type of no holds barred reporting that Andriote conveys the impact of AIDS on a community struggling to free itself from past and present disease related definitions.

Andriote's research is thorough, interviewing two hundred activitist and paritcipants. These individuals tell the story of a gay movement catapulted to the forefront of America's consciousness. He starts well before rhe empidemic and couches it in the context of a liberation stuggle. He tells the insider's story.

Victory Deferred will supplant Randy Shilt's And the Band Played On as the dinifitive story of one community heroically responding to the health crisis of the century.

4.0 out of 5 stars Author bias is far too evident to be useful in academia., January 30, 2012

By 

Robby - See all my reviews

This review is from: Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America (Hardcover)

This book was suggested for a selected reading in my 300 level sociology class and I thought I would stop by Amazon and reflect a bit on how I (as a student) feel about it.

First off, I have been in college 3 years now, so I am certiantly not oblivious to the fact that about 90% of social science professors are complete and utter flakes that are about as deep as a mud puddle. That said, our reading from this book was about on par with any other discussion I have ever had on the subject of HIV/AIDS or homosexuality in school. Quite frankly, they look at the world with blinders on, and this work is very much a case in point.

As opposed to giving any kind of objective overview of the subject at hand, it prefaces everything based upon this whimsical notion of gay victim-hood, as if that alone is supposed to alleviate any sort of responsibility by the author to fairly and objectively cover material? I think not.

Having to do readings like this makes me very happy that I decided upon biology as a major, as opposed to the folks in social science dept who view the scientific method and the rules of evidence as only a rough guide for scholarly pursuits. 90% Supposition and conjecture is not what I pay over 200 dollars a credit hour for.

Since I only read small portions of this book, I still thought it correct to give the book 4 stars since it would be unfair of me to downgrade a work I have not completed. However, based upon what I did read, It is likely a safe assumption that the remainder is filled with more of the same.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read, September 18, 2000

By 

"jkc41" (Bay Harbor Islands, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America (Hardcover)

Mr. Andriote's excellent book is a must read for anyone interested in the major events that have shaped the last three decades of the 20th century. It is an excellent and thoughtful overview of the tragic social, political and economic events that shaped the response to the AIDS epidemic. This book should be mandatory reading in colleges, medical schools and schools of public health.