Faggots
by Larry Kramer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Larry KramerForeword: Reynolds Price
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2000-06-01
ISBN: 0802136915
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of Faggots
Book Review: Is This How It Was?
Summary: 5 Stars
Kramer, Larry. "Faggots", Grove Press Reprint, 2000.
Is This How It Was?
Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
When "Faggots" by Larry Kramer first appeared in 1978 people were up in arms. Some did not understand that what Kramer had written was a satire of gay life in New York City. Some felt he had written an expose of some of the seediest aspects of gay life when it reality it was a touching tale of one man's search for love and quite a desperate search at that. In the 70's and early 80's the book was hailed as genius one hand and excoriated on the other. It is brutal and erotic and harsh and fascinating as it deals with the sexual excesses of the period. Looking back at it now, after a careful rereading, it is a look at how much and how little times have changed. The sex is graphic and not for the squeamish (perhaps that is why I look so much).
Fred Lemish at 39 is in great physical shape and is ready to find Mr. Wonderful and settle down. He cruises everywhere looking for his Mr. Right in all of the wrong places. He has told the man that he is dating that he is in love with him and is waiting for him to answer. But while he waits, Fred takes us to all of the hot spots of gay night life, the bathhouse, the club openings, the summer parties on Fire Island. While he agonizes over his boyfriend, he is out having random sexual encounters and his friends are living in drugged out stupors.
Kramer gives us a New York that is one big party-sexy, wild and glamorous and excessive. It is a look at gay life that spares no one and nothing and the truth and honesty hit very hard--especially to those that lived like this. Kramer has written a moral satire and sadly his unwritten predictions came true with the AIDS epidemic--the music stopped, we calmed down, the bathhouses closed and we kept quiet for a while. The book hits close to home, in fact it is a bull eye's target hit. And it is funny--laugh at loud funny. It is also a novel of great courage--it is his bravery that allowed Kramer to pull everything out of the closet and slam the door behind him. He liberated gay sexuality in this book and because of that he paved the way for a more serious look at the way we live. How can anyone revile Kramer? He was simply a prophet--a man way ahead of his time. He documented an era in a wonderful social parody. This is a book that had to be written and Kramer gives us an undaunted look at the way we lived. Kramer begs for justice and love as he looks at the gay ghetto--a self-imposed area of gyms, sex clubs, and partner swapping. He has written the book that helped bring about our liberation and Kramer had the courage to write about it. "Faggots" is a book of major importance both historically and culturally and he changed the way America looked at gay men. His sense of unease with the way things were--promiscuity, drug use and sadomasochism is a look at the gay community that was needed.
"Faggots" has not gone out of print since its original publication and has remained a best seller. It is an assault on the mind and as Kramer's characters indulge in every excess, it is not for the faint of heart. The irreconcilable pursuit of sex is the theme and the action is plentiful. In the 350 pages of the book we find a kaleidoscopic vision of gay life and this is a book not to be missed--many characters, many locales and a lot of sex--could you ask for anything more?
Summary of Faggots
Very few writers have the prescience or audacity to produce one of the standard works of their era--not a classic, necessarily, but a book that defines its own cultural moment in startling new terms, like One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest or Portnoy's Complaint. Activist and rabble-rouser Larry Kramer has the distinction of having written not only one of the earliest and best-known plays on AIDS, The Normal Heart, but also the astonishing satire of gay urban sexual mores Faggots, perhaps the most reviled novel in the gay literary canon. A grim, graphic expansion on John Rechy's Numbers, which chronicled a hustler's soulless game of sexual conquest, Kramer's pornopticon turns off many readers by about page 3, when its hero, the screenwriter Fred Lemish, is offered an array of dubious pleasures in a private room at the infamous Everard Baths in New York. What Lemish really wants, of course, is true love, preferably from his elusive boyfriend, Dinky Adams. But as long as he's in the room...Celebrated and excoriated when it first appeared in 1978, this reprint of a gay anticlassic is not for the faint of heart. For the rest of us, it is a harsh, fascinating, and somewhat eerie revisitation of the carnal excesses of a generation that couldn't hear the bell tolling over the disco beat.
Larry Kramer's Faggots has been in print since its original publication in 1978 and has become one of the best-selling novels about gay life ever written. The book is a fierce satire of the gay ghetto and a touching story of one man's desperate search for love there, and reading it today is a fascinating look at how much, and how little, has changed.
Satire, Classic Books
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