And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic in Queereaders

Sep 08, 2008 Zweegas rated it it was amazing

This is an amazing achievement. It's written with a palpable sense of urgency and is a 100% classic, no doubt about it. The author gave everything he had for this tome and it will hopefully stand throughout history as the major literary landmark it is.

I just have a few petty observations.

I always say how books like this might as well be considered fiction and that's basically true, but I do believe this book is a lot closer to the ideal of pure non-fiction journalism than all the insubstantial l This is an amazing achievement. It's written with a palpable sense of urgency and is a 100% classic, no doubt about it. The author gave everything he had for this tome and it will hopefully stand throughout history as the major literary landmark it is.

I just have a few petty observations.

I always say how books like this might as well be considered fiction and that's basically true, but I do believe this book is a lot closer to the ideal of pure non-fiction journalism than all the insubstantial literature that gets passed around as non-fiction these days. Of course this isn't all 100% non-fiction. Even at 605 (large) pages of (small) text (not counting indexes and references and additional information), there are messy intricacies of reality that can't be handled even with that much volume. Not everyone involved in history got mentioned, which is not the point but there are other parts of the story that are interesting and I wish were included. Several of the book's themes (of lesser importance) get repeated over and over and re-stated in slightly different ways over and over and detailed over and over again until it's all pounded into the freaking ground. If War And Peace can come in an abridged version why can't this book get some abridges too?

The story stops before ACT-UP and Keith Haring and Ryan White and that White House photo-op where Ronald Reagan impressed everyone with his bold compassion when he let that African AIDS baby sit in his lap. I understand the logistics of why the book begins and ends as it does, but since it's such a definitive statement of a period of time I wish a few more interesting points would've been mentioned.

Of course since it is true, I personally inserted myself into the story which turned the reading of it into a monumental emotional traumatic experience. I was committed to finishing this book no matter how big it was, no matter how long it took. (It took me 20 days to read this one book -- TWENTY! That's an accomplishment for someone who so firmly believes in the literary virtue of brevity.) If the book had been about some other disease that never had such an impact on me, there's no way I would've spent twenty days reading about all the bickering egos of politicians and scientists, funding problems of government agencies, political maneuvering, the impracticality of the scientific establishments, etc. That's one of the fundamental quandaries inherent in even the title -- What does it take to get people to care?
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