Vital Signs Essential AIDS Fiction

Since first reports of a "gay cancer" in 1981, it has been hard to ignore the politics, polemic, and prejudice that gathered around AIDS. Yet a literary genre also emerged, and Vital Signs contains the very best of the extraordinary work created in America in response to our greatest contemporary health crisis. This collection documents the critical years of struggle, bravery, loss, and redemption in 18 unique examples. Andrew Holleran's "Friends at Evening"--unavailable for 20 years--depicts a group of New Yorkers, urbane, witty and charming, suddenly staring into the abyss. Edmund White's "An Oracle" takes us to Crete in one American's journey to self-knowledge. Ann Beattie's narrator struggles to find a clear role among her gay friends in crisis in "Second Question." Rebecca Brown and Carole Maso offer poignant miniatures of the consolations and heartache in caregiving and bearing witness. Thomas Glave's O. Henry Award-winning "The Final Inning" focuses on an African American community's response to revelations concerning a deceased friend and relative. David Leavitt lays bare a mother-son relationship suddenly based upon improvisation. David Feinberg and John Weir show why the epidemic can, and must, be laughed at. Allen Barnett offers stoicism, David Wojnarowicz anger, Adam Klein eroticism, and Dale Peck lyricism. In "Lilacs," Abraham Verghese, himself for many years a physician treating people with AIDS, documents the indefatigable urge to keep living--at any cost. Inventive, moving, humane, and uplifting, these stories show us how to live in times of uncertainty and adversity. They offer, indeed a plethora of vital signs.Canning, Richard is the author of 'Vital Signs Essential AIDS Fiction', published 2007 under ISBN 9780786720095 and ISBN 0786720093.