1978 book by Larry Kramer
Faggots is a 1978 novel by Larry Kramer.
It is a satirical portrayal of 1970s New York's very visible gay community in a time before AIDS. The novel's portrayal of promiscuous sex and recreational drug use provoked controversy and was condemned by some elements within the gay community.
Summary.
The main character, Fred Lemish, is loosely modeled on Kramer. Lemish wants to find a loving, long-term relationship. His desires are frustrated as he stumbles through an emotionally cold series of glory holes, bathhouses, BDSM encounters and group sex. He becomes disillusioned with the 1970s "fast lane" lifestyle dominating the gay subculture in and around New York.
Lemish also expresses discomfort with the widespread use of multiple street and prescription drugs helping to maintain the party atmosphere. "Faggots" details the use of over two dozen 1970s party drugs and intoxicants such as Seconal, poppers, LSD, Quaaludes, alcohol, marijuana, Valium, PCP, cocaine and heroin.
The book moves through, among other locales, a gay bathhouse called the "Everhard" (based on the Everard Baths), a large disco named Capriccio, an orgy at the apartment of a successful gay lawyer, the spectacular opening of a club called The Toilet Bowl, and ends with a tumultuous weekend on Fire Island.
Characters.
While "Faggots" contains over sixty named persons, only a few are fully fleshed-out characters. Some of the principal actors are listed here:
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...the widest field of shining waxed wood on which to move and glide and shake and boogie and turn and hug and hold and sweat and show the muscles, wiggle the ass, bump your crotch, clutch you tight, spin, spin, wave and shout, look and smile, say good-bye to all our cares, with all our brothers, a lifetime of friends, beside, around, above, bleachers stringing round all sides, everything bathed in light and sound, that legendary sound! ... .9034 psu's of decibelacular sound, all engorging all of the above, Hot Men!, Dancing!, Love!, Friendship!, this legendary spot of Heaven on Earth, our very own beloved exclusive club...
Reception.
The book has been influential over the years, though many have criticized Kramer for perceived negativity toward his subject matter and writing style.
Upon "Faggots"' release, the book was banned in the only gay bookstore in Manhattan.
"The Washington Post" noted that the book focused on "a peculiarly ugly, vicious, perverse, depraved, sado-masochistic subculture in which love does not exist–a subculture that homosexuals have been at pains to say is not representative of homosexual life" and slammed Kramer for "Pretty Lousy Writing." "The New York Times" also criticized Kramer's writing abilities, calling it "sentence for sentence, some of the worst writing [...] encountered in a published manuscript." ;templatestyles src="Template:Quote_box/styles.css" / ;
"I'm tired of using my body as a faceless thing to lure another faceless thing, I want to love a Person!, I want to go out and live in that world with that Person, a Person who loves me, we shouldn't have to be faithful, we should want to be faithful!, love grows, sex gets better, if you don't drain all your fucking energy off somewhere else" [...] "I've lived all over the world and I haven't seen more than half a dozen couples who have what I want." [...] It tells me something. It tells me no relationship in the world could survive the shit we lay on it. It tells me we're not looking at the reasons why we're doing the things we're doing. It tells me we've got a lot of work to do. A lot of looking to do. It tells me that, if those happy couples are there, they better come out of the woodwork fast and show themselves pronto so we can have a few examples for unbelieving heathens like you that it's possible. Before you fuck yourself to death."
— Larry Kramer, "Faggots"
In the advent of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, it was discovered that the drug use, multiple partner sex and other behavior condemned in "Faggots" increased the risk of HIV, which seemed to validate Kramer's criticism of homosexual promiscuity. Kramer was somewhat redeemed in the gay community.
The gay scholar John Lauritsen commented on "Faggots," saying, "The book showed courage and insight. It touched a raw nerve. It was disgusting, and very funny." The historian Martin Duberman writes that "to me, "Faggots" represented not uncanny clairvoyance but merely Kramer's own garden-variety sex-negativism".
References.
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