HIV and AIDS in literary history

Table of contents

1. Introduction

2. HIV and AIDS in different genres
2.1 Medium
2.2 Beginning in the 1980s
2.3 Development and Extension through literature
2.4. Reasons and Effects

3. AIDS literature and Extension today

4. Life with HIV / AIDS: An Interview

5. Final Discussion

6. References

1. Introduction

The following paper deals with AIDS in Literary History and the influence in different media with the focus on creative writing. The paper is divided into two parts whereas the first main part represents the development of that topic through literature.

In a first step there will be given a general definition of what is meant by the term media and what we are talking about when referring to them. I concentrate on the medium literature which is mentioned in the topic of this paper. After the description of the beginning in the 1980s the development of AIDS Literature and its extension through literature basically concerning the 1990s will be outlined. The extension through 1980 – 1989 is disposed by the date of publication. The number of creative AIDS writings that highly increased from 1990s until today are arranged according to their literary category in which they appear. These include novels, both biographical and autobiographical style, poems and collections.

The question why people write about AIDS will be discussed in the next step of the paper. With reference to feelings of HIV infected people reasons and effects will be analysed more concrete. Furthermore there will be some words on AIDS Literature and Extension today, even if the disease is not that present today as is was in the 1990.

To close the circle and come back to the topic of the paper, I present a certain medium that gives AIDS a voice. The second part of this paper consists of an interview given by a HIV infected person called Horst-Johann Peters who also suffered from AIDS and lost his partner in 1995. On the one hand the interview expresses the motivation of being an AIDS activist and represents several feelings that lead to this commitment. On the other hand the interview can be found as a category in different media and is therefore a special part of literature.

This paper focuses on literature to give an overview how complex creative AIDS writing in Literary History appears to this day. To be responsive to all other sorts of media mentioned in the table would therefore go beyond the scope.

2. HIV and AIDS in different genres

At the beginning of the 1980s the society became acquainted with an infection called HIV (H uman I mmunodeficiency V irus). Both people and scientists did not know much about that virus, so there was a great uncertainty all over.

In the beginning some people talk about GRIDS (G ay- R elated I mmune D eficiency S yndrome) when they refer to HIV or AIDS. Since people know about the disease called AIDS (A cquired I mmune D eficiency S yndrome) one can find this topic in different genres: writers descend to HIV and / or AIDS in novels, poems, short stories, (auto) biographies, journals, essays or articles. But not only writers deal with that topic. HIV and AIDS are present in a number of different media.

2.1 Medium

As said above, there are lots of ways to attend to a disease like HIV / AIDS^[1] especially when so many things are unexplored and unacquainted. The medium gives a person the opportunity to express thoughts, feelings or simply information. Several different media are shown in the table below to give HIV and AIDS a voice:

illustration not visible in this excerpt

In the next part of the paper I will basically concentrate on HIV / AIDS in literature. AIDS literature is no longer only gay-literature or literature of PWAs (P erson W ith A IDS), many people such as partners, the family, friends, doctors or even people who are interested in or dealing with that subject expressing facts and feelings by creative writing in different genres of literature.

2.2 Beginning in the 1980s

Early AIDS literature occurred when the virus was acquainted at the beginning of the 1980s^[2]. The earliest novel called A Day in San Francisco (1983) was written by Dorothy Bryant, a mother who had lost her gay son because of HIV-related illness. In the novel she writes about her fear to lose her son and about her fear of a terrible illness nobody knows anything about so far.

Another novel was written by Toby Johnson named Plague (1987) where the author addresses to prejudices against gay PWAs. Cry in the Desert (1987) written by Jed Bryan also plots preconception to infected homosexual people.

Larry Kramer’s essay 1,112 and Counting (1983) was published in the gay journal New York Native and was reprinted all over the world. His most important statement was to “act immediately”; if not, we will have to “face our approaching doom” (Shilts 245 : 50).

Two New York Plays, William M. Hoffmann’s As Is (1985) and Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart (1985) became successful whereas until 1985 AIDS became more acknowledged as an American literary subject (cf. Joseph Cady). Larry Kramer writes among other things about the inaction of the government and the importance of self-help groups. In 1988 Joseph Beam edited In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology.

In the same year Paul Monette published two classic works: a book of poems called Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog (1988) and Borrowed Time (1988), a prose memoir. Paul Monette lost his partner Roger Horwitz to AIDS in 1986 after a long way of suffering and pain. The first one is a set of poems written by Paul Monette where he often addresses directly to Roger Horwitz.

Joseph Cady characterises this work as “the supreme work of immersive AIDS writing so far” (Joseph Cady : 2)^[3]. The harrowing experience of Roger Horwitz and also Paul Monette comes across to the reader very brutal.

[...]

^[1] I refer to HIV and AIDS this way because the HIV virus determines AIDS. Further Medical Research can be found among other literature in magazines of the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.

^[2] It is to mention that the detection of that virus has no “date of birth”; an exact data of the point in time when HIV / AIDS occurs at first is not acquainted.

^[3] Joseph Cady wrote an essay about Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog called Immersive and Counterimmersive Writing about AIDS: The Achievement of Paul Monette’s Love Alone.

When the vocabulary immersive and counterimmersive is used in AIDS writing collections, the writer mostly refers to Joseph Cady; he became quite popular using these terms. Furthermore each fall he teaches AIDS Through Literature in a medical School Curriculum in Rochester (cf. Pastore : 233).