Paul MonetteRecensioni

A very moving story and a remarkable man! After reading this I wanted to know more about Monette. Written while he was struggling with AIDS, which made his story that much more powerful.

Enjoyably Good

when paul monette reports that he lost his temper and said, "I'm not interested anymore in talking to anyone who doesn't have AIDS," it isn't that I don't blame him (and who am I anyhow), but that I think he was right. as in righteous.

So it turns out there's a novelization of Werner Herzog's 1979 film based on F.W. Murnau's 1929 film loosely based on Dracula. Both of those movies are brilliant, and it's no surprise that the book isn't, since novelizations are produced for strictly commercial reasons—and this particular movie has fairly little in the way of dialogue or plot, it's all about the tone and the performances, so any attempt to pad it out to book length can't help looking like just that: padding. No one really wanted to make this book, and probably few people wanted to read it.

However, there are plenty of writers who could've approached this gig as a straightforward exercise in "Describe what happens in the movie, and make up some extra stuff of the same kind, plus maybe some things the director didn't have the budget for." Paul Monette doesn't exactly do that. There's certainly plenty of excess verbiage in a faux-19th-century style, as he describes this German town and various details of the characters' backgrounds that don't really matter but make it seem more like a novel; yet you get the sense that there's a point of view there, and every so often a genuinely good and surprising sentence will show up, and it's an effort he wasn't required to make, he just felt a little more inspired right then. My favorite of these is when Lucy Harker (the most pure-hearted woman in the world) decides she's not at any risk of losing her soul, because to be a vampire you need "a cast of mind she simply didn't possess—a sense of secrecy and guilt, of longing without a name, of terror to live in time." There are things going on in that ambiguous and allusive sentence that are both perfectly appropriate for the story and also clearly the work of a queer writer who had been closeted until just a few years earlier. At such times you can see the author briefly imagining what his own supernatural novel might be like, if he wrote one.

While he clearly hasn't seen the film—these books are usually based on early script drafts, and the plot is the same in this case, but this more ferocious characterization of Dracula has nothing in common with Klaus Kinski's strikingly sad performance—Monette gets at some of the same themes that I think Herzog had in mind, so there's some imagery about nature being out of balance, and some dry satire of the conformist townspeople, and a clear sense that what really seals Jonathan Harker's fate is just wanting a little more money. So anyone expecting an action-packed horror story with some kind of romance angle (which, by the way, the back cover copy tries to play up by totally giving away the ending) will be confused and disappointed, which is also true of the film, and in that sense mission accomplished! Monette also seems to know the Murnau film and throws in some nice details from that, like how Dracula's handwriting is just a bunch of unintelligible symbols; or maybe Herzog had that in the script and cut it, I don't know.

I haven't read Monette's later work, the stuff he's known for, which only started after his partner's death and his own illness. Apparently he didn't like any of his earlier books, not the more personal novels and I'm sure not the four novelizations he wrote for 20th Century Fox and Universal: this, and Scarface, and the SF/action Schwarzenegger vehicle Predator (read this review), and the cop comedy Midnight Run—all totally unsuited to [my impression of] his style and concerns, but I presume the main criteria for authors of these things are "Tells a story, doesn't need a lot of copyediting, turns in the job on time." I can't imagine how he would've approached Nosferatu—with its apocalyptic scenes of a community being destroyed by a semi-supernatural plague, presided over by an ancient demented aristocrat and the mad businessman who serves him—if he'd written it a few years later in the time of AIDS and Reaganism. But presumably this book helped him to pay the rent in 1979 and I'm fine with that.

“What am I going to do without him?”…
“Write about him Paul… That’s what you have to do.”

In a world before triple-drug therapy (HAART) was enacted and allowed individuals to live a normal lifespan with HIV, Monette and his lover Roger Horwitz contracted HIV, which ineluctably progressed into AIDS. Professionally, Horwitz was a lawyer and a lover of literature; Monette was a writer. Both were educated at Ivy League schools. This work is the first personal memoir of someone with AIDS.

The secret is that this book is not a story of a disease. Instead, it is a love story as passionate and profound as any written down in human language. In today’s world of marriage equality, works like this demonstrate the deep value of homosexual relationships. Monette beautifully voices his love using floral, expressive language that is expected among articulate heterosexuals… only Monette did so in an America and in a world that did not accept his humanity as fully as they do now. That defiant decency is the brilliance of this work.

Managing HIV/AIDS took over this couple’s lives. They went from vacationing in Greece to making regular stays at the hospital over 19 months. Horwitz dies at the end of this work, and Monette lived until 1995 – both dying of AIDS-related complications. Their love did not falter while being confronted with an evil enemy. It sustained until the bitter end. Thus, this book combines themes of love with those of a noble death.

Dare I say that heterosexuals need to read this book more than the gay and lesbian community? It speaks of the dignity of love in any context. It does not debauch into sensationalism, nor does it cower without decency. It puts to death many stereotypes of gay folk (even more common in the 1980s than in the 2020s). Evocative words draw readers from whatever background into Monette and Horwitz’s relationship and dare them to find something wrong with it. That message of love’s triumph still needs to be heard in 2021 as much as it did in 1988.

Obviously, gay men, who remain disproportionately and cruelly plagued with incurable HIV, and their allies will sympathize with Monette’s plight. They will find themselves and their own stories in the characters of this narrative. This is the natural audience. Nonetheless, Monette’s vivid words, so common to lovers yet glistening in the setting of AIDS in the 1980s, shine brightly for readers of varied backgrounds. They teach humanity inasmuch as they inspire humanity. Perhaps especially those who continue to belittle gay men as second-rate should listen and stand corrected.

The language was a little flowery for my taste, but it was still very, very good.

An unflinchingly honest, eloquently written memoir about love and watching your beloved die of AIDS in the 1980s. Tragic and important reading all at once.

Wonderful novel exploring the life of AIDS widows.

The very first word that comes to mind when trying to describe Afterlife is heartbreaking. Taking place at the "start" of the AIDs epidemic in the heart of United State's "ground zero" in San Francisco, it tells the story of a group of gay men trying to make sense of the horrific disease while coping with personal loss. Facing their own mortality, each man has lost a partner to AIDs but display very different coping mechanisms as they have very different support systems. They form a Saturday night support group of survivors, each asking themselves, but for how long? This is a story of courage; the willingness to live and love in the face of death.

Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir by Paul Monette; (4*)

It was really difficult to pull my head out of this memoir. I took my time reading it and found myself very caught up in the lives of Monette and the people he wrote about. I also found myself much more sympathetic with Paul's lover, Roger, than with Paul himself.
These are Paul's memories of the days of HIV, Aids and those who lived with it before it was even admitted that there was such a disease. In those years, the 80s, contracting this disease was a death sentence. Paul's lover died in 1986 and when Paul began this beautiful memoir, he had no assurance that he, himself, would live long enough to complete it. (He passed away in 1995.) I am thankful that he did for this memoir is his very beautiful legacy.
Now before you think that I found this book to be perfect, I did not. I found Paul to be a bit full of himself and to be self important. He was also quite the name dropper of those of the Hollywood and L.A. scene in those days. But the book IS wonderfully written and so much of it is heart rending.
I took the extended families of these men and also their friends quite to heart and found myself loving the character of many of them. I remember thinking as I read this that I would so have appreciated knowing a great many of the people who fill this memoir.
All in all, a lovely memoir and tribute to the thousands of gay men who fought this dread disease and sadly lost.

I was expecting to like this book, somewhat. I found it profoundly disappointing. The narcissism got to be way too much, as well as a lot of other things.

This was on a friend's list, and since I love memoirs, I picked it up at the library. I haven't read anything like this before. The context couldn't be more foreign to me- Gay intellectuals of 1980's West Hollywood. The writing is superb though. Paul Monette was obviously a gifted poet, narrator and archivist. Despite what your views are on gays, (and I'm certainly , as one reviewer stated, "not a worshiper of the gay couple") this book is worth reading. It's a very good picture of the AIDS realities during the 80's, the marginalization of the gay population, and the real horror that was so present at this time. I did struggle through some parts- in particular the jet-setting lifestyle common to them- hobnobbing w/screen writers, producers, poets and artists, the constant parties and stuffy fundraisers, jaunts to Greece or other foreign countries.. It's a bit much for me but the writing was so obviously good. I'm curious now to read his 1992 memoir, Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story.

Humble Bundle (https://www.humblebundle.com/sierra-bundle) heeft eens in de zoveel tijd een bundel met e-boeken rondom een bepaald onderwerp of schrijver. Daar kun je dan voor betalen wat jij vindt dat het waard is en kun je ook aangeven hoeveel daarvan naar een goed doel gaat. Een sympathieke manier van boeken verkopen wat mij betreft. En zo heb ik de LGBTQ-bundle aangeschaft zonder werkelijk te weten wat daarin zat.
Een van de boeken was Becoming a Man van Paul Monette. En zonder enige voorkennis ben ik aan deze autobiografie begonnen.

De volledige titel is Becoming a man: Half a life story. En gelukkig maar dat dit de eerste helft van zijn leven is geweest en daarna de omslag is gekomen want man o man, wat deprimerend. Paul Monette vertelt over het deel van zijn leven waarin hij in de kast is gebleven. Daar zat hij niet eens zo zeer omdat anderen dit hadden gezegd maar omdat hij dat zelf wilde. Om zijn natuurlijke manier van zijn te verbergen, ging hij zich anders voordoen dan hij was en deed zelfs tot een bepaald moment mee met andere jongens voor homo uitschelden om zelf uit de wind te blijven van de bullebakken. Ik had moeite om door te lezen omdat dit zoveel antipathie bij mij opriep en zo tegen mijn eigen natuur ingaat.
Ik vind het dan ook knap dat Paul Monette geen moeite heeft gedaan om in dit boek zichzelf als een beter persoon af te schilderen dan hij was. Dit geeft een totaal beeld van een opgroeiend mens die worstelt met zijn eigen seksuele identiteit waarbij zowel zijn eigen ideeën als die van de maatschappij om hem heen een grote rol speelt.

In zijn latere leven dat zich afspeelt na dit boek is hij een bekend voorvechter geworden voor de rechten van homoseksuelen en heeft gestreden voor meer geld voor onderzoek om AIDS te bestrijden. Uiteindelijk is hij in de jaren negentig zelf aan AIDS gestorven. Maar niet zonder een belangrijke erfenis aan geschriften achter te laten.

Voor mij heeft dit boek mij meer inzicht gegeven in hoe ideeën in iemand zijn hoofd een leven op bijna desastreuze wijze kan bepalen en dat het blijven open staan voor alle mogelijke andere ideeën altijd de beste keuze is.

Well written. A detailed walk through the lives of some of the AIDS stories of the 1980's. Not always easy to read, but I understand why it has been included in the 100 New Classics list.

Devastating firsthand account of living - and dying - with AIDS. Author and activist Paul Monette, who died from complications related to the disease in 1995, writes about the tragic loss of his lover Roger Horwitz ten years earlier with unflinching detail and brutal honesty. At first, Paul's attitude of 'What about me?' bugged me, especially in the face of his partner's display of dignity and bravery, but after reading the whole book, I now respect the author for being so open about his own feelings.

'The party was going to have to stop', Paul begins; 'a lot of us were already ticking and didn't even know'. I think personal stories like this are often more educational than all the weighty non-fiction texts on the subject, because the lesson is made real by the human lives involved and a lot of uneducated misunderstandings can be dispelled. For instance, as Paul makes clear, 'the disease wasn't drawn to obsessive sex or meaningless sex. Sex itself, pure and simple, was the medium'. Paul and Roger were in a loving, committed relationship, but he still had to watch his partner of ten years - and many other close friends - die a terrible, painful death.

The greatest tragedy, of course, is that Roger - and later Paul - died primarily of ignorance. Not theirs, but the medical, political and social ignorance facing the early patients of the 'gay cancer'. Paul talks about not recognising the early symptoms, or fearing that every ailment might mean the worst. Mistaking a bruise for Kaposi's sarcoma, for instance, or a cough for the first signs of pneumocystis (PCP). The first treatments were equally vague, initially ineffective and often acquired illegally, like Suramin and AZT. AIDS patients and activists had to go 'underground' to fight for drugs, lobbying the FDA to test and release potentially life-saving medicine.

The real breakthrough - which is also the term for the onset of fullblown AIDS - came in 1995, too late for Roger, Paul and thousands of others. But their story is still important, and always heartbreaking to read.

This heartbreaking book is the true story of author Paul Monette’s final two years with his partner Roger Horwitz, who died of AIDS in 1986. Monette chronicles their discovery of the disease and the subsequent downward spiral which Roger’s health took, in a time where ignorance about AIDS was rife, and many people just didn’t want to know about it, thinking that it was a problem only for the gay community.

Roger’s symptoms and health problems are described fairly explicitly and the anguish of the author comes through on every page, as he describes seeing his soul mate struck down by a cruel and vicious illness. His anger at the lack of government interest in the disease is also palpable – and understandable.

But through it all, through every symptom, every ray of hope, every crushing disappointment, is the love. Paul and Roger were a couple so obviously, so completely in love, so together that Roger says, “…we’re the same person!” Yet there is no shying away from the problems they have been through – the brief affair which Paul had earlier in their relationship, and which he feels guilty about because he believes that that was the cause of Roger getting the HIV virus.

Monette talks about seeing friends struck down with “the plague” and describes the situation as a war. And it does feel like they were fighting a war – against AIDS, against ignorance, against indifference. He is aware that he himself has the HIV virus (Monette died of complications from AIDS in 1995).

The first line of the book says, “I don’t know if I will live to finish this.” I’m glad that he did. It’s honest and passionate, and a beautiful read. Keep a handkerchief handy if you are planning on reading it – you will cry, but it’s worth it.

Highly, highly recommended.

Monette's searing anger at his oppressors, which include his younger self, make this book, in my opinion, just as relevant today as it was when it was written. It's not like there aren't millions of people on the planet trying to stuff queer folk back into their closets. I highly recommend this book to anyone who's struggling with being different.

Love the review about censorship particularly . . .

Absolutely unflinching memoir about what it was like to grow up gay before it was ok to be gay publicly.

Sad but very good. A pretty fast read, really.
Read this after Borrowed Time and How To Become A Man, both memoirs. This is much less wordy - the MC is much less manic that Paul comes across when writing about himself in the non-fiction books. I want to know how much Steven and Mark (characters) are like Paul and Stephen.

14 of 75 for 2015. Difficult to say if I should count this as it's really just a story published posthumously, but it is, strictly speaking, a book, if a very short one. Monette is one of my favorite authors. I have 8 of his works in my library at present, including all three of his AIDS memoirs. Sanctuary was originally intended to be one story in a collection. Like all fables, it is intended as instruction, and is beautifully told. The story of the love between a fox and a rabbit, both female, not only shows us how love changes our own nature--the fox becomes a vegetarian, as an example--but also shows how narrow minded outsiders may have difficulty accepting such a "contrary to nature" relationship. The story also is clear on the difference between true power and the illusion of power--something we all need to keep in mind in these frightful days.

Paul Monette’s early life is marked by both the astounding conformity and pent-up rage that one might expect to find in the Bildungsroman of a young gay man growing up in mid-century America. His ability to “pass” for straight comes at a cost – to wit, the inability of ever having to admit to anyone that he’s not. From the time that he’s a small child, Paul seems tragically torn, more so than even many other figures in well-known gay-memoirs who came of age at about the same time in American history (I’m thinking of Edmund White’s “The Beautiful Room is Empty” and others). Whereas White’s memoirs explore sexual openness and the life of the mind, Monette can only begin to feel comfortable with the latter, and never seems to approach the former until he is well into adulthood. He was already one to get “straight A’s,” but whose courage balked when it came to admitting his sexuality to a close friend or family member.

Beneath that Yale- and Andover-educated genteel exterior is the heart of an enraged activist who, if he had a problem with admitting his homosexuality, certainly had fewer problems with hyperbole. He blithely claims within the first few pages of “Becoming a Man” that “genocide is still the national sport of straight men.” He goes on to clarify that Stephen Kolzak, one of his former lovers, “died of homophobia, murdered by barbaric priests and petty bureaucrats.” I would never be the first to suggest that the national response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in its initial years was rapid or proportionate to need, but Monette’s moralizing is certainly a momentous task in blame-shifting. One review, whose overall impression of the book was much less favorable than mine, nevertheless mentioned something very striking about the man who wrote it: he seems to consist of two different personalities, neither of which have reconciled themselves to one another.

Nor does he self-consciously explore his balkanized personality; he seems supremely unhappy in being unable to be open about his sexuality to most people, but does nothing to change this. And this repressed self sits right there, silently, next to the one that rails against America with clenched fist about committing “genocide” against those with HIV/AIDS. It’s a perplexing picture, but strikingly human one, a poignant one.

I’ve noted before in my reviews of memoirs that I don’t read many of them, and that I somehow have to be struck by the life of the author before I’ll pick one up. Monette was gay; Edmund White’s homosexuality and love of ideas were two big invitations for me as a much younger reader when I stumbled across “The Beautiful Room is Empty.” I found this book, my first experience reading Monette, honest and forthright in Monette’s “trying to give a true account of one’s self” – perhaps the hardest thing you can ever ask someone to do. Perhaps I’m grateful for his rage and his furor, discombobulated as it was. It allowed, decades on, for people like me to not have to re-wage the battles that he already fought.

Lovely and heartbreaking.

Written after his lover Roger Horwitz, passed away from complications from the AIDS virus, Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog is a moving collection of poems by Paul Monette. He dedicates these to Roger.

Reviewing poetry is difficult, I think either you enjoy reading the poems and they resonate or, they just don't strike a chord. Poetry is so subjective, I think that is why I enjoy it so much. Everyone sees it differently and can take different things from it.

I enjoyed this sad collection and I found this to be a beautiful tribute by Monette for the love of his life. The way Monette shares his feelings through poetry in an intense and honest way makes this for an emotional read. He remembers Roger as he shares not only his pain and his loss, but also his love for his partner. It's really moving. And that is what real love is all about, you never stop loving someone, even when they are gone.

"I promise you all the last gardenias Rog
but they can't go on like this they've stopped they know
the only garden we'll ever be is us"

There are photos at the end and I always find that a nice touch, as it makes reading something like this even more real. This was a lovely tribute.

disclaimer: I received my free review copy of Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog by Paul Monette via NetGalley.
This review is my honest opinion. I did not receive any type of compensation for reading and reviewing this book. While I receive free books from publishers and authors, such as this one, I am under no obligation to write a positive review.½

A collection of essays written by Monette in '92 and '93, Last Watch of the Night chronicles his thoughts on family, spirituality and the church, health and disease, writing, and AIDS, primarily as connected to being gay in America in the 1970s and 1980s. All personal and heavily anecdotal, the essays veer between being sorrowful, angry, and celebratory, though Monette's sarcastic humor often comes through as well. While a few of the essays come off as being overly self-indulgent, most of them are both thoughtful and entertaining, well worth the time for any interested reader. It's worth noting, also, that readers needn't be familiar with Monette's other works in order to get something out of the collection--most of the references to his own writings are general, his primary focus being on more memoir-and-history based interests.

On the whole, the collection is well worth reading for any interested parties, though perhaps not as historically or personal telling as readers might wish.½