Larry Kramer‘s The American People, a 4,000-page two-volume tome some 30 years in the making, will finally see the light of day in 2012 with a six-figure publishing contract. Though count on his publisher, uh, slightly editing down the “cast of thousands, but most of them are real people or based on real people.”
Larry Kramer’s 4,000-Page History of Homosexual Humans Is Coming
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Davey Fan
I hope this won’t turn out to be the world’s longest bitter rant, but knowing Larry it probably will be.
southpaugh
Davey Fan: You’ve got to be kidding. Were it not for Larry Kramer and legions of collegues, friends, competitors and miscellaneous cohort, you wouldn’t have nearly the freedom you have now. Yes, Larry is angry, and he has every justification and permission and right to openly express his every frustration. So what if he rubs you the wrong way. Had he not been rubbing society just so these last forty odd years, so many more of us would still be sneaking about to seedy speakeasy joints at risk of police harrassment just because we exist and want a bit of comaradarie. Silly shortsighted and punctiliously selfish ingrate. Larry Kramer deserves every ounce of respect you can ever manage to muster up.
slobone
Sorry southpaugh, there have been plenty of rational and effective gay spokesmen over the last 30 years. We don’t need Larry Kramer and his psychodramas…
SomethingElse
He’s a silly old dingbat. The book will be an angry rant claiming every single U.S. President (except Nixon ) was gay.
ForeverGay
I adore Larry Kramer. He has been instrumental in raising awareness of safe sex in the gay community, pushing drug companies to produce drugs to elimate HIV/AIDS and getting the NIH to approve drugs faster.
Unlike most gay activists who don’t want to rock the boat too much, Larry Kramer went all out for us. Larry Kramer knows heterosexuals were against us from the start. Many gay people falsely believe heterosexuals are for equality and that some move will damage the movement in turn pushing heterosexuals to be against equality when in reality heterosexuals are against equality from the start. Larry Kramer has done some wacky things but they got results quick which can’t be said of gay organizations who believe if we play nice and fair heterosexuals through the goodness of their hearts will vote for equality.
I can’t wait to read the books. I wish they would release the orginal unedited version because I know they will cut so much out.
Ken S
I adore Larry’s ferocity too, even though I find his “all straight people are against us” pronouncements to be hyperbolic. I know many, many straight people who are all in favour of equality for homos & heteros. I hope before we lose him Larry finally accepts the fact that we’ve *made* sincere, trustworthy straight friends who want to see the bigots undone, and are fine with the abolishment of their own straight-privilege.
But I’d never condemn or dismiss Larry for being angry. He watched a generation of his friends and lovers nearly wiped out because for years their government thought “meh, it’s just a bunch of fags dropping dead.” He’s watched as the culture (to which gay people have contributed plenty) has driven countless *children* to kill themselves with relentless bullying. He has every right to be angry, we all do, but a few conformist ‘house-faggots’ try to tell us that anger is never good, never justified, that it’s always ‘rude’ and ugly and beneath us. These people lack imagination. The pity is that they can’t even conceive of how much worse off they (and everybody who’s ever been powerless and tread upon) would be if history weren’t full of angry, righteous motherfuckers who said “I’m mad as hell at this injustice, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
Joe
I can’t believe there are some gay people on here slamming Kramer. If you’re one of them, you are either A) too young to know who Kramer is or B) too stupid and or/lazy to realize that Kramer was at the forefront politically for us in the 80’s all the while you thought it was Madonna advancing our cause
Brian Holbrook
I can understand why many in the LGBT community respect Larry Kramer so much for his activism. It always feels nice when someone fights so ferociously for you. He is uncompromising and a seemingly tireless advocate and activist so he is due some measure of respect. Having said that, there are a few (fairly obvious) things I would point out:
1) The man can’t write. His prose is awful, his mechanics are sloppy, his narratives meandering and uninteresting. His essays are poorly researched, poorly thought out, embittered, vindictive, and brimming with hyperbolic rhetoric that –despite what he would assert– does not trigger hatred or fear from heterosexuals as much as it triggers impatience. I say that as a heterosexual man. His writing, not his politics or sexuality, is what I hate. Look at the first line of his essay “Homo Sex in Colonial America”:
“No, there was no right word for it that you wanted to use for it if you were doing it.”
If that sentence were any more tortured it would have to be sent to Gitmo.
2) He is a zealot in the most negative sense. His rage has overtaken his common sense and his “us vs. them” attitude toward all heterosexuals (or anyone who deigns to disagree with him, really) does nothing to help either his cause or his reputation.
3) He is a liability. Citing anything he has said or written will surely weaken whatever point you are trying to make. I understand that homosexuals rightly hold him in high regard for his past actions, but he is frankly a gigantic ball of untalented, batshit crazy, and you’d do well to cut him loose.
But what do I know? I’m just some random straight dude, so I’m obviously the enemy.