Disasterama!

This book had pluses and some minuses.

The Good:
- I love a hyper-specific memoir that delves into a time, place, or subculture with a lot of detail and heart. Alvin absolutely achieves that.
- The sprinkles of political and philosophical questions in the sea of AIDS and glitter and New Wave are great, and give the memoir a sense of wider reflection.
- At the end, I really felt like this was a love story / elegy / processing of Alvin and Diet's relationship more than anything else. This is a good thing, and had the author dispensed with the rest and focused on this, it would have been just as strong a work if not stronger.
- There can never be too much queer memoir, and I treasure every added story.

The Less Good:
- The tone is a little to journalistic/flat in parts. I can understand the urge to document what happened in light of so few folks being left, but the strongest moments were the most interpersonal rather than the detailed descriptions of club nights.
- “Eventually, time worked its magic on my brain. My memories of the plague years faded to the point where they seemed like a chapter from a history text” - unfortunately, some of the resulting memoir read like said history text. I would have preferred Alvin cover less ground but dig a bit more deeply into certainly anecdotes. I know that this is a fraught suggestion for an author who seems to be quite earnestly enumerating memories for posterity. I liked the introspective, interpersonal, and philosophical (Antimony/Antinomy, Seven New Types of Sadness, etc) best of all, and more of these ruminations would have been welcome. I thought the more stylistic moments were great, but overwhelmed by the plodding through of time.


I would still recommend it, as it totally delivers on “Adventures in the Queer Underground: 1977-1997” it just didn't reach the level of being writing I enjoyed for its own sake. The stories here are good, the delivery is earnest but could be improved.

[Thanks for the ARC, Three Rooms Press and LibraryThing!]