Walking After Midnight: Gay Men's Life Stories

Like its companion volume about lesbians (see review above), this trenchant compilation of interviews scrutinizes societal and personal factors affecting 14 gay men residing in the U.K. Despite the abundant humor and the ebullient self-contentment of most participants, their transcripts are suffused with an inescapable sense of the ominous. Speakers mark the passing of an era of relative benignity resulting from activism in the early '70s, and talk of the intolerance arising from the political conservatism associated with Thatcherite Britain and from reaction to the AIDS epidemic. Although not the focal point, AIDS is omnipresent here: most contributors refer to the disease; one has it; and one piece is a recollection by five friends of a 27-year-old who died of it. Particularly noteworthy is the cultural diversity of the men here, whose native lands include Brazil, Cyprus, India, East Africa and Turkey. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)