Gone Tomorrow

New York, Munich and Cartagena, Colombia are the scenes of reckless decadence and excess in the early dawn of the AIDS epidemic, as recounted in this ambitious, uneven chronicle of a charismatic gay filmmaker's final years. Two friends of the late Paul Grosvener meet in New York in 1991 and discuss, over cocktails and joints, circumstances that led to his somewhat mysterious death. The narrative flashes back seven years to Cartagena, where Paul is directing a movie. Surrounded by corruption and poverty, stultified by excessive heat, drugs, liquor and sex, a motley crew of ex-Nazis, native Colombians, cosmopolitan actors and ``cinema types''--narcissists and grotesques--butt heads as they struggle to bring Paul's obscure vision to the screen. The second part of the novel recounts Paul's lover's horrible death from AIDS, Paul's own contraction of the virus, and the intrigue of his suicide. Indiana ( Horse Crazy ) frustrates the reader with his inconsistent first-person narrative. Contemplating life in the face of death he presents keen insights both through symbolism and through overt discussion; but at times his prose becomes overburdened with ostentatious mixed metaphors and almost Chandleresque similes that create an incongruous, mocking tone. Reminding us that he is not omniscient, Indiana's narrator disrupts his own story with frequent asides. Still, this is an intelligent, evocative treatment of an all too timely and difficult subject. (Mar.)