Queer and Loathing

October 31, 1994
Novelist Feinberg (Eighty-Sixed) brings together an unsettling but frequently affecting collection of autobiographical essays and miscellaneous pieces (originally published in the Advocate, Details and other publications) about living with AIDS. Sometimes Feinberg's attempts at black humor merely confirm Edmund White's contention that joking about AIDS is to attempt in vain to domesticate it; an essay on etiquette for the HIV-positive begins, ``Avoid bleeding in public.'' Less facile are the more autobiographical pieces, complex blends of rage, despair and wit. Of his relationship with a friend who is HIV-negative, Feinberg writes, ``Sometims I feel like damaged goods. He has a fifty-year warrantee, and I'm stuck with a failed inspection slip in my shirt pocket.''