Description:
In eleven linked stories, prize-winning novelist John Weir brings his wit and compassion to the question of how a gay white guy from New Jersey lived through fifty years of the twin crises of global AIDS and toxic masculinity in America.
John Weir, author of The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, a defining novel of 1980s New York in its response to the global AIDS crisis, has written a story collection that chronicles the long aftermath of epidemic death, as recorded in the tragicomic voice of a gay man who survived high school in the 1970s, the AIDS death of his best friend in the 1990s, and his complicated relationship with his mother, "a movie star without a movie to star in," whose life is winding to a close in a retirement community where she lives alone with her last dog.
Brief description:
John Weir, winner of the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction for Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me, is the author of two novels, The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, winner of the 1989 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Debut Fiction, and What I Did Wrong. He is an associate professor of English at Queens College CUNY, where he teaches the MFA in creative writing and literary translation. In 1991, with members of ACT UP New York, he interrupted Dan Rather's CBS Evening News to protest government and media neglect of AIDS. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Review Quotes:
"Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me refocuses the lens of memory. Most reboots and reimaginings may evoke retro fashions and music, but the true voices of the times come from those, like Weir, who survived the not-so-distant past."--Foreword Reviews
"This raw, unflinching work has a lot to offer."--Publisher's Weekly
"Sharp, elegaic, angry, funny stories with a searing loneliness often just underneath the surface."--Kirkus
"These eleven short stories are fast-paced with plenty of quick dialogue, pop culture, and political moments. Weir's collection is a history lesson, a survival story, and a study on how to occupy the space between."--Five South
"Your Nostalgia is Killing Me is entertaining and heartbreaking by turns, always a gripping read."--North of Oxford
"The linked stories span a 40-year period, illustrating the power of nostalgia to alternately bring us to tears and make us laugh with a familiarity that is sure to resonate with readers from all walks of life." --Bay Area Reporter and Grab Magazine
"Weir is the Whitman of the Age of Aids, bequeathing us litanies in cascading trebles."--novelist Kate Rounds
"Weir writes beautifully, and his wit, his keenly detailed observations, and his telling insights will resonate -- at the very least for gay men of the generation we share. His ruminations about that untamed epidemic our world continues to face -- unreconstructed masculinity -- could hardly be more timely."--Gay City News
"Weir writes beautifully, elegantly." --NY Journal of Books
"With insight, eloquence, and wit, Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me refocuses the lens of memory. Most reboots and reimaginings may evoke retro fashions and music, but the true voices of the times come from those, like Weir, who survived the not-so-distant past." --Foreword Reviews