I am a big admirer of Hervé Guibert, as I explained in my essay “Sade in Jeans.” What I like about Guibert is that he was tough. It seems to me that in the English-speaking world the problem in AIDS writing has been sentimentality — a tearful, victimized, medicalized approach to AIDS and not enough defiance, anger, gutsiness. I don’t want to name names, but we’ve had everything from AIDS deathbed weddings to angels descending.
Of course this has been vastly admired by most people, and I feel like a cad not liking it. But I don’t like its sentimentality. It’s not that different from the death of Little Nell in Dickens. I think people living through AIDS probably get a lot of consolation from that kind of writing. But I think, as literature, it’s dubious.