Gay History Month: Paul Monette
Paul Monette was an openly gay memoirist, novelist, poet and activist. His work dealt with the gay struggle and recounted the loss of his partner to AIDS. Monette also wrote a series of influential essays on same-sex relationships.
He was born in 1945 in Massachusetts. He came out publicly as gay in his late twenties.
Monette received his B.A. from Yale in 1967 and dedicated himself to the writing of poetry for eight years.
He turned to fiction writing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, publishing four successful novels between 1978 and 1982.
Monette suffered a personal setback when his long-time partner, Roger Horowitz, was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s.
Horowitz died of AIDS in 1986. Monette published two memoirs in 1988 that dealt with the battle he and his partner went through after the latter was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.
Monette returned to fiction in the early 1990s with the publication of two novels about AIDS.
He died in 1995 of AIDS-related complications. He was 49.
I read “Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir” a couple years ago. I cried towards the end of it.