"And Now You Know ... the Rest of the Story"
Written: Jun 26 '00 (Updated Jun 26 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: a Herculean epic of investigative reporting
Cons: written by an investigative reporter
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| ErgoPropterHoc's Full Review: Randy Shilts - And the Band Played on: Politics, P... |
Two things strike you while reading this tome: it is a Herculean epic of investigative reporting, and it is written by an investigative reporter. Shilts' training in journalism is painfully evident in this dense, hard to digest timeline of the unfolding AIDS epidemic—yet it is still a worthwhile read as the seminal work on the subject.
This review is a part of the Epinions.com National Gay & Lesbian Pride Month Write-Off, hosted by esteemed writers caconti and mshawpyle. Also participating are arazim; caravan70; cmuir; cowboydj; doublecoog; ed_grover; elorraine; endora60; ergopropterhoc; erik_kosberg; fdknight; forkids; frazzledspice; gracef; jasonkirk; jrk; kcfoxy; kchowell; kurt_messick; leah; redlass; and stonehousellc. You can find quick-links to all their reviews through the x-off affiliate at x-off.epinions.com
What might strike you as odd about this review is that I'm giving And The Band Played On only two stars (or dots, blobs, or what-have-you) out of five, but also I am "recommending it to others". I can't really say that this is a well written volume, or that it’s a gripping tear-jerker, or even a page-turner. Instead, it is a dense, difficult to absorb, jargon filled history of one of the most serious epidemics ever to afflict the United States. Within its covers are important stories about the epidemic, stories that are repeated every day, and will continue for years. I think you should read it, and I also think you probably won't overly enjoy it, as it lacks some of what you should expect from a good story.
The first problem is that there's a new name introduced every other page or so—which can be a lot to handle in such a lengthy piece. The Dramatis Personae at the beginning of the book lists fifty-five players, and there are many more than that who appear in the text. You'll probably quickly learn to disregard all but a few of the key characters in the unfolding story—most of the names are only mentioned once or twice in the entire text, and are unimportant to understanding the saga. Others are mentioned once, and then ignored for a while until they return to play another insignificant role later in the story. The overarching plot is really only advanced through much of the story in the lives of about a dozen or so people. It seems as if Shilts was trying to include in this publication every detail he had ever uncovered about the AIDS epidemic. That may be a worthwhile task for an academic record, but it does little to make this scripture generally readable.
Despite the plethora of players in And The Band Played On, one major character is absent from the book—Shilts himself. Shilts had worked for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1981, and was the first and only reporter for a major rag assigned full time to cover the gay community and ultimately the AIDS epidemic. He was the first to break many of the stories relating to AIDS in the popular press, and was more important to the saga than many of the other people named within the pages of his book. In fact, Shilts himself became a victim of the very affliction he was chronicling. His doctor had tested him for HIV as he was writing this book, but Shilts asked to have the prognosis withheld, fearing that it might bias his reporting.
Another problem is that Shilts shies away from developing the character of some of the major players. We know that these are real people, with real emotion, yet Shilts chooses to ignore that in many cases, especially when those emotions are not directly related to the virus itself. We often read of people who are sorrowful for their afflicted or deceased friends or patients, but little else of any emotion in their lives. This tends to make Shilts' dense writing and investigative journalism even more difficult to digest.
Shilts does a moderately good job of keeping his personal opinions out of the explicit text, but it is impossible for anyone to write a completely unbiased account of the tragedy. It is natural to attempt to assign blame to someone (or more than one) for such an epidemic, but Shilts takes the opportunity to assign blame to almost everyone. The story that Shilts' weaves tries to put the CDC, the NIH (and the National Cancer Institute specifically), the right-wing Reagan administration, the press, and the gay community itself all simultaneously at fault. His descriptions of events and conversations make it out that anyone who failed to find funding or take action was to blame.
Absent from this book is an acknowledgement of all the other cases of unexplained illness brought to the CDC, and all the other diseases about which the NIH was concerned. For each doctor in Shilts' saga that correctly prophesies the coming epidemic, there are many other false prophets. Only in hindsight can we look at our institutions and ask, "why didn't they listen?" At the time, there were not enough resources to address every idiopathic malady—and even if there were, it is possible that the gay community would have rejected any stern public health warnings that earlier studies might have produced. Without deep analysis, the commentary on the outbreak that Shilts often engenders in his prose rings hollow.
Reading through the book, you'll often times find instances where Shilts has tried to include some foreshadowing in his story—usually it just breaks up the pace of the moment, instead of providing great insight. Since virtually every reader already knows how the story is going to turn out, the telling should be less about the suspense of what's going to happen (or have happened), and more about the suspense of the moment. Shilts has missed this key distinction, and instead tries to write what could be a compelling novel. But you already know . . . the rest of the story.
Recommended:
Yes
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ErgoPropterHoc
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Location: Evanston, IL
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