Friday from the Archives: “A “love of hopeless comedy”: The Humor of Personal and Cultural Crisis in Allan Gurganus’s Plays Well With Others“ by Gary Richards from NCLR 17 (2008)
As we continue to search out and receive submissions for our 2025 feature “LGBTQ+ NC Voices in Literature”, we think about how the “gay story” has morphed over the years. Richards’ insightful essay about Gurganus’s 1999 novel shows just how far the shift in cultural story-telling has gone.
There are many things one expects in a novel about the AIDS crisis in NYC: Broadway references, drag and camp events, visiting the bath houses. But to read the piece now–16 years after publishing and 25 years after the novel debuted–is akin to time-traveling back into a museum piece. Pride events, corporate affinity groups (and to some extent rainbow-washing), and local support organizations like PFLAG have all grown to show just how prevalent–dare we say normal–LGTBQIA folks are.
But Gurganus’s novel would’ve been a beginning to changing the story. Richards wrote, “In contrast to a nearhumorless writer like Larry Kramer, Gurganus can frankly document elements – drugs, pornography,
other sexual practices and accoutrements – that are taboo and hence potentially offensive to dominant
culture and yet which were – and are – central to certain gay identities and lifestyles. Moreover, once Gurganus has secured readers’ interest and relative lack of anxiety, he can, through the gradual diminution of the camp and non-camp humor, steer these readers through a moving, thought-provoking AIDS novel, one that might go unread without the effective comic bait.”
Read the entire essay on Gale Cengage or purchase a copy of the 2008 issue with the feature “North Carolina Humor: The Old Mirth State”.
