Andrew Holleran, HIV/AIDS, and Queer Narrative Form

Abstract This article argues that gay American fiction writer Andrew Holleran’s short story “Friends at Evening” measures narrative’s capacity to represent the HIV/AIDS epidemic before the advent of prophylactics and therapeutics. Anticipating later critical debates in queer narratology and responding to one of Holleran’s earlier essays on writerly feelings of futility, the story incorporates and emphasizes lists and lines of poetry in order to forestall lethal climaxes and conclusions. This aesthetic hybridity creatively connects the catastrophe of an epidemic to a crisis in genre.