Books on pre-AIDS crisis New York

October 30, 2022 9:31 AM

Looking for some good books on NYC underground culture in the 1970s, with a focus on the subcultures that would be affected by the AIDS crisis. Especially looking for nonfiction.

I’ve already read Please Kill Me and Love Goes to Building on Fire.

posted by pxe2000 to Media & Arts (15 answers total)

Might cover later years than you’re interested in but very good: Gentrification of the Mind and several chapters of The Lonely City.
posted by caek at 9:50 AM on October 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: It's not entirely NYC specific, but Peter Shapiro's Turn the Beat Around: The Rise and Fall of Disco is great and going to fit pretty squarely in this niche.
posted by thivaia at 10:16 AM on October 30, 2022

Best answer: Just Kids by Patti Smith comes to mind
posted by beyond_pink at 11:15 AM on October 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I've recently read both Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance and Edmund White's the Beautiful Room is Empty. They are excellent fictionalized autobiographical novels from gay men in New York in the 1970s.
posted by Nelson at 11:24 AM on October 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Tim Lawrence !!! Love Saves the Day and its sequel, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983 are both incredible oral histories (with soundtracks) of dance music during the 1970s and 1980s.

https://www.dukeupress.edu/love-saves-the-day
posted by kickingthecrap at 11:26 AM on October 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

F*gg*ts by Larry Kramer.
posted by hworth at 11:31 AM on October 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Nan Goldin's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (note this is an autobiographical photo essay/artist's book)
posted by veery at 11:46 AM on October 30, 2022

Best answer: It takes place in Chicago and London, but Tiny Pieces of Skull by Roz Kaveney really taps into trans culture pre-AIDS.
posted by Ardnamurchan at 1:03 PM on October 30, 2022

Fiction: City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg.
posted by scratch at 1:24 PM on October 30, 2022

The Gay Metropolis by Charles Kaiser.

Gay New York by George Chauncey covers 1890-1940.
posted by Comet Bug at 2:29 PM on October 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You might like Peter McGough's memoir I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going.
posted by praemunire at 4:12 PM on October 30, 2022

Best answer: Ada Calhoun's St. Marks is Dead is really good. It is only really about the lower east side in the 50s to 70s. I also liked her memoir-like book about growing up there, her father, and the poet Frank O'Hara, titled Also a Poet.
posted by tmdonahue at 5:36 AM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water starts in the early 60's, but iirc continues on at least into the early 70's.
posted by Bron at 7:05 AM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Kill All Your Darlings by Sante
My Lost City
posted by Violet Hour at 1:08 AM on November 1, 2022

The Basketball Diaries, by Jim Carroll. It's been years since I read it and it might be more about the 1960s than the 1970s, but Jim Carroll himself sure is 1970s NYC.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:48 AM on November 1, 2022