Diary Prequel Package — page 444

Mr. Kramer said he was driven to write the book because he had long felt that gays had been excluded from history books, written out or ignored. "Most history is written by straight people, and they don't have gaydar," Mr. Kramer said during an interview at his apartment in Greenwich Village. "People say, 'Can you prove to me that George Washington was gay?' and I say, 'Can you prove to me that he wasn't?' " (As evidence, Mr. Kramer notes that Washington "was surrounded by men, and he designed all their uniforms himself.") In the novel, and in conversation, Mr. Kramer criticizes historians and scholars like Stacy Schiff, Ron Chernow and Doris Kearns Goodwin for glossing over homosexuality in American history. If he had had his way, he would simply have called the book a work of history rather than fiction, he said. "Farrar Straus said call it a novel, that way the lawyers will leave you alone," he said. "But I believe everything in the book is true. It may look like fiction, but to me, it's not." Mr. Chernow, the author of a well-regarded 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton, said he was surprised to be called out in Mr. Kramer's novel, particularly as he brings up in his book the possibility that Hamilton might have been bisexual. "I'm glad that Larry Kramer is raising the issue, I'm just mystified at why he's attacking me, when I thought he would have applauded the fact that I take this seriously," Mr. Chernow said. "It's a legitimate issue for historians or novelists, but we also have to be careful not to ransack history in service of a political agenda." As for Mr. Kramer's theory about Washington, Mr. Chernow countered that it was common in that era for generals to design soldiers' uniforms. If conflicting early reviews are any indication, "The American People" is likely to be as polarizing and controversial as Mr. Kramer's other works. While Kirkus Reviews praised the novel as "breathtakingly well-written," others have taken a dimmer view. "To call it a rough read at times would be an understatement," a reviewer wrote in Publishers Weekly. "It's like being hit by a truck, the book is so all over the place," the novelist Andrew Holleran, who has known Mr. Kramer since the 1970s, said of the book. "What I admired as a writer was the imaginative energy and the amount he takes on." Jonathan Galassi, the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, said the book struck him as ambitious and provocative, both as a work of literature and as an act of protest. "This book is, in a way, a culmination of all his artistic activity," he said. "Larry is a great polemicist and a fighter, and this book is part of his polemic about gay history and the roles of gays in our society. He's still fighting and he's using art to do it." Mr. Kramer never set out to be a political activist and said that in some ways he was illsuited to the role. "They say I'm obnoxiously noisy and angry, but I'm actually a bit of a shy person," he said.