ber of gay men with AIDS in the Castro district was much higher than
previously thought— a story which received national network television
63. Johnette Rodriguez, “AIDS: Reporter Randy Shilts Chronicles the Deadly Epi-
demic,” NewPaper [Providence, RI], February 3– 10, 1988, sec. NewSection, 1. See also
Shilts, Band, 229– 31.
64. Gayle S. Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexu-
ality,” in Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, ed. Peter Aggleton and Richard Parker
(London: UCL Press, 1999), 152. First published in Carol S. Vance, Pleasure and Danger:
Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984).
65. Shilts would later recall that he had been covering AIDS full- time since 1983. Re-
fer, for example, to CAJ, [Media Coverage of AIDS].
“Humanizing This Disease” 159
coverage.66 Angrily confi ding to his video display terminal the day af-
ter the story was released, Shilts complained that “I had just endured
36 of the most pressured hours of my career— hours in which gay lead-
ers and researchers had worked feverishly to cover up the story of the
dramatic proportions that the fatal AIDS epidemic had reached in the
city’s gay neighborhoods.” Shilts continued, stating that he was reluctant
to use the fi rst person, “a reticence exacerbated by my decidedly old-
fashioned view of the role of a reporter in contemporary society,” and
noted that he was not going to use the names of the individuals involved
“in an uncharacteristic act of mercy.” He did not believe that the individ-
uals involved deserved this leniency, since they were “[rank] amateurs
playing games of life and death for other people.” Defending his actions
to himself, Shilts rationalized that “as a reporter, my duty is not to pon-
der or even consider the consequences of a story. My job is to dissemi-
nate information, not withhold it. The UCSF study clearly was a good
story, containing information that the public had a right to know.”67 Con-
templating the issue of having community “leaders” whose actions might
not be in the best interest of those they claim to represent, Shilts con-
cluded, “Thankfully, it’s the job of reporters to ask questions, not to an-
swer them.”68
66. Randy Shilts, “Study of S.F. Neighborhoods: Startling Finding on ‘Gay Disease,’”
San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 1983, 2.
67. Shilts exuded a confi dence in being able to instinctively know “a good story” that
was common to the journalistic profession at the time. An authoritative guide to the indus-
try described the task of writing the lead to a story as “fi nding the phrase, the quotation or
the fact that reaches the essence of the story”; see John Chancellor and Walter R. Mears,
The News Business (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), 16. Such a view, which suggests
that each story has a quintessence, downplays the role of the reporter in the construction of
a single, authoritative view.
68. “3/24/83,” folder 8: March 83, box 21, Shilts Papers; the word rank is added as a
handwritten correction to the printed type. See Shilts, Band, 255– 56, for more on this epi-
sode and where he names the individuals involved. Although in this book excerpt the jour-
nalist partially acknowledges the gatekeeping process involved in journalism— “AIDS
stories still needed a careful marshaling of editorial support to clear the various hurdles
toward publication”— he seems less aware of the socially constructed features that made
“a story” interesting to an “old- fashioned” reporter. Also, one reviewer of Band later sug-
gested, based on a visit he (the reviewer) had made to San Francisco at that time, that
Shilts overexaggerated the initial secrecy of the data: Tim Burak, “Books,” Seattle Gay
News, November 27, 1987, 28.
160
chapter 3
Gary Walsh’s diagnosis, verbal and written attacks from members of
the gay community regarding his reporting, and the death of his mother
from a stroke all combined to make 1983 a particularly diffi cult year for
Shilts. He continued to push for more coverage of AIDS at the Chron-
icle and was a signifi cant contributor to the newspaper’s “This World”
special weekend edition released in January 1984, which focused on the
syndrome.69 A Freedom of Information Act request yielded his fi rst ev-
idence that the federal government was resisting spending additional
funds on AIDS. Shilts fi rst released this material in an article for the
Chronicle and then expanded it for the New York Native. It would form
the foundation of his national- level coverage of the federal response to
AIDS in Band.70 Leah Garchik, a colleague of Shilts at the Chronicle,
was the editor of the AIDS edition of “This World.” She recalled that
Shilts was a “hot dog” reporter and kept on developing ideas and direc-
tions for the special edition. At one point, she had to remind him that
she was the editor and he one of the contributors. “He started crying,”
Garchik remembered, the stress of the reporting on the devastation of
his community having become too much to bear.71
At that stage, Shilts’s alcoholism “went into a fi nal tailspin,” a situa-
tion which was compounded by the death of Gary Walsh on February 21,
1984, and attacks from the gay press for his AIDS reporting relating to
the city’s bathhouses. “I went out the day after Gary died and drank like
crazy,” he revealed in a 1989 interview. “I was working a swing shift and
had six double shots of Jack Daniels back to back and then went back to
the Chronicle.” One of the editors suggested that he go home. At this
point, he decided to join Alcoholics Anonymous: “I struggled so hard to
get that job at the Chronicle after years of discrimination, and I was fi -
nally on a story that I felt was important. And here I was blowing it for
this cheap high.”72 The criticism he faced in his reporting on the delays
in closing the bathhouses in San Francisco through the rest of 1984 was
69. “AIDS OUTLINE— For December 11 Issue of THIS WORLD,” October 20, 1983,
folder 6: AIDS 83, box 21, Shilts Papers.
70. Randy Shilts, “House Panel’s Ideas on AIDS Research Financing,” San Fran-
cisco Chronicle, December 6, 1983; Randy Shilts, “Memos Show Administration Falsifi ed
AIDS Funding Needs,” New York Native (hereafter cited as NYN), December 19, 1983,
18– 19, 64.
71. Leah Garchik, interview with author, San Francisco, January 6, 2009.
72. Kelley, “Interview: Randy Shilts,” 108– 10; Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 176.
“Humanizing This Disease” 161
challenging, yet, combined with his relative sobriety, fulfi lling too.73 Af-
ter a four- year hiatus from introspective journal writing, he made an en-
try on March 22, 1984, one month into being alcohol- free:
I can see now the dramatic changes which I hoped would come in my life.
Boy, I thought I was trapped in a rut forever— and then things started falling
into place— just when I stopped drinking. I have new confi dence (too m[u]ch
dr[u]gs, h[o]w[e]v[e]r) . . . even though I
have fi ght ahead— maybe I should be
more concerned with my physical safety and I hope those fears will pass. But
I don’t want to feel bad now— I feel I’m blossoming, things fall into place.74
By the autumn of 1984, however, he had become convinced that na-
tionally, despite his local accomplishments in reporting on AIDS in San
Francisco, the government and the media were not interested in the
mounting deaths of mostly gay men: “I was convinced they were going
to let us all die.”75 Shilts made the decision to write a book on the emer-
gence of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, hoping to raise the
profi le of the issue in the media and “rephrase the debate about AIDS”
in a way that his newspaper reporting could not. “Here I was doing all
these stories and the national press wasn’t paying any attention. . . . I had
the sense that there was no way to capture the attention of the national
media, especially in New York, unless I did a book.”76
Several publishing houses passed on the project. A book on AIDS
was viewed as doubly problematic, since it would be both treading on
sensitive ground with leaders of the gay community and of limited
appeal to straight readers.77 Half a dozen publishers declined interest
73. For a discussion of the controversy surrounding the closing of the San Francisco
bathhouses, see Ronald Bayer, “AIDS, Privacy, and Responsibility,” Daedalus 118, no. 3
(1989): 79– 99; Christopher Disman, “The San Francisco Bathhouse Battles of 1984: Civil
Liberties, AIDS Risk, and Shifts in Health Policy,” Journal of Homosexuality 44, no. 3– 4
(2003): 71– 129.
74. “March 22, 1984,” “Green” journal, Alband Collection. Shilts’s fears about safety
almost certainly refer to the escalating tensions around the city’s bathhouse crisis of that
year and the controversial stance of his reporting.
75. Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 181.
76. Patrick O’Neill, “Gay Reporter’s AIDS Exposé Vents Anger over Epidemic,” Ore-
gonian [Portland], November 18, 1987, B4.
77. “AIDS: At the Heart of an Epidemic,” Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, March 28, 1988, 14.
A national poll conducted for ABC News and the Washington Post in September 1985 in-
dicated that only 6 percent of Americans knew anyone, living or dead, who had contracted
162
chapter 3
before Michael Denneny agreed to submit a proposal at St. Martin’s
Press.78 Denneny recalled the diffi culty he encountered having the book
approved at an editorial meeting in the spring of 1985:
I had a lot of problems with it. I mean I had an eighty- page proposal, it was
an incredibly good proposal. I’d already had some friends die, which people
knew about in work. So they knew that this was a fairly sensitive topic with
me. And I made every single editor read the proposal, something like six-
teen editors at the time. And I remember [St. Martin’s Press CEO] Tom Mc-
Cormack went around the table, t, t, t, t, t, t [ counting] all sixteen. Because I’d laid down the law. I’d said to everybody, “This is of major importance to
me. You all have to read this.” And every one of them essentially said it was
one of the best book proposals they’d ever read, but they all voted against
it. They said, “First of all there’s no ending.” Which there wasn’t. . . . Every-
body was afraid— ’83, ’84— that they might fi nd a cure tomorrow, so there
would be no reason for the book. I said, “You know, I can’t guarantee that
they’re not going to fi nd a cure tomorrow, but I’ll bet you two years’ salary
on it.” . . . While it wasn’t in the news that well, we were fi ghting very hard
to get coverage of AIDS in any media whatsoever. [ Pause] There was a lot
of fear that the story would just disappear. Finally it came around to Mc-
Cormack, and this long silence and fi nally he said, “Okay, I want to point
out three things to you people.” He said, “One, virtually every one of you
have said this is the best book proposal you’ve ever seen. Two, all of you have
voted against it, and three, Michael’s going to kill all of us if we don’t sign up
this book.” So we signed it up, for sixteen thousand dollars, which was not a
huge advance.79
Notes from Shilts’s papers, scrawled in Shilts’s quick handwriting on
Chronicle stationery, appear to document a decreasing amount of
money being offered for the book advance, foreshadowing a decrease in
the originally intended scope:
$25,000 start
down to $20,000
AIDS; see Eleanor Singer, Theresa F. Rogers, and Mary Corcoran, “The Polls— A Report:
AIDS,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1987): 584.
78. David Streitfeld, “Book Report,” Washington Post, January 24, 1988, BO15.
79. Denneny, recording C1491/22, tape 1, side B.
“Humanizing This Disease” 163
travel to:
- Atlanta
- Haiti
- NYC
future
9 months
concept novel
interwoven
straight audience
. . . 60,000 words – 240 pp
100,000 words – 400 pp80
The book’s proposal clearly stated Shilts’s objectives for writing the
book. He intended to write a book with heroes and villains, to explain to
a “straight audience” how “a disease unheard of just four years before—
and without a name until 1982— had swept through every corner of the
nation, seizing 10,000 lives.” “How,” Shilts asked, “did such a deadly ep-
idemic . . . spread so thoroughly through America before it was taken
seriously?”81 The journalist clearly highlighted the areas that he believed
ought to have worked better: “the world’s most sophisticated medicine
and the most extensive public health system, . . . an amply fi nanced sci-
entifi c research establishment, . . . the world’s most aggressive media in-
stitutions, . . . [and] a substantial political infrastructure” built by the gay
community.82 Given that the book was structured around “the lives of
a core of characters,” Shilts promised that “AIDS at last will leave the
realm of dry science writing and become fi rmly enmeshed in the lives
of fl esh- and- blood people,” resulting in “provocative conclusions about
80. Randy Shilts, undated handwritten note, folder 6: Research Materials “Ambu-
lance,” box 42, Shilts Papers.
81. Randy Shilts, “Overview,” 1985, pp. 1– 2, folder 9: “2nd book proposal,” box 41,
Shilts Papers. This is a draft proposal for the book “BRAND X” that Shilts worked on
during the fi rst two weeks of May 1985. In the archival records, the fi rst two pages are
missing from the revised copy of the outline, the copy of the book proposal from which
most of the subsequent quotes are drawn; see “Book Proposal,” n.d. [1985], folder 1: Book
Proposal, box 36, Shilts Papers.
82. Shilts, “Overview,” 2.
164
chapter 3
how AIDS became so entrenched in America.”83 “Put simply,” he wrote,
“these will be the heroes in a confl ict with— and to some extent trium-
phant over— the book’s villains.”84 The jou
rnalist suggested that, by the
end of the book, “the reader will fi nd in the range of human responses
to the epidemic much of what there is to loathe and to love in the human
animal . . . cowardice and courage, bigotry and compassion, venality and
inspiration, despair and redemption.” He fi nally noted that the book’s
aim “will not be altogether distinct from the goal of Albert Camus’ fi c-
tional Doctor Rieux in The Plague.” Rieux, Shilts explained, had tried
to “bear witness” to the “plague- stricken,” to commemorate “the injus-
tice and outrage done them,” and “to state quite simply what we learn
in a time of pestilence: there are more things to admire in men than to
despise.”85 In this description, we can begin to understand one aspect of
this chapter’s central question: Shilts’s interpretation of the task of “hu-
manizing.” Rather than making the coverage more “humane,” or civ-
ilized, his intention was to characterize the history of AIDS with the
best— and worst— of human traits.
Though the action would center on San Francisco, Shilts imagined an
international scope for his book, with stock settings providing a back-
drop for his allegorical characters. He saw his history “following the ep-
idemic from the jungles of Africa, to the slums of Haiti, the Bethesda
laboratories of the National Institute[s] of Health, the cramped Atlanta
offi ces of the Centers for Disease Control, the august corridors of the
Pasteur Institute in Paris and the gay neighborhoods of San Francisco
and Manhattan.”86 By contrast, at this stage, the journalist did not spe-
cifi cally envisage a role for Canada or Canadians. He explained that
“the characters have been chosen to represent the book’s various insti-
tutional and social themes.” Signifi cantly, in an earlier book proposal
draft, this sentence was followed with, “There probably will be some re-
arranging as the fi nal research of the book uncovers people who have
stories that are more dramatic or better emblematic of the book’s central
83. Shilts, “Book Proposal,” 3, folder 1: Book Proposal, box 4, Books/Band, Shilts
Papers.
84. Ibid., 6.
85. Shilts, “Book Proposal,” 7. For more about the similarity between Band and Ca-
mus’s The Plague, see Steven G. Kellman, “From Oran to San Francisco: Shilts Appropri-
Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic Page 27
