David B. Feinberg
Encyclopedia
David Barish Feinberg was an American
writer and AIDS
activist.
, Feinberg grew up in Syracuse, New York
. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, majoring in mathematics
and studying creative writing
with novelist John Hersey
, graduating in 1977.
He subsequently worked as a computer programmer for the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) and also pursued a Master's degree in linguistics
at New York University
. He completed his first novel, Calculus, in 1979, although it has never been published. Feinberg himself described the novel as "godawful", telling one interviewer that it was a novel that "only an MIT math major could have written".
In the early 1980s, he joined a gay men's writing group, eventually creating the character B. J. Rosenthal, a young gay man, much like Feinberg himself, who became the central character in virtually all of Feinberg's later writing. He contributed a humour column to the gay magazine Mandate
in 1986 and 1987, which in turn led to his first book deal. The novel Eighty-Sixed was published in 1989, and won Feinberg the Lambda Literary Award
for Gay Men's Fiction and the American Library Association Gay/Lesbian Award for Fiction.
Feinberg tested positive for HIV
in 1987, and joined the activist organization ACT UP.
He participated in ACT UP demonstrations including Stop the Church
.
In 1991, he published his second novel, a sequel to Eighty-Sixed entitled Spontaneous Combustion
, a selection of both the Book of the Month Club
and the Quality Paperback Book Club. For the next few years, Feinberg balanced writing and political activism with working full-time. Stories, articles, and reviews by him appeared in The New York Times Book Review
, The Advocate
, Details
, OutWeek
, Tribe
, NYQ, QW, Out
, The Body Positive, Gay Community News
, Art & Understanding, The James White Review, Diseased Pariah News, Poz
, and both Men on Men 2: Best New Gay Fiction and Men on Men 4.
, where he died early in November at the age of 37. Even while hospitalized, he continued to write. His final book, a collection of essays called Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone, was published shortly before his death.
Queer and Loathing, by contrast, was "as close to the truth as I can get," as Feinberg wrote in the book's introduction. The essays were his attempt "to capture what is to me a painfully obvious reality that is rarely written about: what it is like to be HIV-positive in the 90s; what it is like to outlive one therapist, two dentists, two doctors, and one gastroenterologist."
"He exemplified the best of the gay humor we use to endure impossible situations," said Ed Iwanicki, Feinberg's editor at Viking Penguin. "No one was able to find that humor in the most dire situations as well as he was."
"It was so biting and so satirical, and it had a very New York edge," said author Jameson Currier, who knew Feinberg as a fellow member of ACT UP. "He was the first to write in that style about AIDS, and he created quite a bit of controversy. He broke a lot of ground in that respect."
Feinberg's papers are held by the New York Public Library
's Manuscripts and Archives Division.
Reviewers suggest that the character Zach in John Weir's 2006 novel What I Did Wrong is based on Feinberg, who was a friend of Weir.
He is mentioned by several interviewees of the ACT UP Oral History Project.
The poem, "The Square Root of Three" is recited by Kumar Patel, in order to reconnect with Vanessa Fanning during the final confrontation of the comedic film Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, is often mistakenly attributed to him. The poem instead was written by a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor also named David Feinberg.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer and AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
activist.
Early life
Born in Lynn, MassachusettsLynn, Massachusetts
Lynn is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 89,050 at the 2000 census. An old industrial center, Lynn is home to Lynn Beach and Lynn Heritage State Park and is about north of downtown Boston.-17th century:...
, Feinberg grew up in Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, majoring in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and studying creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
with novelist John Hersey
John Hersey
John Richard Hersey was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer and journalist considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling devices of the novel are fused with non-fiction reportage...
, graduating in 1977.
He subsequently worked as a computer programmer for the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) and also pursued a Master's degree in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. He completed his first novel, Calculus, in 1979, although it has never been published. Feinberg himself described the novel as "godawful", telling one interviewer that it was a novel that "only an MIT math major could have written".
In the early 1980s, he joined a gay men's writing group, eventually creating the character B. J. Rosenthal, a young gay man, much like Feinberg himself, who became the central character in virtually all of Feinberg's later writing. He contributed a humour column to the gay magazine Mandate
Mandate magazine
Mandate was a monthly gay pornographic magazine. It was published in the United States and distributed internationally since April, 1975. Together with the other magazines of the Mavety Group, such as Black Inches, it folded in 2009.-History:...
in 1986 and 1987, which in turn led to his first book deal. The novel Eighty-Sixed was published in 1989, and won Feinberg the Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
for Gay Men's Fiction and the American Library Association Gay/Lesbian Award for Fiction.
Feinberg tested positive for HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
in 1987, and joined the activist organization ACT UP.
He participated in ACT UP demonstrations including Stop the Church
Stop the Church
Stop the Church was a demonstration by members of ACT UP and WHAM held on December 10, 1989 at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Approximately 4,500 protestors joined in what was the largest demonstration against a religious organization in US history...
.
In 1991, he published his second novel, a sequel to Eighty-Sixed entitled Spontaneous Combustion
Spontaneous combustion
Spontaneous combustion is the self-ignition of a mass, for example, a pile of oily rags. Allegedly, humans can also ignite and burn without an obvious cause; this phenomenon is known as spontaneous human combustion....
, a selection of both the Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
and the Quality Paperback Book Club. For the next few years, Feinberg balanced writing and political activism with working full-time. Stories, articles, and reviews by him appeared in The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
, Details
Details (magazine)
Details is an American monthly men's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications, founded in 1982. Though primarily a magazine devoted to fashion and lifestyle, Details also features reports on relevant social and political issues.-History:...
, OutWeek
OutWeek
OutWeek Magazine was an influential gay and lesbian weekly news magazine published in New York City from 1989 to 1991. During its two year existence, OutWeek was widely considered the leading voice of AIDS activism and the initiator of a radical new sensibility in lesbian and gay...
, Tribe
Tribe magazine
Tribe Magazine was a free print magazine originally distributed in Toronto, Ontario as well as across Canada from 1993 through to 2005. The magazine featured photography, music, CD reviews, dance and club listings...
, NYQ, QW, Out
Out (magazine)
Out is a popular gay and lesbian fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle magazine, with the highest circulation of any gay monthly publication in the United States. It carries itself in a similar editorial manner to Details, Esquire, and GQ. Out was published by PlanetOut Inc...
, The Body Positive, Gay Community News
Gay Community News (Boston)
Gay Community News was a weekly journal published in Boston from 1973 to 1992 by the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation. It was an important resource for the LGBT community...
, Art & Understanding, The James White Review, Diseased Pariah News, Poz
POZ (magazine)
POZ is a monthly magazine that chronicles the lives of people affected by HIV/AIDS. Its website, Poz.com, has daily HIV/AIDS news, treatment information, forums, blogs and personals....
, and both Men on Men 2: Best New Gay Fiction and Men on Men 4.
Death
In July 1994, failing health led him to take disability leave. That fall, he was admitted to St. Vincent's HospitalSt. Vincent's Hospital
St Vincent's Hospital or St. Vincent Hospital may refer to:in Australia*St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne*St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney*St Vincent's Hospital in Ireland*St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublinin the United States...
, where he died early in November at the age of 37. Even while hospitalized, he continued to write. His final book, a collection of essays called Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone, was published shortly before his death.
Body of work
B. J. Rosenthal, the main character of Feinberg's first two published books and a wise-mouthed, perpetually libidinous urbanite, was something of an alter ego for his creator. "He and I aren't the same person exactly," Feinberg told New York Newsday in 1992. "I'd say he's 60 to 70 percent me. We're both gay, of course, and HIV-positive. But...I write novels, and he doesn't. And while he's more well-endowed, I'm a better lover."Queer and Loathing, by contrast, was "as close to the truth as I can get," as Feinberg wrote in the book's introduction. The essays were his attempt "to capture what is to me a painfully obvious reality that is rarely written about: what it is like to be HIV-positive in the 90s; what it is like to outlive one therapist, two dentists, two doctors, and one gastroenterologist."
"He exemplified the best of the gay humor we use to endure impossible situations," said Ed Iwanicki, Feinberg's editor at Viking Penguin. "No one was able to find that humor in the most dire situations as well as he was."
"It was so biting and so satirical, and it had a very New York edge," said author Jameson Currier, who knew Feinberg as a fellow member of ACT UP. "He was the first to write in that style about AIDS, and he created quite a bit of controversy. He broke a lot of ground in that respect."
Legacy and influence
Feinberg's voice reading from Queer and Loathing was used in the 1995 PBS series Positive: Life with HIV in 1995.Feinberg's papers are held by the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
's Manuscripts and Archives Division.
Reviewers suggest that the character Zach in John Weir's 2006 novel What I Did Wrong is based on Feinberg, who was a friend of Weir.
He is mentioned by several interviewees of the ACT UP Oral History Project.
The poem, "The Square Root of Three" is recited by Kumar Patel, in order to reconnect with Vanessa Fanning during the final confrontation of the comedic film Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, is often mistakenly attributed to him. The poem instead was written by a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor also named David Feinberg.
External links
- David B. Feinberg Papers, 1976-1994 at the New York Public Library
- Feinberg, David B. at GLBTQ: an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender & queer culture