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This latest installment of Ned Rorem's diary opens in 1986, when the author is sixty-two, and closes in 1999, when he is seventy-five. Though Rorem remains as energetic as ever during these years - new books written, new music composed - the tone of this volume is autumnal: his life and his world are winding down.
He mourns the passing of dear friends and, endures the indignities of growing old, and notes with bitterness the collapse of taste and standards that once defined his artistic circle. As AIDS becomes an epidemic he traces its grim course through the gay community and through the art and literature, the private and public discourse, of the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. In the most moving entries here, he describes in compassionate but unsentimental detail the decline of his longtime companion, Jim Holmes, and, in the diary's closing pages, Jim's death.
