Paul Monette Dies; Books on Being Gay Won U.S. Awards

Paul Monette, whose written works include an autobiography that traced his tortuous path from the stigmas of homosexuality and a memoir detailing the agonizing AIDS death of his lover--both of which brought him national honors--has died of the disease that dominated his life and his work for more than a decade.

Monette, believed to be the first AIDS patient to ever win a National Book Award, was 49.

He died Friday at his West Hollywood home five years after he was first diagnosed as HIV-positive. He recently had abandoned what Times columnist Al Martinez called “the sewers of medication entering his body to let the disease take him.”

In “Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story,” published in 1992, Monette wrote of his struggle for identity in the 1950s and ‘60s, of the self-suppression he experienced as a gay person battling to survive in a homophobic society. It won the National Book Award for nonfiction.

He had known he was homosexual, he wrote, as the young son of successful New England parents who sent him to Andover and Yale.

He wrote that he felt compelled to overcome his sexual leanings by acting more normal than most. “I was very witty and very charming and alone, alone, alone. . . .”

Inwardly, he considered himself a “cipher and a eunuch.” He even had girlfriends, he said, but none knew he was gay.

Monette was strongly influenced by the Stonewall rebellion, which occurred when angry gay men resisted a 1969 police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar. Then he watched as an interested observer as the gay pride movement began to develop across the country.

Monette received his first critical attention in 1975 with a collection of poetry, “The Carpenter at the Asylum,” which a Washington Post critic called a “carefully wrought and dead-serious comedy of manners.”

In 1978 he turned to prose fiction with “Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll,” a comic tale of two gay men who conspire with an aging actress to inherit considerable riches.

“The Gold Diggers” was about homosexual lovers who let a female friend intrude upon their lives, while “No Witnesses” was a series of poems about the imagined adventures of such famous characters as Isadora Duncan, Noel Coward and Henry David Thoreau. “Lightfall” was a mystery that dealt with a murderous cult leader terrorizing a small California town.

Then in 1988, after the AIDS death of his lover, Roger Horwitz, Monette addressed the issue that had dominated both their lives for several years. “Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog,” was a collection of poems, while “Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir” was a poignant examination of Horwitz’s struggle and death.

The New York Times Book Review said the latter “has the leanness and urgency of war reporting,” and the Washington Post Book World called it “a book of terrible beauty.” The work was nominated as best biography for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award.

Monette also wrote about AIDS in “Afterlife” and “Halfway Home,” in 1990 and ’91 respectively, books he told The Times “I didn’t know if I’d live to finish.”

Shortly before his death, he told columnist Martinez that he didn’t feel he had given up on life because he was refusing medications but was simply fighting AIDS on its own terms.

“I owe it to all the people I buried to keep fighting. We all have suffering in our lives. The best we can do is help each other and take the world seriously.”

Survivors include his father, Paul; a brother, Robert, and his companion, Winston Wilde. Forest Lawn Memorial--Park in the Hollywood Hills is handling funeral arrangements.