John Weir

What I Did Wrong

A young homosexual with an uncertain future discovers that he has contracted AIDS after an affair with a dashing but unfeeling man and begins the painful process of coming to terms with his illness

A Novel

The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket

Set in a rapidly gentrifying New York City determined to move beyond the decimation of a generation a decade earlier, What I Did Wrong is a day in the life of Tom, a forty-two-year-old English professor, haunted by the death of his best friend, Zack, who died theatrically and calamitously of AIDS. Tom himself slouches gingerly and precariously into middle age questioning every certainty he had about himself as a gay man while negotiating the field of his college classes, populated as they are with guys whose cocky bravado can’t quite compensate for their own confused masculinity. Tom tries to balance his awkwardly developing friendships with them. In the process, he begins to find common ground with these proud young men and, surprisingly, a way to claim his own place in the world, and in history. A powerfully moving—and often disarmingly funny—book about loss, character, and sexuality in the wake of AIDS, What I Did Wrong is a survivor’s tale in an age when all certainties have lost their logic and focus. It is a romance that embraces its objects from the traumas of toxic masculinity to the aftermath of catastrophic loss amidst the enduring allure of New York City in all its manic and heartbreaking grandeur.

Before the onset of his irreversible decline, Eddie Socket always suspected he was on the verge of something. Now that “something” has arrived in the form of Merrit Mather, an attractive older gentleman of impeccable taste in everything from sweaters to his numerous sexual conquests. That Merrit happens to be the lover of Eddie’s agitated boss, Saul, hardly fazes the smitten Eddie; that the elusive Merrit loses interest in Eddie with dizzying speed hardly dims his ardor. While Eddie continues his futile chase, he finds solace in his roommate, Polly, involved in her own implausible affair with a self-involved banker. Both Eddie and Polly eventually conclude that solitude is their best option. But even that is not possible as Eddie finds his life taking an unexpected turn—a turn that that serves as the catalyst for Eddie, love-ravaged Polly, and the indomitable Saul to reclaim their lives. First published in 1989 and winner of the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Debut Novel, The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket is one of the first novels to respond to the global AIDS crisis. A comedy of absurdist horror, it weaponizes the comic as a way of intensifying the tragic aspects of AIDS, which were especially acute in the early 1980s, and the scars of which are still visible today.

"John Weir, author of The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, a defining novel of 1980s New York in its response to the global AIDS crisis, has written a story collection that chronicles the long aftermath of epidemic death, as recorded in the tragicomic voice of a gay man who survived high school in the 1970s, the AIDS death of his best friend in the 1990s, and his complicated relationship with his mother, "a movie star without a movie to star in," whose life is winding to a close in a retirement community where she lives alone with her last dog"--

Linked Stories

Your Nostalgia is Killing Me

In eleven linked stories, prize-winning novelist John Weir brings his wit and compassion to the question of how a gay white guy from New Jersey lived through fifty years of the twin crises of global AIDS and toxic masculinity in America.

Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me

Andrew Samuel

Introduction to Engineering Design is a completely novel text covering the basic elements of engineering design for structural integrity. Some of the most important concepts that students must grasp are those relating to 'design thinking' and reasoning, and not just those that relate to simple theoretical and analytical approaches. This is what will enable them to get to grips with *practical* design problems, and the starting point is thinking about problems in a 'deconstructionist' sense. By analysing design problems as sophisticated systems made up of simpler constituents, and evolving a solution from known experience of such building blocks, it is possible to develop an approach that will enable the student to tackle even completely alien design scenarios with confidence. The other essential aspect of the design process - the concept of failure, and its avoidance - is also examined in detail, and the importance not only of contemplating expected failure conditions at the design stage but also checking those conditions as they apply to the completed design is stressed. These facets in combination offer a systematic method of considering the design process and one that will undoubtedly find favour with many students, teaching staff and practising engineers alike.

John Weir

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