Kvetching and Screaming: The Polemics, Public Spats and Private Denunciations of Larry Kramer

Over the years, I have read countless interviews that Kramer has done about being gay in America, but have never heard him discuss being Jewish. Outfitted in his signature OshKosh-and-turtleneck combo in his apartment overlooking Washington Square Park in Manhattan, the king of identity politics takes a break from writing The American People––his mammoth chronicle of the hidden history of gay and lesbian Americans––to reluctantly discuss his Jewish identity with Heeb.

So there's this line in Brothers Karamazov: "All are responsible for everyone, and I more than all others." That seems to be your slogan.

That I'm responsible? No, that we're all responsible. I just think that being alive requires you to be responsible for a great many things. Most aren't. I can't understand; I've given up trying to understand why. There are so few of us who fought for the drugs [the antiviral cocktails, which now allow people to live 20 years or more with HIV]. ACT UP is more responsible for getting these drugs out than anybody, and there were so few of us considering how many gay people there are. I never stop talking about it.

Could it be that people just do not know what to do?

Horseshit! You don't know what to do. You're not supposed to know what not to do. You're just supposed to get up and do it and find out as you go along. We made it up as we went along. We didn't know what we had to do, but we knew there was a problem. There were a lot of people dying. A lot of people were scared. So everyone showed up and said, "I can do this..." People get scared because they feel that they don't know beforehand what they're going to do. You get a bunch of people in the room and say, "What's the problem today?" Every day there was a new problem with ACT UP and AIDS. You had to deal with another idiot today that wasn't there yesterday. You have to deal with someone in the position today different than the person you spoke to yesterday—who seems to have disappeared––and you had to give them AIDS 101 all over again. But you have to be prepared to do that. And of course most people aren't. It takes energy; it takes time. I still don't understand why there have been so few; I don't think that what I did was so special. And I almost resent it when people say, "Thank you for what you're doing." I've told this story quite often. My first response is to say, "Go fuck yourself. Why don't you do it too?" I didn't ask to do any of this!

Some of us like to think that there is a unique Jewish aspect to hell-raising, being responsible. In your play "The Normal Heart", Felix claims that Ned excuses himself by claiming that "anger is some Jewish thing, from being a New York Jew."

I don't know, I'm a terrible Jew. I don't believe in God.

Who does?

A lot of people, I guess. Naomi Wolf's essay, the introduction to The Tragedy of Today's Gays, goes on about me and God, saying that he may not believe in Him, but he fights like he does.

Well, we can see you in the tradition of principled people who fight for justice. You've been called a prophet.

Someone calls me "Amos," "Jeremiah." Someone calls me "Job." I'm like the who's who of the Bible. What does it all mean? It doesn't get me anything at the supermarket.