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Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after graduating from Yale. For eight years, he wrote poetry exclusively.

After coming out in his late twenties, he met Roger Horwitz, who was to be his lover for over twenty years. Also during his late twenties, he grew disillusioned with poetry and shifted his interest to the novel, not to return to poetry until the 1980s.

In 1977, Monette and Horwitz moved to Los Angeles. Once in Hollywood, Monette wrote a number of screenplays that, though never produced, provided him the means to be a writer. Monette published four novels between 1978 and 1982. These novels were enormously successful and established his career as a writer of popular fiction. He also wrote several novelizations of films.

Monette's life changed dramatically when Roger Horwitz was diagnosed with AIDS in the early 1980s. After Horwitz's death in 1986, Monette wrote extensively about the years of their battles with AIDS (Borrowed Time, 1988) and how he himself coped with losing a lover to AIDS (Love Alone, 1988). These works are two of the most powerful accounts written about AIDS thus far.

Their publication catapulted Monette into the national arena as a spokesperson for AIDS. Along with fellow writer Larry Kramer, he emerged as one of the most familiar and outspoken AIDS activists of our time. Since very few out gay men have had the opportunity to address national issues in mainstream venues at any previous time in U.S. history, Monette's high-visibility profile was one of his most significant achievements. He went on to write two important novels about AIDS, Afterlife (1990) and Halfway Home (1991). He himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

In his fiction, Monette unabashedly depicts gay men who strive to fashion personal identities that lead them to love, friendship, and self-fulfillment. His early novels generally begin where most coming-out novels end; his protagonists have already come to terms with their sexuality long before the novels' projected time frames. Monette has his characters negotiate family relations, societal expectations, and personal desires in light of their decisions to lead lives as openly gay men.

Two major motifs emerge in these novels: the spark of gay male relations and the dynamic alternative family structures that gay men create for themselves within a homophobic society. These themes are placed in literary forms that rely on the structures of romance, melodrama, and fantasy.

Monette's finest novel, Afterlife, combines the elements of traditional comedy and the resistance novel; it is the first gay novel written about AIDS that fuses personal love interests with political activism.

Monette's harrowing collection of deeply personal poems, Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog, conveys both the horrors of AIDS and the inconsolable pain of love lost. The elegies are an invaluable companion to Borrowed Time.

Before the publication and success of his memoir, Becoming a Man, it seemed inevitable that Monette would be remembered most for his writings on AIDS. Becoming a Man, however, focuses on the dilemmas of growing up gay. It provides at once an unsparing account of the nightmare of the closet and a moving and often humorous depiction of the struggle to come out. Becoming a Man won the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction, a historical moment in the history of lesbian and gay literature and culture in the United States.

Source: GLBTQ ]]> Lawrence, Massachusetts 1945/10/16 1995/02/10 290058 0060595647 9780060595647 26 <![CDATA[Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/290058.Becoming_a_Man_Half_a_Life_Story 4.16 248 Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll, a comic romp with serious overtones. He established himself as a writer of popular fiction with three more novels before he and his lover were both diagnosed with HIV. In 1988 he wrote On Borrowed Time, a memoir of living with AIDS and of his lover's death. The passion and anger that fueled On Borrowed Time surfaces again in 1992's Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, his National Book Award-winning autobiography. Although it follows the traditional structure of the autobiography and bildungsroman--early family life, education, reflections on how art influenced the subject's view of life--Becoming a Man also filters Monette's story through two central facts: the closet and AIDS. Monette writes of the pain of being closeted, the effect it had on his writing, and how it shaped (and often destroyed) his relationships. Monette's fear and fury at AIDS and homophobia heighten the same skill and imagination he put into his fiction. This vision--poetic yet highly political, angry yet infused with the love of life--is what transforms Becoming a Man from simple autobiography into an intense record of struggle and salvation. Paul Monette did not lead a life different from many gay men--he struggled courageously with his family, his sexuality, his AIDS diagnosis--but in bearing witness to his and others' pain, he creates a personal testimony that illuminates the darkest corners of our culture even as it finds unexpected reserves of hope.]]> 29691 4.06 790 99 1992 52614 0156005816 9780156005814 25 <![CDATA[Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170391785m/52614.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170391785s/52614.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52614.Borrowed_Time_An_AIDS_Memoir 4.26 185 New York Times Book Review) remains one of the most compelling documents of the AIDS era-"searing, shattering, ultimately hope inspiring account of a great love story" (San Francisco Examiner). A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and the winner of the PEN Center West literary award. ]]> 29691 4.06 790 99 1988 262544 0156002027 9780156002028 5 <![CDATA[Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173234760m/262544.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173234760s/262544.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/262544.Last_Watch_of_the_Night_Essays_Too_Personal_and_Otherwise 4.25 76 </div>]]> 29691 4.06 790 99 1994 374817 0312026021 9780312026028 6 <![CDATA[Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog (National Forum on Science and Technology Goals)]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269536m/374817.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269536s/374817.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/374817.Love_Alone_Eighteen_Elegies_for_Rog 4.14 43 29691 4.06 790 99 1988 374808 0758201885 9780758201881 6 <![CDATA[Afterlife]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269526m/374808.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269526s/374808.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/374808.Afterlife 3.44 48 29691 4.06 790 99 1990 374811 0758201893 9780758201898 3 <![CDATA[Halfway Home]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269527m/374811.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269527s/374811.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/374811.Halfway_Home 3.49 35 Afterlife. Reprint.]]> 29691 4.06 790 99 1992 374833 1555835317 9781555835316 8 <![CDATA[Sanctuary]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269558m/374833.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269558s/374833.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/374833.Sanctuary 3.89 27 Sanctuary, Renarda the fox and Lapine the rabbit fall in love in an enchanted forested watched over by a benevolent witch. That Renarda and Lapine are both female and of different species proves no impediment to their love, until the witch mysteriously disappears and her familiar, the Great Horned Owl, takes over. Suddenly, the animals are advised to "keep an ear cocked for any behavior that doesn't feel quite right," and all at once Renarda and Lapine are banished to separate parts of the forest.

Activist and writer Paul Monette authored six novels and four collections of poetry, including National Book Award-winner Becoming a Man, before succumbing to AIDS in 1995. Renarda and Lapine's eventual triumph over the forces of fear and ignorance is an apt memorial for a man who led the fight against both for so many years.

]]> 29691 4.06 790 99 1997 374820 0312015151 9780312015152 3 <![CDATA[Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269537m/374820.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174269537s/374820.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/374820.Taking_Care_of_Mrs_Carroll 3.26 19 29691 4.06 790 99 1978 374827 0312136161 9780312136161 4 <![CDATA[West of Yesterday, East of Summer: New and Selected Poems (1973-1993)]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223665277m/374827.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223665277s/374827.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/374827.West_of_Yesterday_East_of_Summer_New_and_Selected_Poems 4.07 14 Love Alone, is combined with new poems, many focusing on the loss of his lover, who also died of AIDS. QPB Alt.]]> 29691 4.06 790 99 1994 374831 0425064247 9780425064245 0 <![CDATA[Scarface]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/374831.Scarface 3.91 11 29691 4.06 790 99 1983