The Great Believers

“Yale could memorize the real estate agent’s number […] And then this wouldn’t just be the night they didn’t go to Nico’s funeral, the night Yale felt so horrifically alone; it would be the night he found their house.” 

On Yale’s lonely walk home from Nico’s life celebration, he admires a house in his neighborhood. He longs to purchase the house with his partner, Charlie, so he can create a home: A safe haven for their relationship and his friends. He convinces himself that a “home” could transform his feelings of abandonment, because the image of “home” is so closely tied to family, friends, and safety. The precise resonance of this fantasy changes along with Yale’s life and relationships: When he breaks up with Charlie and finds himself homeless, as he moves between friends apartments, and as his friends die (or become fatally ill). 

“You get afraid of one thing, and suddenly you’re afraid of everything.” 

Charlie and Yale experience friction in their relationship because Charlie is constantly paranoid that Yale will leave him for another, more attractive man. This line—spoken by Yale—immediately follows Charlie’s reflection that part of him is happy about the AIDS outbreak (because until a cure is developed, Yale won’t abandon him). Yale forgives this horrible confession because he knows that it comes from a pervasive atmosphere of fear. Later, Yale gradually comes to realize that Charlie’s own toxic, unsafe sex practices—the very behaviors he accuses Yale of—also derive from fear, paranoia, and queer shame: A way of beating a judgmental, prejudicial world to the punch.

“Look. We all have a death sentence. Right? You and me, we don’t know what that is. It’s a day, it’s fifty years. You wanna narrow the range? You wanna freak yourself out? That’s all the test gives you. I mean, show me the line for the miracle cure and I’ll take the damn test, I’ll make everyone else take it too. Meanwhile, what? You want to end up in a government database?” 

In this scene, Charlie and Asher argue about the efficacy of testing for AIDS. While Charlie advocates for conservative measures—safe sex, monogamy, condom use, and regular testing—Asher denounces his attitudes as victim blaming and shaming. In addition to presenting different perspectives on AIDS, Charlie and Asher’s arguments demonstrate that even among friends in the gay community, there’s a great deal of ideological dissonance. 

“When they got tested together in the spring, Yale had imagined that if they were infected, they’d hold each other and sob and then they’d go out for a good meal and make jokes about fattening up, and they’d order the most expensive bottle of wine, and it would be a terrible night, but they’d be heading into this together. […] Yale felt all those people falling away right now like dust. If he didn’t have Charlie, he didn’t have Teresa. And he didn’t have their friends, who’d all been Charlie’s friends first.” 

When Yale learns that Charlie has been infected with AIDS as the result of having sex with other men, he feels betrayed not only by the cheating itself, but by the ways Charlie has emotionally held him hostage, holding him to an impossibly high standard of sexual accountability that he himself could not reach. Above all, Yale resents the fact that Charlie will have a strong support group of friends and family to help him through his illness. Yale, on the other hand, does not have a strong relationship with his father or mother, and most of his friends are also Charlie’s friends. Yale feels betrayed and fears abandonment. 

“How could she explain that this city was a graveyard? That they were walking every day through streets where there had been a holocaust, a mass murder of neglect and antipathy, that when they stepped through a pocket of cold air, didn’t they understand it was a ghost, it was a boy the world had spat out? Here, in her hand, a stack of ghosts.”

In Paris—30 years after her brother Nico’s death by AIDS—Fiona looks through Richard Campo’s photographs of Nico and his Chicago friends. She reflects on how lonely and unmoored she felt living in Chicago after the gay men in these photos passed away. Most of the people she knew in the city never met these men before they died, so they have no idea the “city is a graveyard.” Fiona, however, lives in two different Chicagos at once: Her memory of past-Chicago—with the men from these photographs smoking outside of clubs, standing near record stores—and her painful experience of present-day Chicago—with gentrified buildings, coffee shops, and other “new” fixtures built on top of what used to be there. For Fiona, this erasure of their memories is almost as painful as their “murder” by the government and the medical establishment: “a mass murder of neglect and antipathy.”

“She had so much guilt about so many of them—the ones she wished she’d talked into getting tested sooner, the ones she might have gone back in time to keep from going out on a particular night […] the ones she might have done more for when they got sick. […] She felt, sometimes, like some horrible Hindu god, turning all she touched to ash.”

Fiona recalls holding her own private “thirty year memorial” for Nico’s death, listening to music and drinking wine. Looking at Richard Campo’s photographs, Fiona begins to process her survivor’s guilt from a physical and metaphorical distance. This processing of survivor’s guilt—the sensation that she could’ve “gone back in time” and done something to save her friends—becomes a major motif in the novel. Fiona works through her feelings of guilt over her friends’ deaths as she also works through her guilt over her daughter Claire’s disappearance. These two kinds of guilt connect through the events surrounding Claire’s birth. 

“It was what she wanted! She—at the beginning, she cared more about them than about me, that was obvious. If I made her choose, I knew who she’d choose, and it wasn’t me.” 

In this moment, Fiona confronts Kurt Pearce, the man her daughter, Claire, came to Paris with. Up until now, Fiona has imagined Kurt as an emotionally manipulative older man who convinced her daughter to be in a relationship with him, join a cult with him, and move abroad with him. Here, however, Fiona realizes that Claire has been in charge of her own decisions all along. Kurt is just another person in Claire’s life who followed her, hoping to become close to her (much like Fiona herself). Thus, Fiona realizes that she must contend with her own guilt and blame instead of (conveniently) blaming Kurt. This passage further develops the novel’s interest in complex guilt and blame. 

“That’s where judgment and blame come in, and I want no part of it. I mean, what, we’re gonna make an infection tree? A flowchart? Come on. Everyone got it from someone. We all got it from Reagan, right? We’re gonna blame someone, let’s be productive and blame the ignorance and neglect of Ronald Fucking Reagan.” 

When Yale tries to tell his friend, Teddy, about Charlie’s unsafe sex practices, Teddy refuses to hear any “judgement and blame.” Teddy suggests that the real blame lies with the powers that be: The government and medical establishment that has restricted gay men’s access to affordable healthcare and legal protection. Herein, Teddy gestures to a widely held sensation among AIDS victims in the 80s and 90s: That the conservative government unjustly perceived AIDS as divine “punishment” for gay men (who purportedly threatened American “family values”). Teddy thus implies that if gay men sink to “blaming and shaming” one another, they will be mimicking the toxic thought processes of officials like Ronald Reagan. Instead of blaming men who unintentionally spread infection, Teddy feels it is more productive to blame men who intentionally infect people’s minds (with their shaming rhetoric).

“That’s why I picked you, why I wanted you to have all this! […] Because you’ll understand: It was a ghost town. Some of those boys were dear friends. I’d studied next to them for two years. I’d run around with them, doing all the ridiculous things you do when you’re young. I could tell you their names, but it wouldn’t mean a thing to you. If I told you Picasso died in the war, you’d understand. Poof, there goes Guernica. But I tell you Jacques Weiss died at the Somme, and you don’t know what to miss. It—you know what, it prepared me for being old. All my friends are dying, or they’re dead already, but I’ve been through it before.” 

Yale pays a final visit to Nora, hoping to obtain a timeline for her artwork before she dies. During this visit, however, Nora is more intent on telling him the stories that compelled her to donate the artwork (and—specifically—to work with Yale). Here, Nora suggests that the Lost Generation of men in World War I have a great deal in common with Yale’s young friends who are dying of AIDS. She also echoes Fiona’s earlier reflections on the strangeness of surviving ones friends. Just like Fiona sees constant reminders of loss in Chicago, Nora sees reminders of loss in this collection of paintings. Most people, however, “don’t know what to miss.”

“Time travel is easy! It’s devastatingly easy! All you have to do is live long enough!” 

During Yale’s final visit, Nora tells him she wishes she had a time machine so she could show him Paris in the 1920s and introduce him to her artist friends. Her declaration here suggests that living long enough not only allows one to see and experience changing history, but to constantly travel back in time through memory. She subtly implies that present-day environmental reminders—like Yale and his own friends dying from AIDS—trigger memories and sensations of the past. In other words, Yale's very presence has the power to send her back in time.

“Train station bathrooms were where guys from the suburbs went, furtive men with wives and kids, the ‘commuter gays’ Charlie used to rant about. People who could match his guilt, his self-loathing.” 

When Julian stays with Yale, the two of them process their feelings surrounding Charlie’s infection (and their mutual involvement with him). Julian tells Yale that Charlie not only had sex with him, but with many other anonymous men in furtive public locations. Hearing this, Yale realizes that Charlie must have felt secret guilt and shame about his sexual identity. He understands that Charlie’s righteous political image—ranting about “commuter gays” and safe sex—was a mask for his deep, private shame. This understanding helps Yale to come to terms with Charlie’s complex, beneath-the-surface feelings, and to begin his first steps toward forgiveness. Yale’s process of forgiving Charlie—and emotionally repairing their relationship—mirrors Fiona’s process of forgiving both Claire and herself. 

“If he’d lived, we’d have parted ways soon enough. He’d have had a life out there in the world, outside my mind. But when someone’s gone and you’re the primary keeper of his memory—letting go would be a kind of murder, wouldn’t it? I had so much love for him, even if it was a complicated kind of love, and where is all that love supposed to go? He was gone, so it couldn’t change, it couldn’t turn to indifference. I was stuck with all that love.” 

Here, Nora explains her lifelong love for Ranko Novak, the unknown artist whose work inspired her to donate her art collection to the Brigg. Because Ranko died young—before he had the chance to establish his own life’s story—Nora feels responsible for telling his story and preserving his memory.

Nora offers these reflections when she confesses that she painted Ranko’s “self-portrait” that appears in her collection (because he was no longer able to use his own hands). This self-portrait serves as a complex symbol of Nora’s love for Ranko, her longing to preserve his memory, and the self-sacrifice involved. For Fiona, Nora’s self-sacrificing gesture invites questions of her own self-sacrificing care for her gay friends. Likewise, Fiona’s friends died young and left her “with all that love.” 

“She was struck by the selfish thought that this was not fair to her. That she’d been in the middle of a different story, one that had nothing to do with this. […] Just as she’d once been in a story about raising her own brother, growing up with her brother in the city on their own, making it in the world, when the virus and the indifference of greedy men had steamrolled through. She thought of Nora, whose art and love were interrupted by assassination and war. Stupid men and their stupid violence, tearing apart everything good that was ever built.” 

Just as Fiona finds Claire in Paris and begins to slowly repair their relationship, the 2015 terrorist attacks send the city into turmoil (and separate Fiona from her daughter). Fiona is personally distressed by this “interruption,” which compels her to reflect on the ways “stupid men and their stupid violence” also unfairly stole the lives and legacies of Nora’s Lost Generation and her Chicago friends who died of AIDS. Fiona’s reflections indirectly echo back to Teddy’s blaming of Ronald Reagan (229), bemoaning the inability of powerful forces to see the humanity (the personal stories) of those affected by their actions. 

“I’m sure I’d roll my eyes at the gentrification, but listen, honey, I’m old and I’ve seen a lot of shit, and I’m telling you, enjoy it while it lasts. Because this isn’t Mother May I. You’re not always advancing. I know it feels that way right now, but it’s fragile. You might look back in fifty years and say, That was the last good time.” 

In a catching-up conversation with Richard Campo, Fiona describes how much the landscape of Chicago’s Boystown (the neighborhood where many of Chicago’s gay nightclubs were located) has changed in the last 30 years. Richard advises Fiona to enjoy what’s there while it’s still there, knowing that “in fifty years,” it will likely be gone. This conversation echoes the novel’s themes of loss (over time), and preservational memory (appreciating the “good times”). Richard’s reflection—“You’re not always advancing”—resonates with Nora’s earlier words about time travel. Even as time moves forward, people are not “advancing”; rather, they are moving back and forth in their imaginations and memories, in a complicated dance between the past and the present. 

“He fed him water, drop by drop. He could feel it, all around him: how down the corridor, and down other hallways of other hospitals around Chicago and other godforsaken cities around the globe, a thousand other men did the same.” 

Here, Yale sits by Charlie in his death bed, in the very hospital he will die in. Sitting with Charlie, Yale accepts and comes to term with his own future death by AIDS. So doing, Yale allows himself to be moved by Charlie’s vulnerability: not only as a man physically suffering from AIDS, but as a man who has suffered psychologically over the shame and blame cast upon gay men. Thus, Yale forgives Charlie not only for cheating on him (and risking his infection), but for harboring private guilt over his sexuality. This release of blame, shame, and guilt absolves Yale of his own blame, shame, and guilt, and he senses many other gay man doing “the same.” Yale realizes that this release is necessary for enjoying and elevating life while he still has it. 

“Why, she was thinking, should it be Julian Ames, of all people, to show up, a ghost at the door? Why not Nico or Terrence or Yale? Why not Teddy Naples, who’d evaded the virus only to die in ’99 of a heart attack in front of his class? Why not Charlie Keene, for that matter, who was an asshole, but did so much good? She’d loved Julian. She had. But why him?” 

Thirty years after Nico’s death, Julian travels to Paris for Richard’s memorial art show and comes face to face with Fiona. Having lost touch with Julian over the years, Fiona had always assumed that he died of AIDS. Fiona is shocked to see Julian, and feels like she has seen a ghost. Though she is happy to see him alive, she wonders why someone she felt closer to—like Yale—or someone who could’ve done more good for the world—like Asher—didn’t survive instead.

Eventually, Fiona realizes that these questions about human value—about “why” certain people survived—are more directed at herself than Julian. As she grows in her connection to Julian, she begins to understand that they share the same survivor’s guilt (and thus have a unique ability to heal each other’s guilt). Just as Nora can be considered a mirror of Yale’s experiences, Julian can be considered a mirror of Fiona’s experiences.

“I don’t believe in it anymore. It’s the entire reason I’m sick.” 

During a gay rights protest Yale participates in with Fiona, he tells her that he no longer believes monogamy is a necessary—or even desirable—value to strive for in relationships. He has come to understand that monogamy is “the entire reason” he has AIDS. On one level, Yale sees that Charlie’s inability to preserve their monogamy—and the shame Charlie felt about this inability—led him to irresponsible, secretive sex with strangers (whereas if they’d been in an open relationship, they could’ve made honest compromises about seeing other partners). On another level, Yale recognizes that his assumptions about Roman’s sexual behavior and presumed monogamy (based on his superficial appearance and self-presentation) led him to unwittingly engage in unsafe sex (which ultimately led to AIDS).

These realizations significantly challenge conservative narratives about the “reasons” AIDS was spread among gay men: The belief that the virus was spread by sex with multiple partners, and that sexual abstinence was the only way to preserve safety. Yale recognizes that contrary to these narratives, the elevation of abstinence and monogamy only leads to shame, secrecy, and irresponsible behavior. In short, the conservative rhetoric of “shaming and blaming” is the “entire reason [he’s] sick.” 

“When was the last time he’d yelled? He’d yelled at Cubs games. He’d yelled at Charlie when they were breaking up. But he hadn’t yelled about AIDS. He hadn’t yelled at the government. He hadn’t yelled at the forces that had denied Katsu Tatami health insurance, at the county hospital system that had made Katsu wait two weeks for a bed when he couldn’t breathe and then let him die on a ward that smelled like piss. He hadn’t yelled at this new mayor and his lip service. He hadn’t yelled at the universe.” 

As Yale participates in the gay rights protest—and yells on behalf of his friends who have been treated unjustly—he realizes that the personal is political. Individual struggles he has endured with AIDS are the product of much bigger, systemic struggles. This moment is a thematic extension of Fiona’s earlier realizations surrounding the 2015 terrorist attacks. It continues one of the novel’s primary messages: “the world comes at you no matter who you are or what you do.”

“You think the dead control us? […] We’re in charge of them. I mean, my friend Julian? When I thought he was dead, all the things we’d ever said to each other, all my memories of him, they were mine. One of the weirdest things about seeing him again was that something left me. Some kind of energy. Like the air whooshing out of a balloon.” 

In this moment, Fiona converses with her new lover, Jake, about the strange sense of loss she felt when she discovered Julian wasn’t dead. Because Julian is no longer “dead” in her imagination, her memories are no longer frozen and perfectly preserved, but alive and changing. This understanding disturbs Fiona, as she has dedicated herself to tending the metaphorical “graveyard” of her friends’ memories for so many years. This understanding also helps prepare her to accept her changing role as Claire’s mother, however (and understand Claire as a living, evolving person rather than a symbol or a frozen memory).

“He faced the house, closed his eyes, and put his hand on the rolled-up cuff of Asher’s shirt. He wanted to bathe in it for five seconds, the future he might be having if it weren’t for everything. […] Asher would be lighting the grill in the backyard. Fiona and Nico were on their way over for dinner. Julian was hanging out on the porch with a drink, fresh from rehearsal.” 

Just after hearing that Asher will be moving to New York—and their romantic affection will not have a chance to materialize into a relationship—Yale passes the house he once thought about buying with Charlie. His reflections on home—and his fantasy of developing a safe space for his chosen family of friends—come full circle, as he imagines a comforting scene with all of them gathered together.

This moment can be read several ways. On one level, Yale is mourning the home—and the life—he will never have, knowing he and his friends will die young from AIDS. On another level, this imagination of an ideal home is a self-portrait: a lovingly cherished and preserved space of memory, like Nora’s art collection and Richard’s photographs.

“There was a part of me that thought if only I’d been born after he died, she’d believe I was him, reincarnated or something. Then I could believe it, even.” 

Fiona reveals that Claire was born on the day Yale died; thus, Claire’s birth has always been surrounded by feelings of guilt (that she lived, that she couldn’t be there for Yale, and that Yale died “alone”). Claire wishes she could’ve been thought of as a reincarnation of Yale, that she could’ve been considered an extension of his life instead of a symbol of her mother’s guilt.

By the end of the novel, however, Fiona and Claire come to think of Nicolette as an extension of Nico. They begin to feel there’s a kind of symbolic continuity within their biological and chosen family. 

“If we could just be on earth at the same place and same time as everyone we loved, if we could be born together and die together, it would be so simple. And it’s not. But listen: You two are on the planet at the same time. You’re in the same place now. That’s a miracle.” 

Here, Julian helps Fiona and Claire let go of their guilt and bitterness toward one another. So doing, Fiona feels a sense of purpose in Julian’s survival—in the reality that they are all “in the same place now.” Just as Yale learned to appreciate life at Charlie’s death bed, Fiona learns to let go of Yale’s death (and appreciate the present-moment she and her daughter are living in).

“I keep thinking of Nora’s stories about the guys who just shut down after the war. This is war, it is. It’s like you’ve been in the trenches for seven years. And no one’s gonna understand that. No one’s gonna give you a Purple Heart.” 

In the penultimate scene of the novel, Fiona pushes Yale through the Brigg gallery of Nora’s art in a wheelchair. Though Yale once dreamed of wheeling Nora through the gallery before she passed away, he is symbolically visiting the gallery in her place. Thus, this scene firmly establishes Yale and Nora as symbolic mirrors of each other’s experiences.

With this symbolic mirroring between Yale and Nora thus established, Yale also points out the connection between Nora’s experiences (as a survivor of World War I) and Fiona’s experiences (as someone whose friends are similarly dying). Herein, Yale essentially foreshadows Fiona’s survivor’s guilt, comparing her to a soldier who has been in the metaphorical “trenches,” battling AIDS for seven years.