Tim & Pete [Mass Market Paperback]

Known for his dark, often violent satires, James Robert Baker (1946-1997) had slowly success as novelist--until 1993, when he published TIM AND PETE. With a plotline that seemed to recommend assasination of a host of then-living politicians and religious leaders, the book put panties in a twist from one end of the country to another. In the wake of the flap, Baker found it virtually impossible to find a publisher for his later works. Over the course of the next few years he sank into profound depression and committed suicide.

Tim and Pete are two gay men living in the Los Angeles of the early 1990s. Both have lived through the sexual revolution, gay liberation, the rise of AIDS, and most recently the Los Angeles riots of 1992. They have also broken up. Six months later, Tim finds himself reluctantly trapped into a Memorial Day weekend date--and when it goes awry he turns to Pete, who he still loves, for help. Their reunion touches twenty-four hours of bickering, making up, accidental drug use, a tour of post-riot Los Angeles, recollections of the pre-AIDS world, and the discovery that even more friends have now died of the disease.

It is AIDS that fuels the novel, and if the book has a flaw it is that Baker takes one's knowledge of the politics that swirled around the epidemic for granted. As the epidemic emerged, Republicans and their fundamentalist Christian allies had a very distinct tendency to offer a smug "let the homosexuals die" smile. The Reagan Administration was particularly horrific in this regard, and Tim, Pete, and their various friends are acutely aware of it. They respond in kind: if they don't care if we die, why should we care if they do?

The book is chock full of brutal, grotesque, and hilariously funny conversations in which the characters imagine how much they would like to see such individuals as Pat Robertson and Jesse Helms meet the sword in particularly brutal and highly public ways--fits of revenge fantasy that Tim and Pete, although boiling with anger and frustration, do not take literally. But then the novel takes a chilling turn: they stumble into a group of radical, HIV-infected homosexuals who are determined to take the next step, and their targets are no less than former president Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy.

Clearly this is not a book that will greatly appeal to Republicans, Southern Baptists, or the-then emerging neo-cons who find themselves in Baker's crosshairs. It is worth mentioning, however, that neither does Baker paint the gay community in a particularly flattering light: in a very real sense they emerge as ineffective, self-absorbed, and superficial. Funny though it may be, it's pretty bitter stuff. But Baker had the gift. As the novel goes from escapade to another it twists you from laugh-out-loud hilarity (I can think of few books that have made me laugh as hard as this one) to sudden dismay and back again, riccoheting from one subject to another, cuting first with one side of the blade and then the next.

TIM AND PETE provoked such outrage in 1993 that it went out of print very quickly. More than a decade later, it and Baker's other novels are slowly but surely enjoying rising admiration by critics and the reading public and the book is available once more. It's strong stuff, no doubt about it, but it is more than worth the effort of latching onto a copy. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This was my second book by James Robert Baker, so obviously there was something in the first book I read by him (Testosterone) that made me want to know more of his work. I think with this one I've had my fill. If this and Testosterone are two of his best works, I've had enough.(btw, I thought Testosterone much the better of the two.)

What is interesting about this book was the way Baker described the 80's and 90's and an era of AIDS angst in southern California. He does capture the mood and the anger that were 'out there' in the gay community in the Regan and early Bush (the pappa) years (I am ten years younger than Baker and was living in Los Angeles in the same time.) So from that perspective the book was a time capsule. But what was overly annoying were the overdrawn situations and the relationship of Time and Pete. It just didin't ring true to me. What did ring true was the anger and the over-the-top obsessive / compusiveness of the protagonist Tim (clearly drawn from Baker's own life experience). It is sad (but not surprising after reading these books) to learn that Baker committed suicide in 1997 at age 51. He was clearly a man with lots of issues on many levels. And a lot of the issues Baker deals with are not different than issues gay men deal with today (HIV, aging, the superficiality of many gay communiites). Baker's responses all seem so extreme.

All in all, the book has become a period piece of the days when Act Up and Queer Nation were out there in a big way, which is an interesting counterpoint to the passiveness of the gay community today. Also, one does wonder if Baker would have toned-down his brash and outlandish writing style with the advent of some maturity that comes with age.

I first read this book when I was fifteen, and five years later, I still love to read it all over again. It has never lost its appeal to me. "Tim and Pete" has the best damn dialogue I've read in a long time - it's sarcastic and witty, and you'll feel like you're living the characters' lives in no time. This book is funny and subversive, and has more than enough black humor to make a conservative person have a heart attack. I recommend "Tim and Pete" to anyone who's ever felt out of place or rejected in this world, be it male or female, gay or straight.