''Ground Zero'' (1988) is a book of essays by

Andrew Holleran Andrew Holleran is the pseudonym of Eric Garber (born 1944), an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer, born on the island of Aruba. Most of his adult life has been spent in New York City, Washington, D.C., and a small town in Flori ...

. The title refers to a catastrophic disaster in

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

, namely the havoc wrought by

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

in the 1980s among gay men. Holleran's essays are by turns thoughtful, reflective, angry, frustrated, and mournful in the extreme. Particularly notable are the twin essays "Notes on Promiscuity" and "Notes on Celibacy," each of which is a collection of provocative

aphorism An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tra ...

s. In 2008, the book was reissue, with ten additional essays and a new introduction, under the title ''Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited: AIDS and Its Aftermath''.

Notes

LGBT literature in the United States 1988 non-fiction books Essay collections Gay non-fiction books 1980s LGBT literature HIV/AIDS in literature {{LGBT-book-stub