SOURCE: Upchurch, Michael. “Recovering the Past.” Chicago Tribune Books (5 May 1996): 5.

In the following excerpt, Upchurch praises Heaven's Coast and Bernard Cooper's autobiography Truth Serum, noting that both works make powerful statements about loss, the gay experience, and dealing with AIDS.

“Death requires a new negotiation with memory,” writes poet Mark Doty (Atlantis) early on in Heaven's Coast, disclosing one reason he embarked on this, his first major prose work. Doty's words could just as easily apply to Truth Serum, the fine new memoir by novelist Bernard Cooper (A Year of Rhymes).

But while these two writers have much in common—both are gay writer-teachers in their 40s, living in gay-friendly communities hard hit by AIDS—their books offer rich contrasts in tone and approach. Doty's is a feverish case history, focusing on the death of his lover, Wally Roberts, in early 1994. Cooper's is a more varied, collage-like book...