SOURCE: Canning, Richard. “A Dying Art.” New Statesman 125, no. 4311 (22 November 1996): 47-8.

In the following excerpt, Canning discusses the descriptions of nature in Heaven's Coast as well as the critical reception of the work.

Aids literature needs no aesthetic. Theories about art can come later; and must, if they are to take into account the subgenre of Aids memoirs (some fictionalised) emerging out of the epidemic. To postpone conclusions about Aids and art should not mean suspending judgment, however. Aids literature will not achieve greatness through pity alone.

Naturally, aesthetic judgments feel inappropriate. It is hard to keep in mind the dynamics of prose when a writer—or his lover, in Doty's case—is dying. Objecting to a turn of phrase feels bogus, or surplus; like criticising a man's handwriting as he writes his will. Perhaps this is why critics have said little of importance about Aids art—and...