At Your Own Risk - Hardcover

Jarman, Derek

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879514736 ISBN 13: 9780879514730

Publisher: Allen Lane, 1993

Synopsis

One of the most controversial filmmakers of our time (Caravaggio, The Last of England, Edward II), and outspoken crusader for gay civil rights in Britain, Derek Jarman was diagnosed HIV positive in December of 1986. At Your Own risk is Derek's distillation of his philosophy of life and an impassioned and witty guide to gay sexuality from the repressed 40s through the libidinous 60s to the Aids-chilled present. Derek confronts his death, describing the reality of being HIV positive. Of a walk home after a sexual encounter on Hampstead Heath, he writes: "Why are you doing this, Derek? You shouldn't be standing under these cold stars. You shouldn't have the stamina to do this.' The answer is that I didn't have the stamina, but throwing my arms around a stranger is an act of defiance that keeps me alive." At Your Own Risk is an act of defiance - a defiant statement against a society that vacillates between indifference and moral censure on the issue of Aids and a defiant celebration of gay sexuality. At Your Own Risk argues that if you are HIV positive you can only remain frightened for so long and that there comes a point at which fear gives way to acceptance - a point after which you have to start living again.

About this title

Review:

"If there is any such thing as the literary equivalent of an incendiary bomb, then this is it... His semtex-packed sentences are welcome thunderflashes of dissent in the grey drizzle of a dispirited political climate" (New Statesman)

"At Your Own Risk gives the reader access to something that is hard to articulate, the near asphyxiating pain, anxiety and rage which many gay people have felt living under the physical, legal and cultural attacks of the last few years" (Observer)

"For all his anger, Jarman never seems brutalised. He retains his humanity and good humour. His is a wonderfully garrulous, mercurial, polymathic daemon" (Literary Review)

Book Description:

Impassioned, witty and polemical, At Your Own Risk is Derek Jarman's defiant celebration of gay sexuality.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0879514736
• ISBN 13: 9780879514730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160