Digging for the Edges of Life

By Isaac Fellman

Some archival collections, while technically separate, produce more meaning when viewed in tandem. Although they are housed on opposite ends of the vault, I have always felt this way about the papers of Arion Stone and his friend Beowulf Thorne, who until his 1999 death was an editor of the AIDS humor zine Diseased Pariah News.

Thorne’s sense of humor is hard to describe, except that it’s large and it has a certain gleeful eagerness to dig for the edges of life. We’ve digitized the full run of Diseased Pariah News, so you can see for yourself: AIDS-themed parodies of Barbie ads, a food column called “Get Fat, Don’t Die,” a superhero called Captain Condom and a bitter sting even to the most personal material. In fact, Thorne’s co-editors paid tribute to his style by headlining his obituary “Dang! Our Founder and Guiding Light Died.”

Avoiding Bland Advice

Interspersed with the gags are incisive and practical articles about life with AIDS. In a crisis, it’s easy to dispense bland advice — like “have safer sex” — and harder to figure out how to fit that advice into a life already full of complication and trauma. DPN handles all of this with care. It doesn’t just blandly encourage safer sex; it reviews different lubes, features centerfolds who are openly HIV-positive, and reviews erotica (via Thorne’s column “Porn Potato”).

It’s funny because it’s honest. It’s honest because it knows that, in order to laugh while everything is falling apart, we need more than a sunny disposition. We need clarity and tools, preferably delivered with camp and bravado.

Thorne’s papers, many of them also digitized, give insight into how DPN was made — but Stone’s collection gives insight into who Thorne was as a person. Stone kept mementos, like a hand-drawn coupon that could be redeemed for Thorne to roast him a chicken. Stone also kept a folder of materials from Thorne’s funeral, with loving notes from friends about the man who encouraged, intimidated and thrilled them.

Through these links between collections, we can glimpse the shape of communities like the one that grew up around DPN. And by remembering DPN itself and its understanding of what its readers really needed, we can see one way of learning to live in crisis.

Isaac Fellman is the society’s reference archivist.