Angels in America: first thoughts

Hey everyone, I'm just gonna get right into it here: this book is HEAD AND SHOULDERS above The Price of Salt.  There is no contest.  Open and shut case.  I understand one's a play and one's pulp fiction and everything so it's hard to compare but come on!  The characterization!  The depth and dimensions! The language!  Night and day compared to Price of Salt.  Every character has so much going on here.  They're so pronounced yet at the same time so multifaceted.  I'm excited.  This is big time.

Getting into the text, we have a lot that's been given to us in a short amount of time.  There's Joe and Harper, Louis and Prior, and my favorite Roy Cohn.  Joe is a mild mannered Morman nice guy in the law world with a valium addicted wife Harper.  We learn soon that the reason for Harper's drug addiction and mental health problems comes from the complete lack of sexual interaction and intimacy in their marriage, which we also discover stems from the fact that Joe, unknowingly, is a homosexual.  Louis and Prior are passionate gay lovers but Prior is revealed to have a terminal disease, soon to be known as the AIDS virus.  Roy is very much his own person, having no long term, monogamous relationship and instead a hugely successful career.  He is confident and thriving in his cut-throat job.  However, he has found out that he, too, has contracted AIDS.

Now we have an interesting setup.  What will come from Joe and Harper's marriage?  All Joe wants is to be normal, to fight what he feels is an disgusting flaw in his soul.  Harper is just falling apart at the seams, so nothing good can come out of this; furthermore, there may be an interesting future for Joe and Louis.  Next, other than a seemingly inevitable death, what will happen to Prior and his relationship with Louis?  No answers there, but something is bound to change soon.  Lastly, what about Roy?  The business man big shot, living the dream.  Yet now, he has a disease known to the public as "gay cancer."  I really liked his speech to the doctor.  It was so characterizing, so visceral.  It has Roy Cohn written all over.  The man's got "clout" dammit!  But besides how much I like that scene, it really speaks to a very modern day concept of labeling and grouping.  Roy will not accept being labeled as a homosexual.  Why?  Because at this time, homosexuals are weak.  Unimportant.  Soft.  Bottom of the society's barrel.  And what is Roy?  The epitome of strength, connections, crude, and top of the top.  He may have sex with men, but he sure as hell isn't in that group.

Overall, very interested.  I want to pay special attention to Joe and Roy because I think they say the most and have the most significant implications of the characters in this book in regards to homosexuality.