The Art of Propaganda

BEFORE IT EVEN BEGAN, Peter Staley called the event a disaster. He was standing before a sold-out crowd at the Strand last October with Sarah Schulman to celebrate the launch of his memoir, Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism. But, Staley announced, Schulman hated the book. During the Q&A she’d been asked to moderate, Schulman joked that he would no doubt be speaking with his therapist about why he ever thought it was a good idea to invite her, their mutual dislike having been rumored for over thirty years. She then pulled out several printed pages of typed quotes from the memoir and proceeded one by one through a long list of factual objections to Staley’s recollections. Occasionally, she opened her own book, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, and flipped through its seven hundred-some pages to offer a corrective. Staley rallied but appeared miserable the entire time.