Like bookends, Skydiving in Christopher Street returns to the characters and bustle of New York a few years after Mountain Climbing in Sheridan Square.
Stan Leventhal paints a picture of Christopher Street in the 80s and 90s. "The streets became ours again. When the fag-bashers began to get bold, to slither from their slimy lairs, the young gay guys and fledgling lesbians fought back. There was a new war to win, along with battles of fear, ignorance, and indifference … But now the streets belong to us again. We paid for it with our muscles, our brains, our bodily fluids. It has our names written all over it. Our blood fills the cracks in the pavement. It's ours and we're never going to give it up."
Against that backdrop, we see the pieces of an ordinary life. He's an editor for a porn publishing house - it's not glamorous, it's just work. His relationship is on the verge of ending. He is visited by the ghosts of friends he has lost to AIDS. In the midst of the familiar days, he learns from his doctor that he too has AIDS.
Leventhal's final novel was produced in 1995. This new edition features a foreword by Paras Borgohain who is currently writing a screenplay for the novel.
"A tender, honest novel about that moment between diagnosis and the decision to grow. Messy boyfriends and dreamy crushes set against the back-drop of daily life make Leventhal's characters vulnerable and familiar. His insider's view of the porn industry adds a comically surprising dimension." - Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York
"Stan Leventhal's new novel, Skydiving on Christopher Street, is a startling attempt to capture the life of an urban gay man on the printed page. Like Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, the book relies on plain-spoken language to convey the depth and multiplicity of lived experience. Read in conjunction with Leventhal's earlier Mountain Climbing in Sheridan Square, the book moves us into a darker, more disturbing arena in which knowledge does not necessarily bring happiness, understanding does not bring relief. But in spite of this, Leventhal's vision is clear and undaunted. For all of its somber chiaroscuro, Skydiving on Christopher Street challenges us to see the world through new eyes and to revel in its author's ability to translate life into art, pain into understanding." - Michael Bronski, A Queer History of the United States
