David B. Feinberg

David Barish Feinberg (November 25, 1956 – November 2, 1994) was an American writer and AIDS activist.

Biography

Early life Born in Lynn, Massachusetts to Jewish parents, Feinberg grew up in Syracuse, New York. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in mathematics and studying creative writing with novelist John Hersey, graduating in 1977. He subsequently worked as a computer programmer for the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) and also pursued a master's degree in linguistics at New York University. and won Feinberg the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Fiction, the Stonewall Award for Literature, and the American Library Association Gay/Lesbian Award for Fiction. It was also cited by the Books to Remember Committee of the New York Public Library.

Feinberg tested positive for HIV in 1987, and joined the activist organization ACT UP. He participated in ACT UP demonstrations including Stop the Church.

Body of work B. J. Rosenthal, the main character of Feinberg's first two published books and a wise-mouthed, perpetually libidinous urbanite, was something of an alter ego for his creator. "He and I aren't the same person exactly," Feinberg told New York Newsday in 1992. "I'd say he's 60 to 70 percent me. We're both gay, of course, and HIV-positive. But...I write novels, and he doesn't. And while he's more well-endowed, I'm a better lover."

Queer and Loathing, by contrast, was "as close to the truth as I can get," as Feinberg wrote in the book's introduction. The essays were his attempt "to capture what is to me a painfully obvious reality that is rarely written about: what it is like to be HIV-positive in the 90s; what it is like to outlive one therapist, two dentists, two doctors, and one gastroenterologist."

"He exemplified the best of the gay humor we use to endure impossible situations," said Ed Iwanicki, Feinberg's editor at Viking Penguin. "No one was able to find that humor in the most dire situations as well as he was."

"It was so biting and so satirical, and it had a very New York edge," said author Jameson Currier, who knew Feinberg as a fellow member of ACT UP. "He was the first to write in that style about AIDS, and he created quite a bit of controversy. He broke a lot of ground in that respect."

Feinberg's papers are held by the New York Public Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division.

Feinberg is mentioned by several interviewees of the ACT UP Oral History Project.