Iron Peter: A Year in the Mythopoetic Life of New York City

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Summary: You won't forget this book.
Review: A very funny black comedy. If you always suspected that money was driving the AIDS establishment, then this book will confirm your suspicions. Well worth reading.

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Summary: Orwellian satire in the best English tradition.
Review: Iron Peter is a first novel, actually a modern day fable, written with the savvy quickness and edge of an experienced satirist. Charles Ortleb is probably the first American author who having taken a serious look at much of the orthodox HIV-AIDS establishment finds black humour the best mirror in uncovering the pranksters within the Aids establishment. The book would undoubtably be a best seller, if its subject matter weren't considered as untouchable as the Shroud of Turin. Readers who enjoy their prose quick and cunning and their narrative hip, perceptive and profound will find Iron Peter to be the most imaginative, first novel of the year.

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Summary: Peter needs more iron supplements to fully succeed
Review: Iron Peter is a satirical novel set in NYC, 1996. Peter is a stunning young gay man who plans to 'assassinate' the AIDS epidemic by exposing it's lies and dangerous self-deluded hypocrises. Though he experiences a number of giddy successes in upsetting the AIDS authorities' poison apple cart, in the end Peter is himself done in by the gay leather jackboots of the evil AIDS Empire. "Iron" Peter himself is a bit too 'aluminum' of a personality after all, to get the job done. He unfortunately wastes a lot of time warming bar stools and waiting for the action to come to him. Along the way Peter does discover a daring gay paper The Messenger, which challenges HIV/AIDS propaganda (clearly modelled after Ortleb's paper The New York Native), and he watches as orthodox AIDS activists do all they can to destroy it. Gay men are portrayed in mostly two caricatures: One solely driven by their sexual desire for the irresistibly gorgeous Peter, the other for their childish trust of AIDS authorities that has them swallowing every toxic treatment and inverted science thoery offered to them with glee. It's not a pretty picture here, folks. Barbra Streisand and Paul Newman will NOT be battling for the film rights. In Iron Peter, Peter comes to believe that HHV-6 is the real cause of AIDS, and that fact may make some dissidents (and othodox AIDS 'believers') uncomfortable with Ortleb and his book. Though it shouldn't -- you may believe whatever you choose to about the cause(s) of AIDS, Iron Peter can still be read as a powerful tale of skeptical courage. Some of the over-the-top depictions of AIDS rallies with gay men cha-cha-chaing while loudly chanting the latest medico-blather to each other in nursery rhyme fashion are alone worth the investment of a few hours and a few dollars. Like a child locked in his room too long, Ortleb comes charging out, kicking every shin he can find, scrawling on the walls with fire and shouting for attention. And he deserves the attention, plenty of it. The book jacket blurbs might lead you to expect a few belly laughs in all this, but there are few. Plenty of humor, satire, irony, parody, rage and over-statement, though. While I do highly recommend this book, you may wish to keep handy your favorite 'blood pressure medicine' and read Iron Peter in installments to avoid accidental anger overdose.