A Cut Above

If you were at Columbia University in the mid-1970s, you couldn't help but notice Brad Gooch and Howard Brookner-an impossibly golden couple. Not only were they beautiful, they were talented. Howard hung out with William Burroughs and made an acclaimed documentary about him while Brad worked as a male model and got a Ph.D. in English. The dream crumbled when Howard tragically and gruesomely died of AIDS, in 1989. Brad went on to write important biographies of Frank O'Hara and Flannery O'Connor and has now written Smash Cut (Harper), a gorgeous memoir of his and Howard's romance, played out in New York City, on Fire Island, and in Paris and Rome, among the era's boldfaced names, such as Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe— a potent mix of love, art, anddeath.

DOUG STUMPF