Gary Indiana, Acerbic Cultural Critic and Novelist, Dies at 74

Gary Indiana, the elfin novelist, cultural critic, playwright and artist whose crackling prose and lacerating wit captured the ravages of the AIDS crisis, Manhattan’s downtown art scene, lurid true crimes and his own search for love, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan.He was 74.The cause was lung cancer, said Jerry Gorovoy, a friend.Prolific and polymathic, Mr.

Indiana was the author of more than 10 books of fiction, memoir and criticism, all of which tackled, in one way or another, a culture careering toward ruin.“Horse Crazy” (1989), is a roman à clef about a 30-something writer obsessed with a beautiful, young, heroin-addled photographer — a “Death in Venice” set in the East Village amid the darkening storm of AIDS.“Resentment: A Comedy,” out in 1997, was the first book in Mr.

Indiana’s lightly fictionalized crime trilogy; its backdrop is the Los Angeles trial of the Menendez brothers for the murder of their parents, a setting that allowed Mr.Indiana to skewer celebrity culture in a collection of scabrous and hilarious portraits.

Richard Bernstein, writing in The New York Times, noted Mr.Indiana’s “dazzlingly good writing.”“One reads Mr.

Indiana’s new work with astonishment at his talent,” he wrote, “and astonishment at the absurdist bleakness, the alienating nihilism, of his vision.”“Resentment” was followed by “Three-Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story” (1999), which delved into the bizarre life of the serial killer who murdered Gianni Versace.Next came “Depraved Indifference” (2001), a novel based on the mother-and-son con artist/murderers, Sante and Kenneth Kimes.

With all three books, Mr.Indiana said, “I was trying to understand something about the pathology of families.”Image“Depraved Indifference,” Mr.

Indiana’s 2001 novel, was an effort “to understand something about the pathology of families.”Credit...SemiotexteWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable J...