How does one find meaning after a catastrophe? That was a question I asked when I began writing Night Terminus, an idea examined over millennia, from Epictetus to Viktor Frankl. AIDS was a war with many heroes but no parades. We now have a deeper understanding of how suffering can stay in the body and be carried intergenerationally.
The novel explores the aftermath of the crisis and the fates of the survivors. I was interested in mining that wreckage and portraying the people affected and infected who watched their friends and lovers die, who were supposed to die then didn’t, and who live with the crippling weight of survivors’ guilt. For bearing witness, these individuals carry the burden of history.
As part of a gay diaspora, rootless and transient, the characters search for meaning, be they fugitives from the law, runaways, Buddhist monks, left-wing Catholics, or radical artists. Some undertake long sojourns, and some seek spiritual or rational counsel. Others find solace in art, politics, or reliving memories.
As a writer who has dealt with illness for most of my adult life, I think one path to discover purpose is through agency — over one’s body, one’s choices, and one’s own life and death. Embracing the outlaw within is a powerful act of resistance. This principle empowers the main cast and the people they encounter along the way.
The novel’s theme, then, is really the search for agency. The events, though calamitous, do not define the characters — it is their love and resilience in the face of extinction. There lies meaning.
Part of the narrator’s journey towards agency is a universal story, discovering a sense of belonging, so long denied, by channeling his vulnerability and grief to the world that surrounds him: the pastures and mountains he hikes, the climate that sustains him, the art that heals him, the spirit he reclaims, and the death that eventually comes for all of us.
Ellis Scott