From The New York Times: “Walt Odets, a psychologist whose work with gay men in the Bay Area at the height of the AIDS epidemic led him to write a book on a nearly taboo topic, the survivor’s guilt and depression experienced by men who were not infected with H.I.V., died on July 5 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 79.” (Walt Odets, Who Delved Into the Minds of Gay Men, Dies at 79)
In 2019 he published a new book on the psychology of gay men. Of the last chapter in the book, Benoit Denizet-Lewis wrote in his review for The New York Times (Wondering at the ‘Special Universe’ of Gay Life in All Its Diversity):
Here, his writing is poignant and achingly beautiful — so much so, in fact, that I occasionally had to put the book down to avoid weeping on the subway. There’s sadness in Odets’s life story, but there’s mostly resilience, tenderness and a willingness to fashion an unapologetic gay life, sometimes against all odds. (The exquisitely told story of Odets’s longtime friend and lover, who fled a trailer he shared with a brutally homophobic family and built a life bursting with meaning and intimacy, is the most compelling story of gay self-actualization I’ve ever encountered.)