Out In The Mountains : Arts & Entertainment - Andrew Holleran's "Dancer from the Dance"

Queer Classics

Andrew Holleran's "Dancer from the Dance"

by Ernie McLeod

The prologue to Andrew Holleran’s “Dancer from theDance” consists of a series of letters between two gay men, one of whom hasfled the 70’s New York gay scene for “The Deep South,” the otherof whom has decided to write “a gay novel” chronicling their passingyouth. These letters, in addition to providing a context for the novel andsetting its often catty tone, serve also as a disclaimer. The aspiring novelisttells his friend he has no interest in successful fags, only failures: “Soyou see I’ve written about a small subspecies only, I’ve written aboutdoomed queens . . . . THAT is what I want to write about—why life is SAD.And what people do for Love (everything)—whether they’re gay ornot.”

“Dancer from the Dance” was published in 1978, well into the hedonisticgay disco era, but at a time when realistic portrayals of gay characters infiction were virtually nonexistent. Of course, “realistic” is arelative term. As the prologue to the novel suggests, Holleran (who writes onlyunder a pseudonym) is showing the reader a narrow slice of urban gay life.However, because gay life of any kind was so absent from fiction at the time,“Dancer” became falsely representative of a whole generation, one ofthe early must-read novels for any young man coming out in the 1980’s.

Today, “Dancer” is both revered as having laid the foundation forunapologetically gay contemporary fiction and lambasted for creating an urban“ghetto” mold from which gay writers are still struggling to breakfree. I think it falls somewhere in between and is worth reading as an importanttime capsule and for Holleran’s lush, uncompromising prose.

“Dancer from the Dance” basically tells the story of Malone andSutherland, the former a goldenly beautiful young man who discovers his sexualityand embarks on a “career in love” amid the burgeoning 70’s gaycircuit scene, the latter a sharp-witted queen of the scene who takes Maloneunder his wing. More than that, though, the novel describes a new gay worldwhere, for a few moments at least, young men believed they had escaped to asexually liberated paradise beneath the spinning disco ball. Holleranpassionately evokes the romantic idealism of this ephemeral paradise whilescorning its shallowness: “They were bound together by a common love of acertain kind of music, physical beauty, and style—all the things oneshouldn’t throw an ounce of energy pursuing, and sometimes throw away a lifepursuing.”

Though “Dancer” was written and set in the 70’s, it has a haunted,elegiac quality that seems to foreshadow the AIDS epidemic, adding an eerie biteto its pathos and humor. Later Holleran works reveal that this hauntedness isnatural to his style, but it’s impossible to read “Dancer” nowwithout feeling the shadow of AIDS on its pages. At the same time, comparing thenovel to the allegedly ground breaking “Queer as Folk,” one realizesthat the more things change, the more they remain the same. 20-plus yearsseparate these two cultural milestones, yet they mine, for better or worse, muchthe same territory.

Personally, I avoided “Dancer from the Dance” for 20-plus years. As ayoung person unsuccessfully struggling to envision life as a gay man, Ididn’t want to know about the bitchy, one-night-stand (or less) realm ofFire Island disco queens. Its campy dialogue, naughtier than but not dissimilarto “Will & Grace” quips today, would have been almost as depressingto me as the repeated descriptions of tea room trolling. Malone’s initialemergence from years of self-enforced celibacy into the arms of an adoring malelover would have fueled my own equally unrealistic romantic dreams, but hissubsequent disillusionment and downfall might have reinforced my view that thecloset was preferable to such an existence.

In other words, “Dancer from the Dance,” like all of Holleran’swork, is far too bleak to be a gay pep talk. The good news is that nowadays, withmany more books (not to mention TV shows, movies, and real-life role models) outthere, it doesn’t have to be. It can be what it is: an often gorgeously sad,wickedly funny, unflinchingly honest look at what it was like to be exuberantlygay but less than proud. The other good news is that Holleran is still writing,the fiercely wary eye he once cast upon the dance now focussed on what happenswhen the dance is long over but the desire for love refuses to quit.

Photo montage of Jane Bowles with quotes from her book, My Sister's Hand In Mine.