Andrew Holleran’s “Dancer from the Dance”

I love Dancer from the Dance. Best gay novel ever written. Timely, rueful, funny, and even a tad prophetic, with intimations of disaster.

A while back, a movie version was announced, which seems to have stalled. I can well understand, since the sexual elements would accrue an X rating.

It is a wonderful book and was edited by Pat Loud for all you Lance fans. Sadly is follow up books didn't measure up.

I remember finding it a depressing read. "The Line of Beauty" was less so but I thought both book had slippery, soulless protagonists that I wouldn't want to spend much time with in real life. I didn't like "Giovanni's Room", which I read around the same. My little gay self was grateful for "At Swim, Two Boys", OTOH.

Read them in any order. I liked Grief best after Dancer. I also think it's interesting to read Larry Kramer's Faggots, which came out just a few months after Dancer.

[quote]I also think it's interesting to read Larry Kramer's Faggots, which came out just a few months after Dancer.

While I'm largely in agreement with Kramer philosophically, I had to really push myself to get through Faggots -- the writing is just so clunky and awkward.

Holleran, on the other hand, writes beautiful prose.

For me, r5, it wasn't about the beauty of the prose, or lack thereof (obviously there is no contest). I liked looking at the differing perspectives on gay life during the time when I, like Malone, Sutherland, and Ned Weeks, lived in the Village. Dancer, for all its eloquence, left me feeling bad because Holleran had proved, as far as I was concerned, that gay men could not love each other. Faggots, did only a little to dispel that feeling, but compared to the nihilist Dancer, it helped me be able to wake up the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that.

Any thoughts as to why Holleran hasn't written anything after "Grief"? (He does write a column/review for the "Gay and Lesbian Review".

Perhaps he feels that "Dancer/Aruba/Beauty/Grief" traces the natural progression of one gay man's life and there is no need to write another. Pity - as the OP states, "Dancer" is beautifully written elegy to a time and place we will never see again.

Love this book .. I should find a cheap copy to reread.

R8 My local library has it and several other Holleran books.

At one point they were talking about a movie version of this, but I couldn’t find anything to suggest that it went forward. I hope it does some day. The casting alone would be fascinating.

Rosebud is the sled, OP.

The butler did it...

[quote]At one point they were talking about a movie version of this, but I couldn’t find anything to suggest that it went forward. I hope it does some day. The casting alone would be fascinating.

Malone is what, 30?

R13 That sounds about right. Sutherland would be the one I’d really like to see cast. No one who could nail that part springs to mind.

I agree about Faggots not being a pleasant read but it's key to understanding his more important later work, literary and political.

Matt Bomer for Malone ?

Line of Beauty is my favorite. Maybe because of the decade difference. 1980s vs 70s - which was more my time. I also think it’s a better book and broader in scope - capturing the massive change in English culture which was very similar to the American culture shift at the time. I still love the word “ogee”. The U.K. TV version ruined it I thought - in part because of the actors. But it’s a book I reread occasionally as it really captures that time in my life.

"There is nothing so unhappy as going through the clothes of a friend who has died, to see what may used and what should be given to charity."

"I exist only in New York. Take me off this island and I evaporate."

Sutherland on Pride Day:

"Not since Juvenal have such harlots and f@gs been seen parading through a major capital!

"Who can waste a summer on the Island? Why, it's the only antidote to death we have!"

Sutherland on summer in the city:

"Oh, my dear, there is no other time, no other time at all but now, when the city is overripe, like a fruit about to drop in your lap, and all the young stockbrokers’ underwear is damp! My dear!"

"How many people I fell in love with on this train."

Wait, don’t spoil all the beautiful quotes before I read them myself!

"I thought Malone was the handsomest man I'd ever seen. But then I was in love with half of those people, and I never said hello or good-bye to any of them."

Ah, sorry, Op. Just one more:

"Have you never seen a nine-year-old boy on a Georgia road playing by himself in the noonday sun? Have you never seen innocence?"

[quote]I’m tired of using my body as a faceless thing to lure another faceless thing, I want to love a Person!, I want to go out and live in that world with that Person, a Person who loves me, we shouldn’t have to be faithful, we should want to be faithful!, love grows, sex gets better, if you don’t drain all your fucking energy off somewhere else” […] “I’ve lived all over the world and I haven’t seen more than half a dozen couples who have what I want.” […] It tells me something. It tells me no relationship in the world could survive the shit we lay on it. It tells me we’re not looking at the reasons why we’re doing the things we’re doing. It tells me we’ve got a lot of work to do. A lot of looking to do. It tells me that, if those happy couples are there, they better come out of the woodwork fast and show themselves pronto so we can have a few examples for unbelieving heathens like you that it’s possible. Before you fuck yourself to death.”

This quote from Kramer's Faggots always sends chills down my spine, considering what was just a few years down the road . . .

R28, I read Dancer when it was originally published. When I reread it ten years later, I gasped when I read the opening line, quoted at r19.

Faggots showed how anti-sex Kramer was from the start. The AIDS crisis fit his personality perfectly. The right man at the right time. Not necessarily good or kind - but an effective angry, aggressive proponent of gay issues at the time when that was needed.

But do any of you remember the ‘gay’ novel (by a woman) that became THE bestseller?

The Front Runner. A talented young athlete - and his coach. Sold bucketloads! Seem to remember it as being a little like some of the later fan fiction that turned iconic straight male characters into gay. The old Kirk/Spock fanfic, later Star Wars and various other slash fic.

The Front Runner film was rumoured as being in pre-production for years - but they couldn’t get it up. Supposedly Paul Newman wanted to do it and had the rights? Don’t think any of her subsequent books sold as well...

Interesting to compare it to a book about gay life by an actual gay man.

I LOVE Holleran. His books chart my own gay life in a strange way. I read Dancer from a Dance when I was still living in NYC in the early 80s. I read Nights in Aruba when I was living and teaching in North Florida with occasional jaunts to NYC. I read Beauty of Men last year as I'm in the 20th year of caring for my disabled mother. (These events are exactly what the three books deal with). I can't (won't) read Grief yet. His prose is like poetry - his observations of gay men, and their inner lives is incredibly acute. I think a lot of gay men must read his work and think as I do, "I remember having that thought."

I suspect that all of his books are quite autobiographical, and with the presumed death of his mother, he must feel that there's not much more content in his life to be mined. But that is only a surmise.

He also has a book of short stories called “In September, the Light Changes.” Is he equally skilled in that format?

[quote]Matt Bomer for Malone ?

Too plastic, I’d think. Malone needs to have a little more vitality.

Matt Bomer as Sutherland. He's too old now for Malone.

I like The Line of Beauty more than any of Alan Hollinghurst's other novels, r18. I liked the miniseries even more, the first time I ever saw Dan Stevens.

I've uttered "my face seats five" in casual conversation thanks to Dancer. I also very much enjoyed The Beauty of Men.

Clearly some here are confusing Andrew Holleran with Alan Hollinghurst.

I'm also tired of the bullshit accusations of "sex negative" aimed at Kramer just because he could see beyond the "life is a bacchanal" attitude of many gay men in the 70's.

[quote]I'm also tired of the bullshit accusations of "sex negative" aimed at Kramer just because he could see beyond the "life is a bacchanal" attitude of many gay men in the 70's.

This.

Here's something that was promising in 2015 but now is quite sad. From Deadline.com 9/23/15 -

[quote] Director Alan Poul is teaming with Brazilian-based RT Features for a feature film based on Andrew Holleran’s cult novel Dancer From the Dance, considered a cornerstone of 1970’s gay literature....

[quote] Production is scheduled for summer 2016 and WME is packaging.

I grew up in a small town and read that book before coming out. It’s my favorite gay novel and I read it many times to look for hidden messages about what happened to Malone. In the mid 80’s I moved to NYC and worked on Wall Street. I spent a lot of lunch hours at the Wall Street Sauna and there was a regular there who was rumored to be the person Holleran based the character Malone on. He had salt and pepper hair hair by then but the beautiful piercing blue eyes projected longing and sadness. He’d usually sit with his towel on and watch the guys go by, occasionally disappearing into a room. I remember he wrote some articles for the NYC gay rags and his bio at the end of the articles was reminiscent of Malone’s. 35 years have past but I can close my eyes and still see him sitting in that long gone bathhouse.

[quote] I remember he wrote some articles for the NYC gay rags and his bio at the end of the articles was reminiscent of Malone’s.

Surely you remember his name.

He’d be too old now, but were he younger and still alive, I could envision Heath Ledger as Malone.

Has anyone posting here read the Brad Gooch novel "The Golden Age of Promiscuity" and if so, how well does it capture the New York scene pre-AIDS?

"Ground Zero" should be given to every millennial gay who needs to know what the beginning of the AIDS crisis felt like. Or anyone, really.

Maybe change his race, Michael B. Jordan as Malone

[R31]: I knew a playwright in NYC back in the early 80’s, who said he and a female writing partner had been working on a screenplay of “The Front Runner” for Paul Newman, who reportedly had the rights, and who wanted to play the coach. After they’d been working on it for some months, Newman made one request: he asked them to make the boy runner into a girl.

They refused, and pulled out. To this day, the film has not been made. Probably still too volatile a story.

I could see Connor Gowland as Malone. He's an instaho who works in production, though, not an actor. But the minute I saw him (look at all his pics), I pictured him wearing one of those green bomber jackets Malone always wore.

Connor Gowland without a shirt

Op, thank you for the reminder!!

I bought a used paperback copy of Dancer a year ago and stuck in it a drawer before I completely forgot about it.

I will read it starting today!

That guy you posted is not unattractive but he is not beautiful (tonight, or any other night).

Oh, I am in Love, L-U-V, with him. But that's okay. Who would you cast?

I don't think some of you read the same book I have. Malone is supposed to be impossibly beautiful but also very masc and straight acting which confounds both the other characters and the reader because Malone is also a depraved faggot sex pig. Only Sutherland really understands him and uses that knowledge to control him for Sutherland's benefit and yet Sutherland actually loves him too. It's all impossible fantasy contradiction and yet I've seen such people and relationships.

I think Jon Erik Hexum would be a good image to have in mind when casting Malone.

I don't think "masc" was a category yet, r53.

R55, yes it was. That is why "looks like Tarzan, talks like Jane" was coined, many, many years ago.

Well, of course not, r55. But that's what it's called now. I spent my 20s living in the Village and summering in the Pines and this book is the story of my youth in the 1970s. I identify with the author/narrator, not Malone or Sutherland, but I knew those people. Like the narrator, I grew up in the rural south.

I'm going to read the book again.

The problem is, there aren’t that many actors who are physically beautiful but also nuanced enough to capture Malone’s contradictions. That’s why I said Heath Ledger could have done it back in his prime.

You understand, r59.

r7: That's the most frustrating thing about wanting more product from him. Grief came out in 2006 and nothing since then. He must not have a literary agent. I do like his regular feature in the Gay & Lesbian Review but it's not the same! I've met him a few times at book signings many years ago: he's very quirky, but also approachable.

Heath Ledger would have bored me to death.

Sutherland would be the harder one to cast.

Patricia Nell Warren the author of The Front Runner just died:

"Patricia Nell Warren, the novelist who was "an inspiration to a generation of gays and lesbians who were venturing out of the closet in numbers, but still felt terrified when alone," died February 9, LGBTQ Nation reported. She was 82. Her 1974 book, The Front Runner, "told the story of an out young Olympic athlete in love with his closeted older coach," and led to "LGBTQ running groups all over the nation [being] named Front Runners after the book. She was working on the fourth book in the series when she died."

The Front Runner "left a seismic cultural imprint," making the New York Times bestseller list and selling over 10 million copies, Lambda Literary noted. Shortly after the book's publication, Warren came out as a lesbian. She continued to publish gay-themed novels, including 1998 Lambda Literary Award-winner Billy's Boy, "while also maintaining an active presence as a LGBTQ rights advocate." Her other books include Harlan's Race, The Wild Man, The Fancy Dancer, and The Lavender Locker Room.

Author Christopher Rice tweeted: "I'm so incredibly saddened to hear of the death of my friend, the author Patricia Nell Warren. An amazing body of work, an amazing person. I was gifted to spend the time with her that I did.""

Start a thread for her, r64. Don't hide it here.

Ah, such a shame about Patricia Nell Warren. And yes, that film was proposed, and Newman was involved, decades ago but has been in development hell, mainly due to financing, ever since.

Patricia Nell Warren thread:

Holleran is an exquisite prose stylist on a level with Nabokov, Conrad, Capote et al. The sheer beauty of his writing brings tears to my eyes.

"...and during sex the phone rings and it's always Joan Fontaine!!" I remember reading it back in the 70s and laughing out loud at this line.

A couple years ago I read Holleran's "Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited," which accurately captures what it was like during the worst of the AIDS epidemic. His writing has such incredible power to transport you back to that horrifically painful time. I read the book in one sitting and felt like I needed a very long walk to decompress afterward.

Michael Cristofer as Sutherland, no question.

I don't think Sutherland was 74, r71.

R2 made reference to Pat Loud as being this books editor. I really can't remember if it was1977 or 1978 I spent the summer staying with Lance at his place in N.Y.C. (Alphabet City when it was an inspiring wreck). Lance was a very intelligent, well-read, and astute reader writing pieces for Interview mag. and as lead singer in his punk band, the 'Mumps" helped write lyrics for some of their songs. Before "Dancer" was published Pat wanted our opinion of the book. We hated it! Why read this when Proust and Genet have already done it better? Perhaps I should read it again. I have no doubt Mrs. Loud would be grateful to speak with Lance about this book or any subject at all.

How has this never been made into a movie?

Well, it's not really "on message", is it? And it doesn't have gruesome elements that would appeal to straights.

R74: there is no plot.

I do wonder why it wasn't made into a movie. It seems perfect for one of of those European films that you enjoy and later go WTF? the source material was American?

[quote]Before "Dancer" was published Pat wanted our opinion of the book. We hated it! Why read this when Proust and Genet have already done it better?

Where, specifically, did Proust do "Dancer"?

Where, specifically, did Genet do "Dancer"?

Apparently the Kindle version will be out June 6, 2019.

Good, R79. It deserves a resurgence.

Dancer from the Dance is kind of like the gay Great Gatsby in a way. The narrator has always reminded me of Nick Carraway. The novel is just so beautifully written and really does kind of "set up" what's to come in the plague years of '80s even though clearly Holleran had no idea what was about to happen.

I really enjoyed his short story collection, In September, the Light Changes (someone asked about his short fiction earlier in this thread). I'm not sure if it was that well received. If I recall correctly, there's a description of the AIDS crisis in one story, comparing it to a dinner party where guests are routinely taken from the table and shot to death outside. I'll never forget that.

One of Holleran's protégés, Philip Dean Walker, published a collection a couple years ago called At Danceteria and Other Stories which Andrew blurbed. It's quite good and Holleran's blurb is wonderful (his writing really is unequaled).

I believe that Holleran is one of three surviving members of The Violet Quill. The others are Edmund White and Felice Picano.

[quote] My little gay self was grateful for "At Swim, Two Boys"

I loved that book.

I could never get into the books that just seemed to me like a travelogue. "I fucked this one, then that one, then this one, and we were all so pretty." Felice Picano's books read like that to me.

I loved "How Long Has This Been Going On" by Ethan Mordden. Had the things many of us liked about Tales of the City but instead of reading like a weekly column (which Tales was) it was a much more fully developed story.

I know this came out years after Dancer was published and doesn’t line up exactly with the music of the period, but this is the song that plays in my head as I read the book.

Lance Loud deserves his own thread.

I'd like to see this with Charlie Carver and Randy Harrison or Colton Haynes.

Colton Haynes as Sutherland, right r85?

Yes, r86.

Who did you see Randy Harrison playing?

Damn, didn't realize Harrison is already over 40, scratch that.

God - is that possible R89? Seems like he was just the Uber-twink yesterday

Why do you think Malone and Sutherland are known by their last names while most other characters in the book (Frankie, John Schaeffer) are known by their first?

What an excellent question, r91. Over the years, one measure of intimacy for me and a friend was whether we were on a "last name basis" with someone. You get to know everyone's first name in Gayworld 1980, but how many of your friends and/or tricks' last names did you know?

I read it for the first time not so long ago, after so many gay men of the boomer generation urged me to read it. (I'm a Gen Xer.) It really does capture a certain moment in gay history really well, and I would agree his prose style (though borrowed from Proust, with story elements borrowed from Genet) really works well. It's not nearly so self-conscious as Edmund white, who also tries for a florid style and I always gets something very labored.

My trouble with "Dancer" is that i found neither Malone nor Sutherland very interesting after a few pages of them. They're basically two huge gay stereotypes--the confused masculine superstud who can have anyone at a snap of his fingers (like Querelle or Brian Kinney), and the aging queen who cracks wise to hide a breaking heart. I suppose that's why the book was so popular, but I didn't care at all what happened to them since I never aspired to be like either type (and it really was selling a kind of aspirational if melancholy fantasy of NYC gay life in the 70s).

[quote]Apparently the Kindle version will be out June 6, 2019.

R79, thank you for sharing this. I remember a few months back talking to a poster who is evidently acquainted with Holleran, and urging him to encourage Holleran to seek a digital publisher for at least some of his back catalog - he only had one or two things available as e-books (and none of his classics, like Dancer or Nights in Aruba). I don't know if we had any influence or not, but this is good news!

Where, exactly and specifically, is Dancer's "prose style borrowed from Proust," and its "story elements borrowed from Genet"?

BOOK NAMES AND PAGE NUMBERS, SVP.

[quote]It really does capture a certain moment in gay history really well, and I would agree his prose style (though borrowed from Proust, with story elements borrowed from Genet) really works well. It's not nearly so self-conscious as Edmund white, who also tries for a florid style and I always gets something very labored.

At the moment when it came out, spring or summer 1978, what it was capturing was the gay present moment. I had not read Genet or Proust (still haven't been able to get through Proust), and Edmund White was yet to happen in a big way (Forgetting Elena and Nocturnes for the King of Naples had been published, but I'll bet most of us only became aware of his novels after A Boy's Own Story in 1982).

The only gay novel I had read up to that point were City of Night and Numbers, by John Rechy, c. 1973, which scared me back in the closet for another few years. And those awful Gordon Merrick books.

So when Dancer from the Dance came out, it WAS my gay experience. I had had a very bad first gay love experience, so bad I moved away from the city where it took place. Malone and Sutherland seemed like very real characters to me, and the idea that true love is impossible if you're gay never seemed false to me

I like "The Beauty of Men" best.

OP here. Almost to the end of the book and the nihilistic feeling is coming on strong I think this one’s about to break my heart but it’s so beautiful I can’t quit.

People keep saying The Line Of Beauty. It was THE BEAUTY OF MEN that Holleran wrote. I agree with R97- The Beauty Of Men was his best novel. I liked it better than Dancer From The Dance. OP-Read The Beauty Of Men next.

I’ll check that one out, R99. Thanks.

Has anyone read his novel Grief? Some Amazon reviews call it his best work. Does it have a gay storyline?

I think all of his work deals with gay themes, n’est-ce pas?

Imagine what Mapplethorpe could have done with Malone had the latter really existed.

Oh, yeah. He could have stuck a whip up his ass. How exciting.

Was Malone an S&M'er?

When you finish that great book, read Faggots by Larry Kramer, another great book. Then read Swimming Pool Library by Allan Hollinghurst.

I loved The charioteer by mary renault when I was younger.

Was he gay, r106?

I read it in the '80s and found it prescient of the great dying that was going on.

What struck me then and stayed with me is the emphemerality of it all, but maybe that's just life in general.

And here I am in 2019 still posting messages.

Grief is good. The life of a lonely, middle aged gay man in DC. Not stunning - but relevant to DL readers. Most would enjoy. I thought it would be AIDS related - based on the title - but it is not. Brief distracting read for gay men.

[quote]Was Malone an S&M'er?

Well, Sutherland pimped him out left and right. I think he was an everything-er.

More than any other book, and not to sound trivial, but it captured going out dancing, what it felt like to go somewhere for a few hours with like-minds people and dance to music no one else knows.

[copy]When you finish that great book, read Faggots by Larry Kramer, another great book.

Is the Kramer book as good as Dancer?

[quote]Is the Kramer book as good as Dancer?

Not nearly as beautifully written, it deals with the same gay NYC/Fire Island demographic. The books came out months apart in 1978. The characters could have known each other.

[quote]The characters could have known each other.

While I’m not into fanfic, somebody please write this.

Some trivia about Holleran: his real name is Eric Garber, he took the nom de plume when he first got published because he wasn’t out to his parents. I think he was an only child and apparently he never came out to them. He’s a brilliant writer and my only complaint about him is he hardly ever publishes. I recently reread The Beauty of Men. Grief is very good also. I think the best short story I’ve ever read is one of his: “Friends At Evening.” Every word of it is perfect.

I read Dancer, Front Runner, Nights in Aruba when they came out in the '70's. All were good reads, but Dancer caught the times perfectly. I adore the book. It is a classic.

And I can't believe no one has mentioned a Sutherland line:

"My face seats five. My honey pot is running over."

Love that. lol

A lively thread on casting this novel just got paywalled. Should we continue here?

Hope the people from the other thread which has been paywalled see this.

R120 I posted the link to this thread on the other one.

Again, Jamie Dornan ten years ago, and before he became associated with that straight S&M thing.

Why the hell did they paywall the other thread? The topic could not be more gay.

Sam Heughan is too old and receding to play Malone, who is 38 in the last chapter of the novel.

I'm still voting for Nicholas Hoult. He has the look, the height, the acting ability, and the experience with American accents. He also has a certain remote quality I think would work well for Malone.

Was Malone tall? I don't remember.

The novel reads as a dream. The narration is layered, with characters relating stories other characters have told them. It reminded me a lot of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in that regard.

Beautifully written, and a never-to-be repeated chronicle of a time post Stonewall and pre AIDS. An interesting subtext is the emergence of disco from an underground scene to a more mainstream genre.

It also comments quietly but bitingly on the plight of the less-than-beautiful gays and how they were shunned by most.

Check it out of your local library.

Hoult looks too elfin and odd and not at all ethereal or fragile or idealistic, carries himself with more inherent guile than innocence.

Is it a reflection on Holleran’s genius in drawing Malone’s character that he’s proving so hard to cast?

Offbeat admittedly, but I can see Bill Skarsgard as Malone.

Yes. Bill Skarsgard. And haven't we already seen his dong on film?

It's always hard to cast The Most Beautiful Man Alive. Everybody's ideal is a bit different.

Yep, Bill would work. But Andrew will now come on and give us a reason why he wouldn't.