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A review by pnwbibliophile
Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
3.75
I appreciate this for its feisty and fleshed-out characters, vivid imagery, distinctive voice, and its ability to capture a time of newfound liberation for the queer community. It has aged well in that it has this Great Gatsby-eque air, memorializing a time of wonton frivolity while also critiquing it. Even if the characters and author didn’t know it, the dark specter of the looming AIDS epidemic looms in the periphery for the modern reader, knowing it will bring the community to its knees. How history after a novel’s publishing can alter or highlight its themes and meaning is an intriguing subject here and that’s where the aging of the novel has done it justice. Here, it unintentionally harkens to Gatsby again as the Great Depression was unknown to Fitzgerald when he published it just as the AIDS crisis was unknown to Andrew Holleran in 1978.
I did enjoy this novel, but what made it stand out was simultaneously a detractor. There is so much sex, partying, and drugs, that it almost fails to accomplish either of the two intentions of its inclusion - memorializing this time and specific moment in queer culture and critiquing the recklessness of it all while showing how one can lose themselves in it. I say almost because it still pulled it off, but the inclusion of so much vulgarity got a bit, “okay I get the point, move on.” That was the point, I believe, to make you feel like the narrator, constantly bombarded by frivolity, but it was overdone. This unfortunately makes the novel lose wider appeal, while also feeling like the author is being overly critical of the party and sex culture of the time, making it lose some nuance in its critique. As a result, this isn’t something I could have my straight friends read and grasp. That is fine, after all, some things are just meant for “us,” but I actually think even a relatively liberal straight person would read this and it could overload them so much it could actually send them down the alt-right pipeline. Which is to say that the novel lost restraint. A better novelist could have pulled off everything in the novel and made even a moderate conservative grasp its meaning.
The other critique I have is the relative lack of plot. It is a character-driven novel. Having recently read My Government Means to Kill Me, which has similar themes, highlighted the lackluster plot for me. Both novels are so similar that I am certain the latter was incluenced by the former, but unfortunately the latter was better executed, especially with regard to plot.
Overall, I enjoyed this, but the overdone components also weighed it down a bit too much for me to love it. I do appreciate it, immensely and found the voices of the circuit queen characters to be absolutely divine.
I did enjoy this novel, but what made it stand out was simultaneously a detractor. There is so much sex, partying, and drugs, that it almost fails to accomplish either of the two intentions of its inclusion - memorializing this time and specific moment in queer culture and critiquing the recklessness of it all while showing how one can lose themselves in it. I say almost because it still pulled it off, but the inclusion of so much vulgarity got a bit, “okay I get the point, move on.” That was the point, I believe, to make you feel like the narrator, constantly bombarded by frivolity, but it was overdone. This unfortunately makes the novel lose wider appeal, while also feeling like the author is being overly critical of the party and sex culture of the time, making it lose some nuance in its critique. As a result, this isn’t something I could have my straight friends read and grasp. That is fine, after all, some things are just meant for “us,” but I actually think even a relatively liberal straight person would read this and it could overload them so much it could actually send them down the alt-right pipeline. Which is to say that the novel lost restraint. A better novelist could have pulled off everything in the novel and made even a moderate conservative grasp its meaning.
The other critique I have is the relative lack of plot. It is a character-driven novel. Having recently read My Government Means to Kill Me, which has similar themes, highlighted the lackluster plot for me. Both novels are so similar that I am certain the latter was incluenced by the former, but unfortunately the latter was better executed, especially with regard to plot.
Overall, I enjoyed this, but the overdone components also weighed it down a bit too much for me to love it. I do appreciate it, immensely and found the voices of the circuit queen characters to be absolutely divine.