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A review by angela_amman
At Danceteria and Other Stories by Philip Dean Walker
5.0
Despite my abiding love for 80s music and staunch loyalty to Madonna in all of her iterations, my actual memories of the 1980s involve suburban roller skating rinks and Cabbage Patch dolls. At Danceteria delves into the side of the 1980s I didn’t live: the early days of the AIDS epidemic and the insidious effect the disease had on the lives of the gay men trying to navigate their lives between the pulsing beat of club culture and the uncertainty of a new reality.
Walker places celebrities into fictional situations, situations in which their appearance startles. Against the backdrop of dance music and the energy of New York City, their celebrity becomes secondary to their humanity, but they can never be completely disentangled from their public selves.
In “Jackie and Jerry and the Anvil,” probably my favorite of the seven stories, Jackie Kennedy Onassis observes, “If I were you, Jerry, I’d do it all. I’d do everything.” We feel the “if” viscerally, knowing Jackie O could not, in fact, do everything, and Walker’s prose makes us nostalgic for all the bits of everything we have never done either.
Sparse, yet evocative, At Danceteria and Other Stories highlights the harsh beauty present in the painful reality of aging, sickness, and fading relevancy. My own nostalgia can’t compete with the collection of stories, and perhaps that’s why it hit me as hard as it did. Each of our moments, each of our realities, can only be experienced by us, and maybe by listening to and understanding the parallel lives of those around us, we can come to a better understanding of the world in which we live.
Walker places celebrities into fictional situations, situations in which their appearance startles. Against the backdrop of dance music and the energy of New York City, their celebrity becomes secondary to their humanity, but they can never be completely disentangled from their public selves.
In “Jackie and Jerry and the Anvil,” probably my favorite of the seven stories, Jackie Kennedy Onassis observes, “If I were you, Jerry, I’d do it all. I’d do everything.” We feel the “if” viscerally, knowing Jackie O could not, in fact, do everything, and Walker’s prose makes us nostalgic for all the bits of everything we have never done either.
Sparse, yet evocative, At Danceteria and Other Stories highlights the harsh beauty present in the painful reality of aging, sickness, and fading relevancy. My own nostalgia can’t compete with the collection of stories, and perhaps that’s why it hit me as hard as it did. Each of our moments, each of our realities, can only be experienced by us, and maybe by listening to and understanding the parallel lives of those around us, we can come to a better understanding of the world in which we live.