Rating: 
Summary: Dancer from the Dance Transcends Time and Place
Review: Plot Summary & Novel InfoMalone, a successful young man raised in a conservative environment, decides to drop everything and live a gay life. He roams to New York, where he meets Sutherland, an old queen who teaches him how to be gay. Originally published in 1978. Setting: U.S., 1970s. *** Why This Novel is Important in the Study of Gay and Lesbian Literature It shows what gay life was like in the decade after the Stonewall incident of 1969. It reveals characters in all walks of gay life, including the gay drug-user, the transvestite, the gay businessman, etc. It demonstrates one possible path for a gay man in the 1970s: to come out, get laid for the first time with a stranger, join the circuit, meet other gays of every possible stereotype through sex, become a hooker, and eventually become an old and wizened gay, who no longer desires sex as a means to intimacy and personal happiness. *** What It Adds to the Genre A beautifully written exploration of the gay world, presented as mostly glamorous, exciting, fulfilling, 'out' and above ground (not underground). Details of specific places and people who were gay or gay-friendly, i.e., New York's Fire Island and celebrity Liza Minnelli. A mix of absurdity and realism. *** What Critics Think Older critics (i.e., Allen Smalling), who lived through the 1970s, tend to praise the novel. Younger critics (i.e., JGarpo@aol.com) tend to say it's shallow and presents a hollow, stereotypical, and outdated view of gay life. *** What I Think I worried about having to read this book for class, because I'm not a fan of the 1970s and hippie culture. Dancer from the Dance turned out to have almost no element of any of that, rather, being a work that transcends its own time and place. *** Interesting Notes Andrew Holleran is a pseudonym. The author's real name is Eric Gerber. He was born in 1943 in Aruba. In terms of content, the book is similar to Petronius' Satyricon, which is also comprised of a series of random adventures and dealings with Priapus, the god of the phallus. However, Holleran's book is more soulful. *** The End Thank you, everyone!
Rating:
Summary: Greatest gay novel
Review: that I've ever read, anyway! Being in my late teens in the late 70s i managed to catch the last few fleeting pre-aids years described in this book. On the first reading i was just stunned by the beauty of the writing, and like many people i suppose, i recognised many of the characters. Andrew Holleran obviously knew this world intimately, and even though much of the novel is rather painful and sad observation, it's a beautiful and real pain and sadness that many of us who lived through that period still feel from time to time when recollecting. Don't get me wrong though, it's hilariously funny too. There's alot of humour to be found in the madness of the club scene of the time, the drugs, the sex, the total abandon. I'm throwing my head back even now and singing Patty Jo's "Make me Believe that you Love Me"! Edmund White doesn't say this is one of his favourite gay novels for nothing! It's a masterpiece, and i still re-read it annually, and savour every page.
Rating: 
Summary: A little less self indulgence please
Review: The Tragic Homosexual, the Drag Queen, brave in the face of adversity, always ready with a wise crack. The gay man who wants love, yet cheats on his boyfriend, then blames him for being distant. I realize that this book was written many years ago and therefore I can't exactly call these characters cliched however this is one of the books that helped make them so. Perhaps this book would have had more meaning if I had grown up during the times it is written about however. I just can't develop sympathy for these characters. Basically the main character, leaves his job as a successfull lawyer and decends into a world of drugs, and sex, supposedly searching for the perfect man. Although he becomes so caught up in the scene he evn begins dying his T-Shirts so the colors can be just so. Then begins sleeping with only ugly looking men because perhaps they're the one. His Drag queen mentor had some funny lines, but these were mixed in with the typical stories of how she would pack a lunch and go down and spend the whole day in the toilets of Grand Central Station. It seemed to be meant as a statement on life but at least in my view it was a swing and a miss. I Have read much gay fiction and I have to say I enjoyed this book nearly least of all.
Rating:
Summary: A little less self indulgence please
Review: The Tragic Homosexual, the Drag Queen, brave in the face of adversity, always ready with a wise crack. The gay man who wants love, yet cheats on his boyfriend, then blames him for being distant. I realize that this book was written many years ago and therefore I can't exactly call these characters cliched however this is one of the books that helped make them so. Perhaps this book would have had more meaning if I had grown up during the times it is written about however. I just can't develop sympathy for these characters. Basically the main character, leaves his job as a successfull lawyer and decends into a world of drugs, and sex, supposedly searching for the perfect man. Although he becomes so caught up in the scene he evn begins dying his T-Shirts so the colors can be just so. Then begins sleeping with only ugly looking men because perhaps they're the one. His Drag queen mentor had some funny lines, but these were mixed in with the typical stories of how she would pack a lunch and go down and spend the whole day in the toilets of Grand Central Station. It seemed to be meant as a statement on life but at least in my view it was a swing and a miss. I Have read much gay fiction and I have to say I enjoyed this book nearly least of all.
Rating: 
Summary: The pinnacle of gay literature?
Review: This book is often considered the best post-stonewall work of fiction by a gay author. If so, I'm not sure I understand why it's worthy of such high praise, though it is a powerful book. The book portrays the downward spiral of an extremely promising and handsome gay man. His apparent sexual addiction and depression destroy any promise he had and he remains painfully closeted from his family. Similar to Larry Kramer's epic, Faggots, it is often considered a classic, but in a Post-Aids light, it seems more of an important period piece portraying the pain of gay life in the allegedly liberated 70s. Even if one's goal is not to be "well-read" in gay lit., picking up this moving work is well worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous!
Review: This is definately one of the best gay novels out there. I appreciated it as a very open look at the partying gay lifestyle of the 70's. The best way to describe it would be Tales of the City meets Queer as Folk. I give it 4 stars because it does revolve around the sex, drugs, and disco lifestyle that alot of people don't find particularly positive. And also the characters really are a sea of dancing faces with no real depth. But if you can get past that and see the book for the slice of brutally honest gay history that it is and appreciate the lives that were lived that way it really is a fabulous, fabulous book.
Rating:
Summary: Ghettoized glamor
Review: This novel holds its place in gay literature only because it appeared early in the development of a relatively new genre. It has an extremely narrow focus that glamorizes a vain and superficial segment of the gay male world, but it functions as such a discovery and elucidation of this world to the reading public that it will probably survive as a document of its times. It was Holleran's first novel and reads like one. I became so impatient with the author's writing style, which seems to consist of lists, that I might not have finished the book but for the seductive sheen of the party circuit in which it occurs.
Rating:
Summary: A love letter from the REAL "golden age of promiscuity"
Review: Where to begin? I've read this book at least six times since that first all-night session in the late seventies and it still gives my heart a pang to look at the original cover. The book works on so many levels that I've never hesitated to recommend/give/nag my straight, gay, and will-bed-anything-that-moves friends into reading it--and they have ALL thanked me for the experience. The achingly rendered images of New York in the seventies--Puerto Rican mothers sitting on the stairs on hot summer nights giving their babies Coca-Cola straight from the bottle, dancing all night at Flamingo then walking home thru the empty skyscrapers on bright Sunday mornings, the way sex feels when it's exactly what you need with exactly the right person. Some people say DFTD is dated, it's pre-AIDS so it's irrelevant, promotes tired gay stereotypes, etc. They fail to recognize that a classic--and this book is one--never goes out of style. It's a beautifully written time capsule of a book that should and will delight readers for many many years to come. Read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Eh !
Review: Wound up skimming the last hundred pages. I found this book to be kind of annoying and dumb. I honestly can't imagine why this is considered a gay "classic". I found the writing style dull (little dialogue, mostly narrative sometimes going on for pages and pages!), and the characters flat and unbelievable. At times this book is funny and insightful, and every once in a while I bordered on actually liking some of the characters, but it just never worked for me. Sorry folks! I recommend Like People in History by Felice Picano, And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts, and The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren for real gay classics.
| 
