The Beauty of Men ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

The lead character in Andrew Holleran’s 1996 novel, The Beauty of Men, is a forty-seven-year-old homosexual named Lark. He lives in New York, until “the plague” comes along and changes everything, taking the lives of many (most) of his friends. When his mother has a terrible accident that leaves her completely paralyzed, he “escapes” from New York and goes to live with her in a small Florida town. (He rationalizes later in the book that she “had the accident” to take him out of the New York world of men, to a place where he would be “safe.”)

In the bleak Florida town where Lark lives, he is mostly alone, except for the several hours a day he spends in the nursing home where his mother is confined. The rest of the time he is on his own to reminisce about the friends who have died, read, watch television, and reflect on his wasted, unfulfilling life. He believes he is in love with a thirty-four-year-old man named Becker, with whom he had one tense sexual encounter. The problem with Becker is he doesn’t seem to live Lark very much and isn’t interested in seeing him again. Becker has a lover with a handlebar mustache—don’t you know?—and a pubescent daughter he is trying to raise without a mother.

In his loneliness, Lark humiliates himself by frequenting gay bars and bathhouses, where he is like a ghost because his hair has turned white and he is so much older than the rest of the men there. He also turns up frequently at the “boat ramp,” an isolated, wooded area where men go to meet each other for quick, anonymous sex. (Going to the boat ramp is demeaning and dangerous.) He’s hoping to hook up with Becker once again but, of course, that isn’t going to happen.

The plot of The Beauty of Men shifts back and forth between Lark’s frustrating and disappointing life and the problems he has in dealing with his paralyzed mother. She wants to return home to die, but if Lark allows that he will lose whatever freedom he has. Does he find happiness and fulfillment at the end of the novel? Don’t count on it. It’s a dark, realistic excursion into one man’s unhappy life. There will be no Hollywood ending.  

Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp

Dancer From the Dance ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Andrew Holleran’s 1978 novel, Dancer From the Dance, is a compelling, beautifully written modern classic for the grownups in the audience. It’s the story of a group of friends in the libertine 1970s, a world that has vanished from the social landscape as completely as the flappers and debutante balls of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz age.   

Anthony Malone (always called simply “Malone”) is a blond Adonis, a “Nordic warrior,” whose blond hair and extraordinary good looks make him, all too briefly, the darling of the hedonistic homosexual world in New York City in the 1970s (before the “plague”). When Malone comes to New York looking for love, he meets Frankie, a blue-collar, under-educated man who leaves his wife and child to be with Malone. They are happy living together for a while, until Malone is no longer satisfied and begins experimenting sexually with a lot of different men. Frankie tells Malone, “If you ever leave me, I will kill you.”  (As lurid as this might sound, there are NO descriptions of sex acts anywhere in this novel.)  

Sutherland has been part of the New York homosexual “demimonde” for a long time. He knows all the principal players and their peccadillos. He is flamboyant, jaded, outrageous; he frequently takes on the guise of a woman. When Malone escapes from Frankie (after a beating that Frankie administers upon finding out that Malone has been unfaithful), Sutherland takes Frankie home with him, nurses his wounds, and becomes his mentor. He instructs Malone and introduces him to all the important people in their insular world. They are together constantly without ever becoming sexual partners.

Malone, under Sutherland’s tutelage, immerses himself in the world of dancing, parties, discos, Fire Island, and chance, uninhibited sexual encounters with any number of complete strangers. These people go dancing at four in the morning and exhaust themselves before the sun comes up. It’s a superficial world, a “world of the eye,” whose inhabitants trade on their youth and good looks. (When youth fades—when the hair thins and the muscles built up at the gym turn to flab—what do they have?)

In this nighttime world of dancing, glamor, gossip, excitement and youth, Malone is a “star.” Everybody knows him and desires him. But he, alas, is “unfulfilled.” He is always looking for that “something” that he can never find. He becomes a “call boy,” a polite name for a male prostitute. By the time he is in his late thirties, he is “burned out,” a jaded queen who never finds the “love” (or whatever it is) that he once set out to find.

Malone is a Gatsby-like figure, a “romantic,” an enigma, a misfit, a constantly searching, lost soul, looking for that green light at the end of the pier. It’s fitting that at the end of the novel he is last seen swimming out into the Atlantic Ocean away from Fire Island. Nobody knows exactly what happens to him, although there are plenty of rumors.  

Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp