From dancing to grieving
Andrew Holleran discusses the gay generation gap, coming out in a library and whether we should mourn like Jackie O or Mary Todd Lincoln.
By Trenton Straube
Read more: New York, Books, Gay Culture, Interviews, Authors, Books Interviews
July 29, 2006 | The publication this summer of a new book by Eric Garber marks a much-anticipated event. Garber, now in his mid-60s, has spent his career documenting a generation of gay men, beginning with "Dancer From the Dance," a 1970s New York coming-out tale that has been likened to a gay "Great Gatsby." He later published a poetic but witty collection of vignettes and essays about AIDS titled "Ground Zero" as well as two other novels, "Nights in Aruba" and "The Beauty of Men," which could be called autobiographical fiction.
Never heard of Eric Garber? That's probably because you know him as Andrew Holleran, the pen name he's used since writing "Dancer," a name that's beloved in literary and gay circles alike.
His new book, coming seven years after his last, is a slim but elegant offering. (See Laura Miller's review here.) "Grief" follows an unnamed narrator, a man in his 50s who has temporarily moved to Washington, D.C., to teach a university class. He's mourning the loss of his mother and, like the landlord he rents a room from, he's contemplating his existence as a gay man in midlife. The narrator finds a few random books in his new, furnished bedroom, including "Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters." He discovers surprising relevance in the words and world of the widowed first lady, even drawing comparisons between her husband's assassination and the AIDS epidemic (not as far-fetched as it sounds).
Given the nature of Holleran's work, one might expect him to be quite serious. He's not. When I called for our interview, he began the conversation joking, "You're one minute late!" He's a fast talker, enthusiastic and inquisitive. (I'm an openly gay editor of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender publications in New York and he seemed as curious about my world as I of his.)
His recent appearance at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York City drew a standing-room-only crowd of fans and distinguished writers and thinkers. Though Holleran now divides his time between D.C. and Florida, he told the crowd that coming to Manhattan for a reading was like an episode of "This Is Your Life." There in the audience were many old friends, including writer Edmund White and activist/author Larry Kramer. In the early '80s Holleran and White, whose gay pride essay in the Village Voice last month argued that gay literature is undergoing a renaissance, belonged to the Violet Quill, a seven-man gay writing group.
Before reading from "Grief" Holleran explained to the crowd, "The book is about untreated depression -- the narrator is a mess," he laughed, only partly joking. "The story is as much about personal loss as it is about collective loss, a generation's grief from AIDS." The narrator comes to realize that "you stop living in a certain way when someone important dies," as Holleran also did when his mother died and when, earlier in his life, he lost countless friends and acquaintances to AIDS. "I really do believe that grieving is keeping someone [the deceased person] alive," he said.
Despite Holleran's having a new novel out, several people in the audience asked him about "Dancer," the book for which he is most well known. The story follows the handsome Malone as he discovers New York's gay underground scene, including the infamous Everard Baths, after-hours discotheques and Fire Island. A wise and wisecracking queen named Sutherland helps the elusive Malone navigate from naive wonderment to jaded sensuality.
"Dancer" predates AIDS, which was first diagnosed 25 years ago this year. Yet one audience member at the LGBT Center reading noted that an ominous tone imbues the story. "Did you have a premonition?" she asked Holleran.
"It had something to do with what was happening in 'Faggots,'" he said, referring to Kramer's 1978 tale of homo hedonism. Holleran recalled for his audience an incident from that period: "A friend came up to me at Fire Island and said, 'Last night, I had sex with an elbow.' And I thought, 'Is this where it's going?' There was almost no way to rein it in. It's not healthy after a while."
Over the phone, Holleran reflected some more on "Dancer," discussed how scary the Internet can be when you're coming out, and mused on the gap between older and younger gay men.
Let's begin with the letters of Mary Todd Lincoln. How did you discover them, and why did you decide to use her in "Grief"?
I was reading Mrs. Lincoln's letters in two places. In Washington, and then a friend of mine in a little town I live in in Florida is a Civil War nut and has a roomful of Civil War books. So I started just as the narrator did. I had a terrible struggle in "Grief" as to how to use those letters. I wanted the reader to get the sense of the letters themselves.
Mary Todd Lincoln was such a diva. The few excerpts from the letters in "Grief" were so entertaining.
They were! Not all are like what I quoted, which are mostly over-the-top. I can't recommend them enough. Do you know the book "Little Me" by ["Auntie Mame" author] Patrick Dennis? A camp classic. There was an unconscious element of "Little Me" in Mary Todd Lincoln, a diva quality that was campy and hilarious. She did definitely take herself seriously as the widow of Lincoln.
But she never moved past being "the widow," and your narrator seems close to repeating that mistake, even though it's his mother who has recently died.
Early on in "Grief" there's a conversation about the merits of Jackie O vs. Mary Lincoln. Jackie Kennedy seems all the more admirable because she did move on after her husband died, and Mary Lincoln did not.
You've referred to the narrator's friend Frank as the Thelma Ritter of the novel. Like that no-nonsense character actress, Frank doles out sage and sassy advice. Some of the book's main pleasures are the conversations between Frank and the narrator exploring grief and relationships. Frank advocates the Jackie O moving-on approach. Which do you lean toward?
There's a wonderful Yeats line in which he says, "A poem is simply overhearing a poet argue with himself." That is the answer. I'm both people. Technically, Frank is right, you must move on. But the emotional part of me is with the narrator.
One intriguing part of "Grief" comes when the narrator teaches a seminar on literature and AIDS. He mentions a novel from the '70s that a reviewer criticized because its characters were motivated by lust.
That was "Dancer," to be honest. The line was something that happened to me, a reviewer from Ohio. I thought, "God, this is so judgmental and dismissive." Then I thought, "In a strange, reductive, crazy way, she [the reviewer] is on to something."
One of the narrator's students agrees with the review, adding that the men shouldn't have been promiscuous if they wanted love and that they should have sensed the looming of disease -- AIDS. Since you teach writing classes, I'm wondering whether that reaction too was based on real life?
Yes, it was a fictional version of something that also happened to me. When I was teaching I had a class where a student said a similar thing. I assumed this was a straight student who was being judgmental and sort of homophobic. But then [a teacher] said, "No, he's gay." I said, "Oh my God. That makes it so much more poignant." Here is a young gay man who is himself morally in judgment of gay life and gay men, making it harder, I assume, for him to be gay. I was never able to work that subplot into "Grief." It was going to be the big surprise.