Holleran, Andrew 1943(?)–

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Holleran, Andrew 1943(?)–

(Eric Garber)

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1943 in Aruba. Education: Attended Harvard University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Pennsylvania. Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Gainesville, FL.

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, editor, educator, and short-story writer. American University, instructor in creative writing, 2000. Military service: U.S. Army, served in West Germany (now Germany) during the 1960s.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Ferro-Grumley Award for best gay novel, 1997, for The Beauty of Men.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Dancer from the Dance, Morrow (New York, NY), 1978, Perennial (New York, NY), 2001.

Nights in Aruba, Morrow (New York, NY), 1983, Perennial (New York, NY), 2001.

The Beauty of Men, Morrow (New York, NY), 1996.

Grief, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2006.

OTHER

(Author of introduction) Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart, New American Library (New York, NY), 1985.

Ground Zero (essays), Morrow (New York, NY), 1988.

(Author of afterword) George Stambolian, editor, Men on Men 4, Dutton (New York, NY), 1992.

In September, the Light Changes: The Stories of Andrew Holleran, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1999.

(Author of introduction) Donald Weise, editor, Fresh Men 2: New Voices in Gay Fiction, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor of short stories to anthologies, including Aphrodisiac: Fiction from Christopher Street, Coward, McCann (New York, NY), 1980; First Love/Last Love: New Fiction from Christopher Street, edited by Michael Denneny, Charles Ortleb, and Thomas Steele, Putnam (New York, NY), 1985; and Men on Men 3, edited by Stambolian, Plume (New York, NY), 1990. Work also represented in Hometowns: Gay Men Write about Where They Belong, edited by John Preston, Plume, 1992.

Contributor of essays to anthologies, including The Christopher Street Reader, edited by Denneny, Ortleb, and Steele, Coward, McCann, 1983; Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS, edited by John Preston, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1988; and A Member of the Family, edited by Preston, Dutton, 1992.

Contributor to periodicals, including Christopher Street, Village Voice, and Tribe.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eric Garber, who writes under the pseudonym Andrew Holleran, is acknowledged as one of the foremost authors in the modern gay literary movement. His work is significant in this arena because of his early success during a decidedly different era—that of an urban pre-AIDS homosexual subculture—and because of his continuation in chronicling the ravages that the fatal epidemic has wrought on the gay community. Holleran's first work, the novel Dancer from the Dance, depicts a heady atmosphere of casual sex and a yearning for true commitment. The follow-up, Nights in Aruba, written as AIDS began to irrevocably change lifestyles and attitudes, brought to light the traumas engendered by "coming out" to family as well as the separate realization that a new celibacy had taken the place of promiscuity. The cycle was completed with The Beauty of Men, a novel that explored the effect of advancing age on a veteran of the once-wild New York club scene. A collection of essays titled Ground Zero further explores the theme of radical and irreversible change that swept through gay culture during the 1980s. Little personal information is available about Holleran, who chooses to remain anonymous. However, the author admitted in a 1983 interview that much of his writing is autobiographical in nature.

Dancer from the Dance, published in 1978, was seen by many as one of the early "post-Liberation" novels. Following some notorious clashes with police on the streets of New York City in the summer of 1969, a movement took root among both gays and lesbians. Openly identifying themselves as homosexual, they organized politically and actively campaigned for the repeal of laws and attitudes that forced them to hide their sexuality. In New York City as well as in many other urban centers, a distinct gay culture emerged, and one of its effects was a vivid nightlife scene of bars, discos, and recreational drug use. In this atmosphere, widespread promiscuity was acceptable, either as an end to itself or as part of the search for "Mr. Right."

Dancer from the Dance is the fictionalized account of a young man's entrance into—and ultimate dissatisfaction with—this aspect of gay life. Holleran sketches the protagonist, Anthony Malone, as a distinct type: youthful, handsome, savvy, and completely intoxicated by the free climate. His education is guided by another archetype, the older, flamboyant, and sage Sutherland. Dancer from the Dance depicts the narcissism and glamour that sometimes preoccupied gay men, many of whom saw the book as an affirmation and celebration of their distinct community experience. As Malone becomes a "circuit queen," making the rounds of Manhattan parties and discos, Holleran offers a commentary on the sadness of gay life through Sutherland, who voices a serious interpretation of the inherent melancholy behind the "anything-goes" mood. In the end, the disillusioned Malone swims off into the night, realizing that his day in the limelight of narcissism will only last a short time.

Dancer from the Dance received considerable critical attention for a first novel. Writing in the New Republic, Paul Robinson called the novel "beautifully written, singleminded and at once evocative and hilarious." John Lahr, reviewing the work for the New York Times Book Review, noted that an "erotic heat percolates through these pages" and lauded Holleran's characterization of Malone as "a mystery that remains deliciously unsolved."

Nights in Aruba, the pseudonymous author's second work, was published in 1983. This quieter, more reflective novel centers around the dual life that its protagonist, Paul, leads between his fast-paced, promiscuous "out" life in New York City and his extended visits to aging parents in Florida. Admittedly bored by the hijinks of sex and drugs in the Manhattan disco scene, Paul's development centers around his coming to terms with his homosexuality, his Catholic upbringing, and his relationship with his parents. Although the spectre of AIDS does not figure into Nights in Aruba, Paul's growing maturity and contemplative nature reflect the significant changes which had begun to take root in the gay community with the realization that casual sex could now mean death. The protagonist is no longer just a beautiful and fleeting face in the night, but rather a character with a concrete and universally commonplace past. At the time of the novel's publication, Holleran noted in a Publishers Weekly interview that he considered Nights in Aruba a continuation of Dancer from the Dance. He also discussed the often-difficult autobiographical nature of his writing. "I tried to keep a distance while being very personal," he admitted, "to avoid being a man in the seat next to you on an airplane, yammering and yammering."

Nights in Aruba received less critical attention than Holleran's inaugural novel. Barbara Pepe, writing in the Village Voice, noted that Holleran's peripheral characters in the follow-up to Dancer from the Dance "are caricatured in the same stark, spare, sometimes cruel style." She commented that Nights in Aruba's "bittersweet complacency is the obvious resolution to" the protagonist's disjointed search for love and truth in the first work. New York Times Book Review critic Caroline Seebohm also praised Holleran's characterizations, while faulting the author's occasional repetition of phrase. She remarked that Nights in Aruba "lacks both the intensity and flashing wit of the earlier book," but concluded by stating that Holleran, having "thoroughly plundered" the ghost of his past, perhaps "can travel lighter."

Ground Zero, Holleran's third volume, appeared in 1988. A collection of essays that were originally published in the New York periodicals Christopher Street and Village Voice, they are ruminations on the crisis that has decimated and irrevocably altered the gay community. The work's title reflects the catastrophic element that the age of AIDS has introduced upon the author's milieu, but he also reflects upon the disease's effect on the larger community of its victims who are not gay. Holleran comments on the compulsory maturity that the epidemic has forced upon gay culture, and rails against the belief that this has been a painful yet ultimately positive metamorphosis. Other essays in the book discuss the writers Henry James and George Santayana as well as coming to terms with the lost friends and shared history of the era depicted in Dancer from the Dance. In a review of Ground Zero for Time, R.Z. Sheppard found that Holleran has a grasp of "the first law of writing about personal misfortune: appalling facts, tersely put, speak for themselves." Sheppard further praised Holleran's "keen, ironic intelligence." The essays also elicited praise from Brendan Lemon, who critiqued Ground Zero for the Nation. Lemon contended that the spectre of AIDS "has killed neither Holleran's bel esprit nor his acute lyrical sense," noting that the end result of the "uniquely gifted personal essayist's" collection is "tonic…. Even the author seems restored."

Lark, the protagonist of Holleran's 1997 novel The Beauty of Men, "could be Dancer's narrator or, indeed, its hero 15 years later," declared Booklist reviewer Ray Olson. Lark's friends have all died from AIDS, or suicide inspired by anxiety over AIDS. Lark himself lives in Florida, where he divides his time between daily visits to his quadriplegic mother and making the rounds of the local gay pickup spots. He is obsessed by the loss of his youth and ashamed of that obsession, as so many of his comrades never got the chance to grow old. Holleran commented to Publishers Weekly interviewer Bill Goldstein: "The Beauty of Men is a reflective novel, but about a man who is not able to reflect successfully. It's about his cell, his prison. I don't think his mind helps him. He seems to be intelligent, but he doesn't see. Lark seems a mystery to me. His depression is continuous, but I didn't want to explain it."

Olson found Lark to be "pathetic," and made note that "only Holleran among gay novelists could make riveting reading out of an entire novel focused on him—which is precisely what Holleran, still a gorgeous writer, has done." A Publishers Weekly writer credited Holleran with creating a "profoundly sad, elegant and insightful new novel." Lark is "a chillingly emblematic Everyman, failing to find meaning and purpose in a world devastated by AIDS. Holleran's trademark prose—lush, carefully cadenced and keenly observed—creates a mesmerizingly claustrophobic world where the trapped elderly residents of Lark's mother's nursing home, the lonely men Lark encounters in his fruitless search for love and the overwhelming anonymity of suburban America have equal power to break the heart." New York Times Book Review contributor Alan Hollinghurst declared that The Beauty of Men offers something of great significance to any reader, whatever their sexual orientation might be: the description of "a modern atrophy of the spirit, and what I think Mr. Holleran wants to identify as a particularly American stupefaction and emptiness. From Lark's lost life he distills a reluctant but persuasive poetry."

Short stories written over a wide span of years were collected in the 1999 book In September, the Light Changes: The Stories of Andrew Holleran. As in Holleran's other work, the overriding concerns in these stories are loss of health, youth, and friends; yet New York Times Book Review writer Peter Parker found In September "less dispiriting" than The Beauty of Men. "None of the stories could be described as comic, yet they do contain some very funny moments. A number of them consist largely of conversations in which Holleran's sharp ear for the cadences, vocabulary, and preoccupations of his characters' language instantly brings them alive." The author's observations on gay life are "unflinching, provocative, witty and shrewd," in Parker's estimation. A Publishers Weekly reviewer voiced some reservations, finding that Holleran's stories were "sometimes predicable in their lyricism" and "are capably fashioned but do not break new ground"; and a Booklist writer called the pieces in the collection "hit-or-miss, ranging in quality from the banal to the brilliantly constructed." Roger W. Durbin in the Library Journal gave a more ringing endorsement to In September, declaring it to be full of "poignancy, ribald humor, pensiveness, keen discernment, and unsettling apprehension…. What ultimately shines … is a seasoned, indomitable spirit."

Grief, Holleran's 2006 novel and his first in ten years, explores the "pain of a generation of gay men who have survived the AIDS epidemic and reached middle age yearning for fidelity, tenderness, and intimacy," observed a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. The novel's unnamed protagonist has spent twelve years in Florida caring for his ailing mother. After her death, he accepts a teaching position in Washington, DC, in order to get away and start life over. He rents a room in an architecturally gorgeous townhouse owned by a celibate, middle-aged gay man who is "slowly and quietly grieving over the loss of youthful energy, attractiveness, and prowess," noted Brad Hooper in Booklist. Though the narrator and his landlord share a superficial relationship and have much in common through many friends and acquaintances lost to AIDS, they know they will never form a true bond of intimacy and caring. The narrator finds himself engrossed in a volume of letters by Mary Todd Lincoln, whose profound grief after the death of her husband Abraham Lincoln never abated the remainder of her life. The narrator sees much in common with himself and Mrs. Lincoln, as he strongly regrets not coming out to his mother before her death. Even stronger is the mixed grief and guilt he feels for surviving the 1980s and 1990s while so many of his friends perished from AIDS. Grief, the narrator discovers, is something that everyone must face at sometime or another, but it is the reaction to it, and the ability to overcome it, that gives hope even in its darkest hours.

Grief "astonishes" with its direct, unwavering look at "our growing older and the losses we experienced so early in our lives," commented Greg Mitchell in Publishers Weekly. "Holleran exquisitely captures the many nuances of loss," remarked Thom Geier in Entertainment Weekly. Throughout the story, "Holleran's prose is unerringly marvelous," commented Paul Russell, writing in the Lambda Book Report. A writer in Kirkus Reviews named Grief "a haunting, exquisite novel about the nature of loss, grief, and the illusion of intimacy" and "a quiet story well told." For Advocate critic Chris Freeman, the novel stands as "an intellectually and emotionally satisfying meditation on aging, loss, love, and American history." Salon.com reviewer Laura Miller concluded: "Grief is a short novel, but like a single note struck on a perfect silver bell, it carries far."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 38, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1986.

Levin, James, The Gay Novel in America, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1991.

Nelson, Emanuel S., editor, Contemporary Gay American Novelists, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1993.

PERIODICALS

Advocate, July 4, 2006, Chris Freeman, "Good Grief," review of Grief, p. 57.

Booklist, June 1, 1996, Ray Olson, review of The Beauty of Men, p. 1643; June 1, 1999, Michael Spinella, review of In September, the Light Changes: The Stories of Andrew Holleran, p. 1786; May 15, 2006, Brad Hooper, review of Grief, p. 23.

Entertainment Weekly, June 9, 2006, Thom Geier, review of Grief, p. 143.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2006, review of Grief, p. 314.

Lambda Book Report, summer, 2006, Paul Russell, review of Grief, p. 13.

Library Journal, June 1, 1999, Roger W. Durbin, review of In September, the Light Changes, p. 182; June 1, 2006, Debbie Bogenschutz, review of Grief, p. 107.

Nation, November 21, 1988, Brendan Lemon, review of Ground Zero, p. 538.

New Republic, September 30, 1978, Paul Robinson, review of Dancer from the Dance, p. 33.

New York Times, June 3, 2006, Bill Goldstein, "Writer of Gay Classic Evokes Mrs. Lincoln," review of Grief, p. B7.

New York Times Book Review, January 14, 1979, John Lahr, review of Dancer from the Dance, p. 15; September 25, 1983, Caroline Seebohm, review of Nights in Aruba, p. 14; August 28, 1988, Robert Minkoff, review of Ground Zero, p. 19; June 30, 1996, Alan Hollinghurst, review of The Beauty of Men, p. 7; July 25, 1999, Peter Parker, "The Party's Over: A Collection of Stories about Gay Men in the Wane of the Century," review of In September, the Light Changes, p. 25.

Publishers Weekly, June 3, 1983, review of Nights in Aruba, p. 64; July 29, 1983, review of Dancer from the Dance, p. 72; April 29, 1996, review of The Beauty of Men, p. 49; May 3, 1999, review of In September, the Light Changes, p. 66; April 3, 2006, Greg Mitchell, review of Grief, p. 10, and review of Grief, p. 36; May 8, 2006, Michael Scharf, "Coming to Grief: PW Talks with Andrew Holleran," p. 44.

Time, July 18, 1988, review of Ground Zero, p. 68.

Village Voice, October 25, 1983, review of Nights in Aruba, p. 52.