JULY 4, 1997
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
25
BOOKS
Novel is superbly written,
but tragic and depressing
The Beauty of Men
by Andrew Holleran
Plume, $12.95 trade paperback
Reviewed by Lincoln Pettaway
In his first work of fiction in fourteen years, gay author Andrew Holleran follows the success of his earlier works Dancer from the Dance, Nights of Aruba, and Ground Zero with a poignant story about the loss of youth, and the fear of facing our own mortality.
The Beauty of Men is an exquisitely written, but tragic and depressing novel. Beauty takes the reader to a place where old gay men go to die. The book is a narcissistic graveyard filled with lots of ideas about what beauty isn't, while prodding the reader to consider what real beauty is. What beauty isn't is all that the main character seems to find.
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ANDREW HOLLERAN
Holleran is one of the founders of the Lavender Quill Salon, along with fellow gay authors Edmund White and Felice Picano, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. His novel Dancer from the Dance was one of the first gay cross-over bestsellers in the late 1970s, establishing him as a literary icon for gay men. The New York Native said of Holleran, "Surely he is the most compassionately insightful post-Stonewall writer of them all." Holleran visited An Open Book in Columbus during Pride weekend.
In The Beauty of Men, Holleran (the author's nom de plume) gives us a lead character named Lark. A gay man in his forties, Lark is unable to gain control of his life in Manhattan, and to deal with the seemingly endless parade of friends he has lost to AIDS.
As the tale progresses, Lark moves from New York City to his childhood home of Gainesville, Florida to care for his ailing mother-a somewhat autobiographical detail in that Holleran did move from New York City to Florida, where he maintains a residence today.
The move from New York to northern Florida is one that drives Lark back into the deep recesses of the closet. While he tries to convince himself that his mother is the reason for the move, it becomes apparent that she is not the real reason that Lark stays in Gainesville. Lark stays there because he is afraid, scared to live in a culture where youth and looks define a person. Lark's self-imposed exile in
Florida is an alternative to what he saw as an empty life in New York.
In Gainesville, Lark is ruled by his fear of getting old. He is obsessed with image, basing his self-esteem on the way he looks rather than his achievements. Lark is unable to see fortyseven years of life experience as anything other than gray chest hair. The fact that he has outlived most of his friends only compounds his grief, which functions as a subtle reminder that he is old and alone.
He later blames himself for not being in New York City with his friends who have contracted HIV or have been greatly affected by AIDS in other ways. His best friend Sutcliffe dies of AIDS while Lark is in Florida. Another friend, Joshua, commits suicide, leaving Lark unable to resolve his feelings over these deaths, and reconcile his guilt over remaining HIVnegative.
Lark finally realizes that part of the reason he was so willing to leave the city and an out gay existence to return to Gainesville, is because he's emotionally unequipped to deal with the reality of AIDS. Lark believes this virus has done more than take the lives of his friends: this virus has taken his life as well, by complicating his once carefree existence with questions and qualifiers.
The bleak tone which Holleran takes in his novel suggests that Lark's move was less of a relocation and more of a preparation for his own impending death.
Just when you thought that it couldn't get any worse, Lark's love interest turns out to be a one-sided preoccupation. Becker, a handsome, virile local, sleeps with Lark once and finds himself the focal point on which Lark has built a year-long delusional romantic fantasy.
A Navy Seal who is much more practical than Lark, Becker sees his one night stand exactly for what it is a one night stand. Lark, on the other hand, has fantasized about a relationship with Becker, wanting and expecting more. Lark's depression only deepens when Becker's feelings don't measure up to his expectations.
The Beauty of Men turns out to be less about Lark's desire to find beauty in men, young or old, but about his desire to be loved unconditionally. He remembers the conditions he placed on his sexual partners in his young life. Lark can't believe that anyone would have sex with him now that he's older, least of all love him. Lark is unable to find love because he does not know what he is looking for. As far as Lark knows, beauty is admired, and having been admired, that is as close as he has ever came to real love.
The Beauty of Men, while superbly written, is ultimately the eulogy of a life devoid of love, and a gay man who has not learned to accept being alone.
Lincoln Pettaway is a Chronicle contributing writer living in Cleveland.
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