Word: holleran
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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GROUND ZERO by Andrew Holleran (Morrow; $16.95). A tragicomic tour -- in the form of essays -- through Manhattan's once bustling gay night spots, now somber and charged with the emotional fallout of AIDS...
GROUND ZERO by Andrew Holleran (Morrow; $16.95). A tragicomic tour, in the form of essays, through Manhattan's once bustling gay night spots, now somber, subdued and charged with the emotional fallout of AIDS...
Borrowed Time demands a sympathetic response instead of inviting one. Holleran and Hoffman, on the other hand, understand the first law of writing about personal misfortune: appalling facts, tersely put, speak for themselves. Holleran has the advantage of being a gifted novelist (Dancer from the Dance) with a keen, ironic intelligence. "Someday," he says, "writing about this plague may be read with pleasure, by people for whom it is a distant catastrophe, but I suspect the best writing will be nothing more, nor less, than a lament . . . The only other possible enduring thing would be a simple list of names...
...Holleran knows the limits of stoicism. He qualifies the old saying "Life is a tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to those who think" with "Too schematic . . . most of us think and feel." Ground Zero is the proof. It is a tragicomic tour through Manhattan's homosexual nighttown: the gay bathhouses, pornographic theaters and bars that the author cruised a decade ago. He finds the atmosphere radioactive with fear; sperm reminds him of plutonium. In this subdued climate, Holleran finds new enjoyment with his surviving gay companions. He meets many over freshly dug graves and notes the difference...
...Risk, Amanda Farrell will not make it to puberty. Nothing wrenches so hard as the death of a child, and Hoffman knows just when and where to tug. Like Holleran, Hoffman (The Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter) is mainstreaming a refined literary talent. Her new novel is structured like a movie, which probably explains why 20th Century-Fox wasted no time buying the film rights...