Customer Reviews

The Beauty of Men: A Novel

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

The first time I read this book, I was moved enough to read it through in one sitting. Re-reading it two years later, I am conflicted about it. It is incredibly well-written, has many crucial observations to make about gay life in the late twentieth century (as Holleran always has), and has a distinctive, authoritative voice. Yet, the same things that will make some readers love this book will make others want to hurl it through a window. The protagonist is unsympathetic, whiny, pretentious, dolorous, self-pitying and even at times self-hating in the extreme, and repetitious (parts of the book feel inadequately edited; you will read certain details in one chapter only to run across them in almost exactly the same guise a chapter later, which appears to be a case of a novel having been cobbled together from what could have more successfully stood as a novella or a group of vignettes). The author tacks on the usual disclaimer about no resemblance between the story being told and events in real life, but an essay he has included in a more recent anthology is a transparent re-write of the same story he tells here, down to the details of dialogue he exchanges with the object of his obsession. Thus, any protest that this is fiction is almost irrelevant. But what the book does do, even if it is not truly a work of fiction, is cast a discerning light on the way a number of men in Holleran's generation, the set of urban gay white men who came of age in the late seventies, view life now that they are no longer the kings of the mountain. The sentimental, often self-indulgent tone of this vantage point will be resonant to some, but to others, particularly those who did not participate in the grand guignol of "Dancer from the Dance," it will grate, and it will sound like a serious case of sour grapes. The essayistic exposition that the narrative breaks into does not help matters. Again, it feels as though parts of this book could have been edited out, parts could have been more successfully trimmed to a novella, and parts could have been more useful as essays. Nonetheless, a lot of what the book says, even if it could be better told, rings shockingly true, and is stark witness to the way gay life continues to be, even at this late date, a life of lies, secrets, and despair for many who live it.

As a post-epidemic work, some might find this book either irrelevant or a curiosity from another age. It is most emphatically neither. While many younger gay readers will possibly fail to grasp the pathos of the subject's life, a very large part of that life has been painfully lived down to the last detail by those of us gay men above the age of 50. Indeed it became so painfully real in places, that I was tempted to put it down; however Holleran's crystalline insights and observations drew me further and further into the story to the extent that quitting it became immpossible. For these insights/observations and his delightful command of the language, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

To read Andrew Holleran's books is to want to know who he is and why he writes. Are his works autobiographical? With other novels I'm not interested necessarily in the writer's own life. Why is it, then, that this reader wonders and why is it important? In The Beauty of Men, with its hauntingly beautiful prose, Holleran writes what life has become for Lark, the main character, living in Florida in the 1990s. With sickness and death all around him, he seeks sanctuary for his grief, while worrying about aging and his success or failure as a homosexual. Holleran,in this and his other works, effectively draws the reader into the dream of his writing and story. By the end of the book, you feel as though you've just read a long letter from a friend you haven't heard from in a long time, describing what life's been like over the past few years. I think it's this intimacy that Holleran creates in all of his books which is the key to the question. As in Dancer from the Dance, you want to learn more about the novelist. If you haven't read Holleran's other novels, I would recommend reading them in order before reading The Beauty of Men. Holleran may just be at a point where critics talk about his oeuvre, though I hope this novel isn't his last.

Andrew Holleran usually chooses an elegiac tone for his writing, and this novel is no exception. Lark, living in exile in Florida, visits his elderly, infirm mother almost daily in her nursing home, brings her home on occasional weekends, and mourns for the lost, fast-lane life of 1970s New York and his friends from that time, most of whom have died since he moved to this small, rural town. Lark also pursues an unrequited, somewhat imaginary relationship with Becker, a man some 15 years younger whom Lark picked up once at a local boat ramp. Some critics have accused this novel of employing self-pity and pathos--Lark does have a rather negative self-image and he persists in mooning over Becker when most would have written off that affair with disgust--but the writing is gorgeous. Holleran is peerless (among the gliterati, anyway) with his evocations of time and place. One can smell northern Florida's pine forests and hear the wind through the branches just as one can smell the unpleasantly antiseptic nursing home and hear its senile chatter. Holleran's wit veers toward the sarcastic, but he's often dead-on hilarious, as in the chapter entitled "Il Paradisio," where Lark ventures into a bathhouse. I recommend this book for anyone who likes tight, concise yet lush writing--and doesn't expect a political manifesto in a novel.

FL to attend to his widowed mother who had a fall that paralyzed her from the neck down. He leaves NY as the AIDS epidemic slows down after devastating the lives of most of the people he knows.

The sexual lifestyle that preceded AIDS is gone now. He finds Gainesville equally subdued. He frequents a boat ramp where men can find sex in the wash room. He goes to a gay bar, where men his age are ignored. He occasionally goes to a bath house in Jacksonville where he can have little sexual solace.

His friends in Florida, few that there are, and he review their lives. He thinks back to his friend Joshua from NY who committed suicide and Sutcliffe who succumbs to AIDS. The devastation of that disease did not merely kill people; it frightened them into living solitary lives.

Lark reflects on his life and his reveries are marked with pathos. His thoughts of this time in MY reveal not only the desolation of a disease, but a futility of a life lead for pleasure. Youth ends and so does desirability, but the need for touch remains.

These reflections are parallel to the condition of his mother, for 12 years can do nothing for herself. He feels imprisoned by her needs and appalled by the vulnerability she must endure. At the end of her life, Lark castigates himself for all the times he didn't see her or felt unable to help her. He admires her ability to live through this infirmity with grace and patience.

The novel is not so much story than meditations on being gay and its pleasures and isolation. The novel reflects on how people try to live through dullness and fear. Not religious, Lark frequently turns to issues life prayer, death and God. He does not practice a religion, but he finds he needs to consider questions.

There are many passages concerning life issues and Holleran's insights are challenging. While not depressing, these thoughts demand and provoke the reader to consider sex, like death, touch, need, desire. The young are gods, but only for a time. What follows youth is far more difficult. In one sense those who died of AIDS before their middle years did not have to face the rejection of their gay brothers. They did not have to face a life that could no longer be lived for pleasure. They did not have to experience years of rejection or pretensions that it did not matter.

Reading this novel requires one to reflect on what is truly meaningful in one's life. That is all it offers. There is no lover at the end of the book. There is only the challenge to find the value in one's own life in something - something hardly defensible, but sensible. This is a demanding book, but worth the struggle to read.

Holleran is a terrific writer, and I am most impressed with his insights into the gay experience. As a middle aged gay man, his observations are right on. When he writes of an older gay man's invisibility, he hits the nail on the head. This is a man dealing with the death of his friends in New York, and moving back to small town USA to care for his elderly mother. The dislocation and desolution of his life are the core of the novel. He moves through the novel's landscape, mixing the harsh reality of his life with day dreams. He is so human in the way that he sees the stark truth, has no illusions and yet sets himself up for a fall, like with his obsessive love for Becker. His mother becomes the vessal for his love, and his sole purpose in life. Again, contradiction surfaces when he feels the oppressive nature of her illness on his life, and yet realizes that his love and duty to her is what keeps him going. A great read on so many levels. It explores a gay man dealing with aging and lonliness, the loss of his youth, the death of friends through AIDS and a love between a mother and son. There are no easy answers here. Judging by others
comments on this book, in the age of Oprah we are all supposed to rise above it all, when maybe just surviving is all we can manage.

All the reader reviews posted here have merit, those which point to the hypnotic prose, those which register aggravation for the author's angst. The truth, from this reader's perspective, is best summarized from all these viewpoints.

I was spellbound as others were, by the vivid descriptions Holleran so effortlessly plants in my brain like living pictures, giving me an almost virtual access to experiences and memories as if they were entirely my own rather than only partly shared. These left an emotional residue still present after finishing the book, all so deeply felt due to the author's writing skill. I could not help but develop some sympathy for Lark, despite my desire to see him break free of bathos and remorse. Perhaps Holleran/Lark should not be taken at face value, but understood for the lesson Lark gives us: no need to resign to some perceived Fate, to sit, pine for and desire the unattainable while anonymously perched near the boat ramp. Instead, with awareness for the depression and resignation self-pity can bring, one should seek to return to life through some other interest, give life meaning through some other pursuit, and love will find you despite the losses. Learn from the lessons of the past rather than brood on them. That for me is Holleran's intention, the value of this book. For if we resign as Lark does, we end up with nothing but unrequited desire, daydreams, immobility.

The fate all gay men eventually must face is the tyranny of youth, the loss of sexual prowess. We cannot go back, we cannot renew. But we can press on, without fear or regret. Holleran reminds us to do just that.

The fact that I am 47 and also caring for a mother who is living in a nursing care centre made this book quite personal. I thought that Holleran captured the balancing of the sense of duty/responsibility with a desire to make a mother's life as worthwhile as possible and also have a personal life.This is not always easy to achieve given that Lake also faces ageism and a sense of loss for the friends dead from AIDS. However, I was left with a sense that Lake spends too much time thinking about what he doesn't have and not enough time in developing a life. It would be nice if there was a sequel where Lake stops judging his life and actually has a life.

"The Beauty of Men" is a poignant story of loss and loneliness told from the perspective of Lark, 47 years old,residing in Florida to take care of his invalid mother. Lark was young in the heyday of the 70's when beautiful men enjoyed a carefree hedonism yet unaffected by the AIDS epidemic. It is a sad story filled with pathos and angst, as Lark recounts his friends from his glory days (all of whom have died), while he is aging alone without love, yet continually seeking it in the places he feels reduced to haunting for brief encounters - a secluded boat ramp as an example. There is a sense of melancholy pervasive from beginning to end in this story, but Holleran writes so elegantly, capturing the character's sense of diminishment so precisely, you appreciate the writer rather than the mood evoked. Lark is a healthy middle-aged man. He is experiencing the natural aging process yet cannot seem to reconcile himself to it. Instead of acceptance and appreciation (he's alive, he made it through the plague - his friend's did not), he mourns the loss of youth and beauty - searching it out like the Holy Grail - an acolyte at the altar of younger men rather than the priest. As I read the story of Lark, I kept remembering Shakespeare's Sonnet 29, "When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state...And look upon myself and curse my fate." "The Beauty of Men" is eloquent and poetic although I found it somewhat heartbreaking at times. It is not necessarily a "must" read, but it certainly a worthwhile one.

The Beauty of Men is the painful story of Lark, a survivor of an AIDS decimated group of friends in New York. Middle aged and still in shock from his enormous loss, Lark has moved to northern Florida to care for his paralyzed mother. The emptiness of Lark's life there prompts a deep exploration of his past and his current state as an aging gay man. Depressed and in a state of "identity limbo" Lark finds brief solace at the local boat ramp tearoom and in his fantasies of a relationship with one-night-stand Becker. Given this brief synopsis it should come as no surprise that The Beauty of Men is not a lighthearted read, but it is a compelling and rewarding one. Lark's profound sense of loss and remorse is tempered by both undeniable truth and periodic humor.