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Some Dance to Remember: A Novel of Gay Liberation in San Francisco 1970-1982

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"The hardest thing to be in America today is a man."

I recall seeing the movie "The Boys In The Band" in college and being so put out by the loathsome men depicted in it that I was easily confined to the closet for another five years. Back in my high-school seventies, when the bulk of the activity in this book took place, I was just a kid with a confused identity. Even in college, I read about Moscone/Milk with a mix of confusion and anger, wondering why good men could get gunned down for little more than being who they were, while all the time I was denying to myself who I really was. It took me another decade or so to come to grips with it all, and to discover what one of the basic premises of "Some Dance To Remember" sets forth. It makes me wish I'd come across this book in the seventies and not viewed "The Boys In The Band."

From "Some Dance To Remember;" "Every gay man is a homosexual, but not every homosexual is gay."

Jack Fritscher has created a world in "Some Dance To Remember" that goes from romanticized to mythologized to the aftermath of when paradise crumbled under the corrosional erosion of AIDS, drugs and too many Peter Pans. Ryan O'Hara is the hero of the story. He publishes MANUEVERS magazine in pursuit of the romanticized masculine man, engaging in rough and tumble leathersex and disdaining the hordes of men who come to San Francisco only to give up any male traits and begin acting like Junior Judy Garlands. He publishes a book titled "The Masculinist Manifesto" and sets the feminests and the SF Queenly majority into a convulsions. (Any similarity to MANUEVERS and Mr. Fritscher's residency at the legendary DRUMMER magazine are purely coincidental.) A cast a characters surrounds Ryan and form his support net; his sister who is a high profile cabaret star, his best friend and porn-king Solly Blue and his hustler's paradise, pop culture critic Magnus Bishop, and finally his ideal man, the southern-bred Kick Sorenson.

Throughout the novel, real life men and women drop by, such luminaries as Moscone and Milk, Dianne Feinstein, Tony Travorossi and Armistead Maupin all get name checked during the decade that "Some Dance To Remember" winds through. But where this book really shines is in its portrayal of the whole San Francisco gay liberation scene of the seventies. The first two acts of the book made me long for a time machine, for the chance to enter a golden age of freedom and possibility, before AIDS, before Iran-Contra, before Bush and Dobson and Falwell and Phelps. The descriptions of both the fictional and the true legendary places sinks in deeply, and even the side characters are all exquisitely detailed. "Some Dance To Remember" is almost a mirror reflection of Maupin's "Tales Of The City" (before the endless sequel books splattered into absurdity), with the characters more exclusively masculine and a lot tougher. Both books capture the very essence of the heady times of San Francisco's madcap dance through the get up and boogie years.

Alas, and much like the cautionary ending song/tale the album from which "Some Dance To Remember" takes its name, O'Hara discovers "to call someplace paradise is to kiss it good-bye." His friend Solly Blue has told him repeatedly how all hustlers are the same, just with different packaging, and as Ryan discovers the world he tried to design is undoing, the story reaches its conclusion in the fog of AIDS, steroids, and the real world that invaded The Castro as the Age Of Reagan ascended.

Probably more identifiable for me than those endless tales of coming out and the subversion of masculinity that most gay books churn away; "Some Dance To Remember" relishes its maleness and shys not from looking into the darker areas of the male psyche. Rich in depth and lovingly detailed, spellbinding in its vocabulary (Jack Fritscher is a master of catchy phrases), "Some Dance To Remember" deserves a place on the pantheon of great American gay novels.

I provide gay tours of San Francisco and I came across this novel which was written before I moved to the City. This memoir is chock full of gay history details when Castro was in bloom with Harvey Milk and the Cockettes and clones and leather in the 1970s. I think that tourists to San Francisco, especially gay tourists coming to Mecca, might better enjoy their visits to 18th and Castro and to Folsom Street with a copy of this memoir in their backpack. This is an emotional, historical guide to SOMA and 18th and Castro back in the day. Back in the day when the 1970s was the golden age. The writing is very good. The characters seem real. Even Dianne Feinstein is in the book.

Perhaps you had to be there...the 70's, San Francisco, the blossoming and peak of the gay sexual culture. It was a rare time; everything, it seemed, was perfect. So perfect, in fact, that those of us there could not have possibly imagined it might ever be otherwise! The list of honors and citations which precede this more modest effort, don't really reveal or do justice to what Fritscher has written. He has, quite simply, told the truth, sometimes whispering secrets that were to remain secret, sometimes using words to betray unspeakable thoughts. The truth of that time is played out on a vast stage within his head, on occasion momentarily inaccessible. But, within a few paragraphs or pages, some small detail, as if casually discarded, will suddenly bring life, and meaning, and intimacy to what he is saying. Fritscher worked the better part of a decade on Some Dance to Remember, living the life as he wrote the words. The story is tightly and carefully knit together, and it's a story that's hard to put down. In spite of the high page count, Fritscher clearly has a reverence for language, and his style is economical, accessible, and crystal clear. His sentences invite re-reading for the sheer pleasure of their composition. Maybe this book is a tribute to those embraced by the San Francisco fog in that forever vanished, blessed, golden moment. I can only recall that wondrous time with a hollow sadness, everyday missing it even more. But even if you weren't there, the book is a monument to its time. The words come to life, and to read it is to be there. Although Fritscher (perhaps with a wink and a nod) steadfastly insists that his book is fiction, it is also a hagiology of people, place and time. A character such as Solly Bluestein (with his overflowing penthouse of husters) simply has to have really existed, if only because he is far too human to have not existed. So, if you've come this far with me, trust me...the book's a gem!

The movies "Boogie Nights" and "Wonderland" led me to search engines that turned up this book that does not flinch in revealing the real life of gay sex aborigines in the experimental decade of the 1970s which was not the bad trip some people make it out to be. I brought in a copy to my gay studies professor who said the book was too long to be assigned at 562 pages. So I said, What about Russian lit? She said, if you have the time, read it, write your paper, and convince me it's worthy gay literature. I got an A.

Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance and Jack Fritscher's Some Dance to Remember. Two wonderful novels that read more real than fiction.

As a graphic designing woman, I heard about this novel, borrowed a copy and was surprised to find several women characters who are more than stereotypes or hags, but around whom the plot actually, in many ways, revolves. I particularly liked Kweenasheba and the satirical art-world woman, January Guggenheim. Also, Sandy Gully, the wife of the Viet Vet, was of interest in her domestic desperation. "Boogie Nights" did the seventies one way. This novel remixes the seventies even in its title, which references the Eagles' "Hotel California" which I remember as a soundtrack for the seventies. I knew nothing of the gay video culture's vultures til I read the gay "Boogie Nights" parts of this novel which seems so real, I wonder if it's really fiction. Even Diane Feinstein enters the story. In all, I was fascinated. I think I was misled by my friends who said this is a gay novel. I think it's a novel, period, and a good novel at that.

Be warned--this novel is big to catch the texture of the times and the kinds of people who existed in the long-ago decade of the 70's before AIDS came in and changed everyone's perception of the 70's. Fritscher seems to write from the inside out of a diary that was hidden under the bed of Armisted Maupin. I usually buy anthologies for their diversity of story and authorship, so this big novel was a challenge, I thought, until I got into it and found that one author can create a widely diverse world of many characters and many points of view, with the politics of the time threaded thru to give a time-line of documentary. I wonder if Dianne Feinstein has read about herself in this San Francisco novel? For anyone who has ever walked thru the Castro, this book that left its heart at 18th & Castro, is a must to curl up with.

This book is monumental. It speaks about our human relationships - how we tend to place those we love on pedestals and then are deeply shaken when the pedestal collapses. We make gods of those we love. We worship that which is missing in ourself. Some dance to Remember discusses these themes in the context of San Franncisco, but the themes are universal. For those of us who lived through the gay 70s and 80s in the hinterlands, the insider insights are fascinating. Get this book and read it. It is one of the more important books of our time, especially for the gay communitee. For all who have ever loved and lost, it helps name what we have been through and gives us hope in the resurrection of the self after loss and disillusion. Good stuff.

The metaphysics in this novel derives from Kant by way of Henry James and leads to Heisenberg. The narrator tells us what he knows or thinks he knows about a torrid love affair between two men:observation supported by video and printed documents. He tries to be objective, but resorts to the omniscient narrator technique to present the interior thoughts of his protagonist, Ryan O'Hara. In the brief opening scene he is preparing to shoot his muscleman lover at a physique contest. Unless the reader notices that this scene takes place "in a drive-in movie" behind Ryan's "high forehead" he will be confused when he reads later that Ryan shot his lover, then that he did not shoot him. The relation betweeen the narrator and his donnee emerges only at the end of this gripping, technically dazzling narrative. "What is, is. Until it isn't." But what is it? The theme, as in Henry James, is maya. We can know in part only. The Apostle Paul said so. So did Heisenberg. SOME DANCE TO REMEMBER should be required reading for all serious students of the American novel.

I won't wax poetic here...just want to pass on my accolades about this magnificent book -- one of the most accurate, descriptively stunning, brilliantly written time capsules ever put into print. I've worn out my previous copies (owning my third now!), have bought several to give to friends, and was fortunate enough to meet the amazing Mr. Fritscher and have him personally autograph my most recent copy.

If you lived and loved through this decadent time period, this book will take your breath away. Love it, love it, LOVE IT!

And what a movie this book would make!! YOWZA!