Some Dance to Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco, 1970-1982

by Jack Fritscher

Book Overview

SOME DANCE TO REMEMBER has been reviewed as "the gay GONE WITH THE WIND." But such popular praise does not do literary justice to this eyewitness classic of the 1970s, that "first golden decade after... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560233273
• ISBN13: 9781560233275
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Harrington Park Press
• Length: 437 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Memoir, Manifesto, Mythology....and Classic

"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 an

Take a tour of 18th & Castro, Folsom south of Market

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.

Gay Studies, Gay history, gay entertainment

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.

It's my life

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.

A profound study of the humand condition American style.

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.