In the nineteen-seventies, a generation of queers saw their reflection in the exuberant prose of Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance. In his new novel, Kingdom of Sand, Mr. Holleran explores nothing less than the nature of Queer mortality. If his prose is less exuberant here, it is also arguably more disciplined, focused.
Queers are often portrayed by the media as a “community”, as though we’re all clustered together in some Gay Mister Rogers Neighborhood: Mayberry with discos. But in this century, “gay ghettos” are disappearing faster than gay bookstores. And most queers in the U.S. live outside of cities. The location of Mr. Holleran’s new novel is a small town in northern Florida.
If there can be said to be any physical queer community here, it is in the area’s video store–a place that the interstate highway system has quite literally passed by. There used to be a picturesque–even beautiful–queer nexus point, but as in much of Florida, this was ephemeral.
At the boat ramp you could sit in your car under the live oaks on autumn afternoons watching the squirrels run up and down the tree trunks. You could admire the egrets and the blue herons standing along the canal while you waited for the man from Florida pest control to drive in–until the police clamped down, that is, and drove away everyone who was not there to fish, which left us with the video store.
The queer world Mr. Holleran is depicting here–it must be said–is largely closeted. A neighbor is talked out of painting a house yellow when it is pointed out that it might be perceived as gay. At a Yoga class, the narrator quickly turns a t-shirt inside out when he realizes it might identify him as gay. In this rural blue state locale these decisions are quite simply a matter of survival.
Against this backdrop, it is remarkable that the narrator befriends a fellow queer: an older gay man, Earl, who lives down the street. They share an appreciation of old movies which they watch together regularly. Earl is not entirely a sympathetic character. He holds surprising right-wing political views. (“Hilary is a lesbian!” he declares, as though that encapsulates everything that’s wrong with her.) But the narrator’s objectives are more practical. For him, Earl is an object lesson. Just a few years older than the narrator, Earl is going through what he will soon: decline and mortality.
The mirror Mr. Holleran is holding up to this queer world isn’t as dazzling and sexy as that of Dancer from the Dance. The queer community has achieved quite a lot since then. It has also gotten older. And Mr. Holleran fearlessly reflects that here.
Andrew Holleran’s The Kingdom of Sand is published by Farrar Strauss and Giroux.
7/20/2022