First published in 1978, Dancer From The Dance is Andrew Holleran’s highly acclaimed first novel. The title is taken from the last few lines of W.B. Yeats’s Among School Children: O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,How can we know the dancer from the dance? Widely considered a gay classic and must-read, it’s been reissued yet again, this…
Tragedy and Oppression:Sophie Zawistowska as Victim in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice Then again I fell asleep, only to wake with a start just before dawn, in the dead silence of the hour, with pounding heart and an icy chill staring straight up at my ceiling above which Sophie slept, understanding with a dreamer’s fierce clarity that she was doomed. (Styron 63). These words uttered by Stingo, the hero of William…
I’m on a Truman Capote binge lately. I’ve been re-reading a couple of his novels as well as discovering some of the ones new to me. The more of Capote’s work I read, the more I appreciate this man’s incredible writing. He truly was a literary genius but a tortured one in his private life, at least in the last few years of his life. I’ve just finished re-reading In Cold Blood and…