SOURCE: Lilly, Mark. “Andrew Holleran: Dancer from the Dance and Nights in Aruba.” In Gay Men's Literature in the Twentieth Century, pp. 190-205. New York: New York University Press, 1993.

In the following excerpt, Lilly discusses the themes in two of Andrew Holleran's novels about gay men—Dancer from the Dance and Nights in Aruba—concluding that both books convey a sense of weariness in waiting for love.

Towards the end, I used to sit on the sofa in the back of the Twelfth Floor [disco] and wonder. Many of them were very attractive, these young men whose cryptic disappearance in New York City their families (unaware they were homosexual) understood less than if they had been killed in a car wreck. They were tall and broad-shouldered, with handsome, open faces and strong white teeth, and they were all dead. They lived only to bathe in the music, and...