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 that first golden decade after Stonewall. This best-selling epic of San Francisco’s Castro seethes with sex, drugs, panic, and passionate characters: a gay writer, a drop-dead gorgeous bodybuilder, a cabaret singer, a Vietnam vet, a Hollywood bitch, and a rough-trade porn mogul. Narrator Magnus Bishop channels Ryan O’Hara, a writer pioneering a tell-all voice in the emerging subculture of gay magazines. When Ryan meets Quentin Crisp’s perfect man in Kick Sorenson, lust and politics collide. Steroids rule Castro Street. Gender fascism divides queens versus clones into gay civil war over correct queer identity. White assassinates Milk. Gay rioters burn City Hall. Ryan, romancing the morphing trickster Kick, cruises through nightclubs, ecstatic sex, and leather rituals in legendary bathhouses. Sprung from Isherwood’s Cabaret, 1970s San Francisco mirrored 1930s Berlin: decadent, dazzling, diverse, doomed. It’s all here. A city. A murder. A plague. A lost civilization. A love story. Some Dance to Remember is dedicated to Jack Fritscher’s 1970s bicoastal lover, Robert Mapplethorpe.
THE SETTING:
THE COSMOS. THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
THE EARTH. NORTH AMERICA.
CALIFORNIA. SAN FRANCISCO.
18TH AND CASTRO.
SOUTH OF MARKET.
THE GOLDEN AGE
1970-1982
THE CAST & PLOT:
A DROPDEAD BLOND BODYBUILDER.
A MADCAP GONZO WRITER.
AN EROTIC VIDEO MOGUL.
A PENTHOUSE FULL OF HUSTLERS.
A FAMOUS CABARET CHANTEUSE FATALE.
A HOLLYWOOD BITCH TV PRODUCER.
A VIETNAM VETERAN.
AN EPIC LIBERATION MOVEMENT.
A CIVIL WAR BETWEEN WOMEN AND
MEN…AND MEN AND MEN.
A TIME OF SEX, DRUGS,
AND ROCK ‘N’ ROLL.
A MURDER.
A CITY.
A PLAGUE.
A LOST CIVILIZATION.
A LOVE STORY.
Review Endorsements
“My God, what a book! It’s all there, done with Fritscher’s usual elan and verve. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has written what will be looked on as that period’s Great American Gay Novel. What lovely stuff!” Sam Steward (Phil Andros)
“Jack Fritscher didn’t invent the Castro. He just made it mythical. HEADY, EROTIC, COMIC….A comprehensive fictional chronicle of the best of times….If one can learn American history via the novels of Gore Vidal, one can learn gay American history through Some Dance.” The Advocate, David Perry
“Cinematic intensity….A brilliant record of gay life before AIDS….An astonishing spectrum of queer lives….This sprawling saga…has not lost a whit of its muscular passion, punchy immediacy, or transformative literary impact.” Books to Watch Out For, Richard Labont
“STAGGERINGLY ORIGINAL and completely absorbing….Here is San Francisco’s gay male scene in the 1970s and ’80s as never told, or documented, before.” Michael Bronski, Author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility