On Saturday, I wrote about the short story "Pump Jockey." While I enjoyed the short story, I'm afraid some may have thought that I was recommending the longer book The Winter of My Discotheque. The truth is, I wouldn't particularly recommend the book that expanded on the short story. The book wasn't terrible, but from what I remember of it, it's not one I'd highly recommend either. However, Rebel Yell: Stories by Contemporary Southern Gay Authors from which the short story came, is highly recommended. I also recommend Rebel Yell 2: More Stories by Contemporary Southern Gay Authors. The two short story collections have everything from gay southern gothic to just good old storytelling.
3 comments:
Ouch!
Andrew, I’m sorry if I came off as harsh. I hate the idea of hurting someone’s feelings. It was over 20 years ago when I read your book (I read it as soon as it came out), and this post was written 15 years later. I read this book at a different time in my life, very different from when I wrote this post. Instead of just giving my initial assessment over your book, I probably should have then and even now given it a second chance.
I was in graduate school when I read it, and was reading hundreds of books a year, so forgive me for being hazy on the details. What I do remember is how much I loved the short story that came before it. The visuals were so sexy, and your writing had me envisioning Tony as the beautiful young man he was. When I read “ The Winter of Our Discotheque,” I think I became disillusioned with the character. I do remember I didn’t like some of the characters, and the scene with the fire will always be etched in my mind as much as your initial description of Tony dripping wet and only in his coveralls at his father’s gas station. I have read “Pump Jockey” many times, and I should have given “ The Winter of Our Discotheque” another shot.
Andrew your writing is beautiful and vivid, and your characters, like any good novel, drew me in, but in the end, I didn’t like them very much. Maybe Tony’s journey broke my heart a little, and I wish right now I could remember the ending of the book. I don’t know if you’ll ever read my response to your comment of “Ouch!”, but I hope you do, and I hope I get the chance to take another look at “ The Winter of Our Discotheque.”
No offense taken, Joe. Indeed, I am absolutely delighted that someone was still engaging with The Winter of Our Discothèque 15 years (now 22) after reading it. It is remarkable to me that you found the imagery of that opening scene so indelible that it sprang to mind when you saw that photo. (Enchanting, by the way, and very much what I had in mind for Tony.)
My “ouch” was more a response to the contrast between your first comment (“one of the single sexiest things I have ever read”) and your follow-up (”not [something] I’d highly recommend”). I went from elated to deflated in 48 hours!
You are not the first person to not “like” Tony or some of the other characters. In 2018 I was having dinner in London with a friend of a friend who had read Winter and not liked it.
“I hated Tony. Hated him!” he said.
Nothing could have made me happier. It meant I had created a character that elicited a strong, visceral response in a reader.
You said Tony’s “journey” broke your heart a little. The important word here is “journey,” for that in fact is what it was. At the beginning of the book, Tony is this absolutely remarkable creature, godlike in his beauty. (Did you pick up on the fact that “Tony” was his nickname, a diminutive for Antinous—a reference I am sure you will understand.) He’s a sweet kid, a bit naïve, even if he has enough street smarts to attempt to con Dallas Eden into some repair work on his ’59 Cadillac. But he’s also damaged—by the death of his mother, by his abusive father, by the foster care system that was supposed to protect him, and most of all by his first lover, Mitch. He doesn’t understand the power he holds over Dallas—beyond Dallas being a petty “mark.”
But soon enough he is swept up into a world beyond his imagining, pursued and then jilted by the second love of his life, groomed for stardom by Dallas and Tuxedo Malone, dazzled by wealth, drugs, an endless buffet of hot men. He is in well over his head. And he loses his way. By the time he is dragged, insensate, from a Times Square porn theater, encrusted with the residue of countless anonymous encounters, he has hit rock bottom. His recovery—his very survival—comes at a price: radical self-preservation via a learned form of narcissism. When he is duped into believing that the love of his life, Avery, has betrayed him, he turns his anger not inward as he had done previously but outward toward the innocent Avery—and the world at large. By the time we see him browbeating a harried airline employee over a seat on the last flight out of LaGuardia before a blizzard closes the airport, he has become as nasty and unsympathetic a character as you can imagine. Of course you dislike him. You were meant to dislike him. Even I disliked him at that moment.
But he redeems himself in the course of the climactic fire at the bar in Florida. Without thinking about it, he places his friend Val’s life ahead of his own, risking the possibility of permanent disfiguring injuries to his million-dollar-face—or even his own death. In the process, he learns the true value of life and indeed his own self-worth. He reconciles and reunites with Avery and plans a future with him and his two young sons. Tony’s journey is complete. And the reader, we hope, embraces him despite all his faults.
I think Winter is a good story, even if it is not great literature. But you likely have more pressing things to do than to revisit it yourself—unless perhaps you are confined to a transatlantic flight or snowed in at home. But I do hope you will see that maybe Tony deserves a second chance, if only in theory.
Andrew
PS: I’ve perused your blog and think we share many interests and tastes, both literary and visual. How remarkable to have kept at it for 14 years! I have bookmarked it and will return to it often in the future. And by the way, your favorite author, Greg Herren, a valued friend and colleague, is a huge fan of Winter.
Post a Comment