ANDREW HOLLERAN’S 1978 novel, “Dancer From the Dance,” was not the first gay novel I read. It was, however, the first gay novel everybody read.

At any rate, it was the first gay novel every gay man I knew seemed to have read. It was the first Big Gay Literary Sensation.

Although “Dancer From the Dance” centers on two gay men named Malone and Sutherland, it’s as much a story about New York City’s gay life in the 1970s as it is the story of Malone’s and Sutherland’s own lives. It’s the story of going out dancing six or seven nights a week. It’s the story of having sex in parks and bathhouses and back rooms and, really, just about anywhere. It’s the story of packing Speedos, sunglasses and not much else for weekends on Fire Island.

It’s the story of youth and beauty and money and drugs.

But overarchingly, it’s the story of a new queer future. It’s a story about jumping the white picket fence; fleeing house and garden to join a battalion of remarkable creatures dreaming up a sexy, shimmering new world on the Isle of Manhattan, where glamour and freedom had been promoted from intoxicating distractions to primary virtues.