Dancing Naked: A Novel Volume 1

By Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner

Terry Walker is an even-tempered, successful mathematics professor, comfortable with his world--the order and predictability of it. He likes the kind of life one lives in a quiet Salt Lake City subdivision. At his children's births, he masks his terror with numbers--his wife's contractions and dilations, blood pressure, heart rate. At funerals he absorbs his grief by calculating the cubic feet of earth the coffin and vault will displace.

But control is illusive, something his fifteen-year-old son Blake never lets him forget. A sensitive boy, Blake has refused to eat meat since the time he could walk. Fearing he will hurt his friends' feelings, Blake withdraws from a spelling bee that he could easily win. More importantly, however, Blake harbors a secret that he keeps from Terry.

Driving this important first novel are issues and characters Thomas Mann himself would have found compelling. Terry Walker's inability to accept what he knows and does not know about his child, what he possibly could never accept, exacts a high price. Almost at the threshold of insanity, the father begins waging a war against a powerful chaos. Van Wagoner takes his readers beyond a simple foretelling of what happens in such situations to deep beneath the story's skin, to a place readers will find familiar and perhaps even irresistible.

Tim Sandlin has commented on Dancing Naked (Sandlin is the author of Skipped Parts, a New York Times "Notable Book."), noting how "remarkably clean" Van Wagoner's prose is. He calls him a "first-rate writer" and adds that he "stares deep into the heart of intolerance, grief, and redemption, and does not blink."

David Lee (Western States Book Award for My Town) considers Van Wagoner "the best contemporary writer in Utah." Elaborating, he writes: "Reading Van Wagoner is like opening a can of biscuits: there's the pop, the swelling, the aroma of fresh dough, and the anticipation of flavor. And the wonder: how can he fit so much into such a small vessel?"

Similarly, Levi Peterson (Association for Mormon Letters Book Award for Canyons of Grace) praises the "mastery of language" and "perfectly cadenced sentences" in Dancing Naked. He says that it is remarkable that Van Wagoner can so perfectly present "the effects of male ego--a punitive anger turned against homosexuality--upon three generations of a family."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560851309
• ISBN13: 9781560851301
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Signature Books
• Length: 372 Pages
• Weight: 1.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.9" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

a moving, insightful book

I note that this book is #1 in Utah. This compelling story deals with family and societal issues that are universal and should make it the number one book in any region. I found the book to be moving and readable and extremely relevant. The author is to be commended for his ability to create characters that we care so much about and for his compelling insights.

Hate and Love in Middle America

I loved this book. It features a not very likable protagonist, Terry Walker: his rampant homophobia is expressed in frequent letters to the newspaper. You have to sympathize with him, however, because his father was much worse. Terry's father, his model for male behavior, was a homophobe and abusive hypocrite. His father's heroic military service was entirely made up, and his anger toward his son was not tempered by love. Terry loves his son Blake and hates his father, but only knows his father's modes of relating to a son. -- anger and hate. Early in the novel Blake commits suicide in a manner that leaves no doubt of his sexual orientation, and this forces the very resistant Terry to examine his life. The book is very well crafted. Terry's uncertain progress toward self-knowledge is skillfully interwoven with the stories of his years with his father and mother and the early years of his own marriage. This might sound confusing but in the hands of this author it is not. Buy it and read it.

A good book for discussion

After having read two chapters of this book, I summarized what I'd been reading for my husband and my daughter. As the subject matter included bigotry, homosexulity, and suicide, they responded as though I were recounting a shocking thriller. Having finished this book, I appreciate the strong characters and the depth of the issues including the effect of our histories, the necessity of the forgivness of the self and others, the need for perspective, and above all love. Don't dismiss it as a thriller. It's lovely. Congraulations Mr. Van Wagoner!

I have never experienced anything quite like "Dancing Naked"

VanWagoner is incredible. It is difficult to believe that this is a first novel from this gifted writer. Wisdom and insight like that found in "Dancing Naked" are uncommon in a first novel. Rather they come after many novels which were merely preludes to a masterpiece. VanWagoner has hit the ground running. Rarely does an author capture the power of despair and the temperment of true love like VanWagoner does. I have never seen the world through another person's eyes quite like I did when reading this book. I was amazed at the disturbing images it evoked and thrilled with the subtle beauty that came simply from words on a page. The symbolism runs deep in "Dancing Naked." This book will stay with me for a very long time and I have a feeling that I will revisit it often, gaining new insights each time I dare to explore its pages. I am anxious to see what VanWagoner does for an encore.

A first novel about love, sex and family relationships.

"Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner has written the first great Mormon novel," according to Martin Naparsteck in the Salt Lake Tribune. Tracing the life and problems of Terry Walker, a mathematics professor at the University of Utah, Dancing Naked is "about the way love manifests itself and how it can turn on us and be our enemy when we don't understand ourselves. It is also about secrecy and distrust and what they do to relationships," said the author, Van Wagoner. The main character's son dies early in the novel by accidental(?) hanging in the family bathroom, the first instance of "dancing naked" in the book. His son's revealed homosexuality, causes Walker to struggle with the results of his own religious upbringing at the hands of his father, a violently homophobic Mormon. Paul Swenson, in the Salt Lake Observor, declared the book to be a "love story, with moments of peace and hilarity, but ... also dense and painful." The appeal of the book extends beyond those in Utah or with Utah or Mormon ties. Anyone with a gay friend or family member will find resonant chords here. And, as with all fine literature, the wordcraft and the insight into human nature speaks to us all