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The Dream Life: A Novel
'Bo Huston's The Dream Life is an exhilarating and frightening tale of love and emotional discontent that manages to seduce us with its beautiful prose and elegant construction. The Dream Life is Huston's best work...one of the most startling and powerful novels to appear in years.'--Michael Bronski
- GenresLGBT
172 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1992
About the author
Bo Huston
7 books4 followersBo Huston was a columnist for the San Francisco Bay Times, and wrote reviews and articles, as well as fiction, for many other publications. He graduated from Hampshire College in 1980, published four books of fiction, and exhibited photographic pieces at several galleries.
More information: https://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/2...
More information: https://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/2...
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 11, 2025
I read this novel in one long extended session and I was completely immersed in it. In many ways I was ravished by it and in the end devastated by its beauty. But almost immediately I couldn't help questioning my reaction. How can I feel so torn about this lyrical novel which has attracted no negative reviews on GR or elsewhere when I find the work of authors like Tony Duvert or Dennis Cooper unproblematic?
Before I attempt to explain I want to refer you to some outside links which talk about Huston and his work:
On Bo Huston and AIDS from Literary Hub: https://lithub.com/remembering-bo-hus...
On Bo Huston and Dream Life from Dennis Cooper's Blog (He largely confines himself to quoting the Literary Hub article and reproduces an excerpt from the novel and some obituaries for Huston): https://denniscooperblog.com/5-books-...-
On Bo Huston's and work including Dream Life from Ever Green Review: https://evergreenreview.com/read/the-...
On Bo Huston and Dream Life from a NAMBLA (if you don't know who NAMBLA are see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_A...) poit of view: https://www.greek-love.com/index.php/....
The last links are the 'elephant in the room' that none of the reviews discuss and which I find makes my response to the novel perplexing and I believe the NAMBLA review distorts Bo Huston's intentions but ultimately this is a novel about a 33 year old man, Holly, who runs away with a 13 year old boy, Jed. Of course it is about much more. As it says in the Evergreen Review:
'This is a book about children growing up without parents who don't know how to love, about boys becoming men, and men becoming old and trying to grasp at what they didn’t get when young. There aren’t any fathers to speak of in this book, and the mothers don’t know how to mother their kids, though Holly would be a mother if he could.'
But Holly can't be a mother, indeed he isn't even a mother substitute, like his Aunt Joy who brings him up after his mother succumbs to depression. He may love Jed but what is love? If Jed's mother Lila is inadequate what is Holly? He pimps Jed out and refuses to discuss safe sex with him when Jed asks about it. When Jed leaves Holly he misses him but he doesn't worry about him. the NAMBLA review has no problems with this:
'The frequent interplay of the sacred and the divine is best illustrated by Jed’s introduction to boy hustling, which is comparable to the prostitution of vestal virgins. Thus the novel can be seen as an account of a tutor who leads his pupil boy into prostitution, as if hustling were the tutor's ultimate educational goal for the boy. This is ironic, since education carried out by individuals with genuine credentials and operating within the framework of accredited institutions may often train an individual, in effect, for selling himself or his services in a commercial world that some view as little better than a whorehouse, anyway.'
That Holly has given Jed a Leica camera and the boy has acquired a fascination with photography hardly counts as a life skill. Nor is prostitution. When you are young and pretty it is easy to get fucked, but in reality boys like Jed (and Holly who was a 'successful' boy-prostitute) get fucked over. At one point Holly asks:
'Who were we? Teacher and pupil, master and slave, or friends? Fagin and Oliver Twist? Lovers? We were certainly not like a father and son...Was that what Jed wanted?'
Of course like all man-boy love stories Jed, though he has a voice in the novel, has no agency or, most importantly power. This is a novel about Holly, his inadequacies and problems. It isn't about Jed. Indeed in the final part of the novel Holly dreams he is walking across a field where he is hoping to meet Jed. But in this dream, the person he meets isn’t Jed, doesn’t know him, walks past and leaves Holly alone. Sometimes even in dreams you can’t get what you want. Sometimes even love leaves you alone.
But significantly the last line of the novel is, 'There must not be a Jed', because of course if he met Jed now a few years later he probably wouldn't have recognised him. As Dennis Cooper said in Period, the final book in the George Miles cycle:
'...you can't predict with teenagers. They're still developing. They're just human transitions...'
Jed was a boy, being a boy is transient. Holly and Jed could neither stay together nor get back together.
Yet I loved this novel, it is not singing the praises of boy love, it is a novel of its time. I cannot see any writer in the last twenty five years writing this novel. I wonder if Huston had not died at 33 what he would think of this novel? Should you read it? of course you should, it is something special. But what does that say about those of us who love it?
Before I attempt to explain I want to refer you to some outside links which talk about Huston and his work:
On Bo Huston and AIDS from Literary Hub: https://lithub.com/remembering-bo-hus...
On Bo Huston and Dream Life from Dennis Cooper's Blog (He largely confines himself to quoting the Literary Hub article and reproduces an excerpt from the novel and some obituaries for Huston): https://denniscooperblog.com/5-books-...-
On Bo Huston's and work including Dream Life from Ever Green Review: https://evergreenreview.com/read/the-...
On Bo Huston and Dream Life from a NAMBLA (if you don't know who NAMBLA are see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_A...) poit of view: https://www.greek-love.com/index.php/....
The last links are the 'elephant in the room' that none of the reviews discuss and which I find makes my response to the novel perplexing and I believe the NAMBLA review distorts Bo Huston's intentions but ultimately this is a novel about a 33 year old man, Holly, who runs away with a 13 year old boy, Jed. Of course it is about much more. As it says in the Evergreen Review:
'This is a book about children growing up without parents who don't know how to love, about boys becoming men, and men becoming old and trying to grasp at what they didn’t get when young. There aren’t any fathers to speak of in this book, and the mothers don’t know how to mother their kids, though Holly would be a mother if he could.'
But Holly can't be a mother, indeed he isn't even a mother substitute, like his Aunt Joy who brings him up after his mother succumbs to depression. He may love Jed but what is love? If Jed's mother Lila is inadequate what is Holly? He pimps Jed out and refuses to discuss safe sex with him when Jed asks about it. When Jed leaves Holly he misses him but he doesn't worry about him. the NAMBLA review has no problems with this:
'The frequent interplay of the sacred and the divine is best illustrated by Jed’s introduction to boy hustling, which is comparable to the prostitution of vestal virgins. Thus the novel can be seen as an account of a tutor who leads his pupil boy into prostitution, as if hustling were the tutor's ultimate educational goal for the boy. This is ironic, since education carried out by individuals with genuine credentials and operating within the framework of accredited institutions may often train an individual, in effect, for selling himself or his services in a commercial world that some view as little better than a whorehouse, anyway.'
That Holly has given Jed a Leica camera and the boy has acquired a fascination with photography hardly counts as a life skill. Nor is prostitution. When you are young and pretty it is easy to get fucked, but in reality boys like Jed (and Holly who was a 'successful' boy-prostitute) get fucked over. At one point Holly asks:
'Who were we? Teacher and pupil, master and slave, or friends? Fagin and Oliver Twist? Lovers? We were certainly not like a father and son...Was that what Jed wanted?'
Of course like all man-boy love stories Jed, though he has a voice in the novel, has no agency or, most importantly power. This is a novel about Holly, his inadequacies and problems. It isn't about Jed. Indeed in the final part of the novel Holly dreams he is walking across a field where he is hoping to meet Jed. But in this dream, the person he meets isn’t Jed, doesn’t know him, walks past and leaves Holly alone. Sometimes even in dreams you can’t get what you want. Sometimes even love leaves you alone.
But significantly the last line of the novel is, 'There must not be a Jed', because of course if he met Jed now a few years later he probably wouldn't have recognised him. As Dennis Cooper said in Period, the final book in the George Miles cycle:
'...you can't predict with teenagers. They're still developing. They're just human transitions...'
Jed was a boy, being a boy is transient. Holly and Jed could neither stay together nor get back together.
Yet I loved this novel, it is not singing the praises of boy love, it is a novel of its time. I cannot see any writer in the last twenty five years writing this novel. I wonder if Huston had not died at 33 what he would think of this novel? Should you read it? of course you should, it is something special. But what does that say about those of us who love it?
June 16, 2022
An uncommonly good short novel, and almost consistently pitch-perfect. It's an examination of failed mother-child relationships (I count at least four, and to think that there are only two characters to speak of!) -- father-child relationships are entirely absent -- and the variously unsuccessful ways in which the children, if given a chance at all, try to cope with them. Thirteen-year-old Jed is open-eyed but adrift; Holly, who I gather is thirtysomething, has built quite an impressive wall around and within himself. One is initially tempted to regard their doomed love as a kind of *Death in Venice* (to which Holly refers more than once) with a dash of *Lolita* thrown in (cross-country road trip with an underage lover!) except that there's so little to their relationship that's sexual, and what sex there is, is pretty underwhelming anyway. It's much more a need for companionship, validation even, and, on Jed's part, a need for mentorship that Holly can satisfy only as an academic tutor.
I've seen one negative critique on the basis of the writing style. The passage cited ("Jed was the highest, most mellow sound a flute can make") is indeed kitschy, but I think it's perfectly pitched: it's a moment when Holly lets his defenses down and admits to himself his love for the kid. I'm more bothered by the profusion of lifeless, useless adjectives on pages 160-161: yeah, Holly is now alone and lonely, but certainly that's no reason why he has to tell us what color the sand beneath his feet is. I'm more bothered by the all-too-fashionable achronological sequence of sections -- not quite flashbacks, certainly not quite revelatory of anything -- and find it curious to note how Huston moderates this halfway through by having both characters, one after the other, comment on the same events. But these are trivial complaints. Huston handles a, shall we say, delicate subject with a high degree of sensitivity and sympathy for/understanding of his characters. It's a shame he didn't have more time and opportunity to develop his talents.
Four stars.
I've seen one negative critique on the basis of the writing style. The passage cited ("Jed was the highest, most mellow sound a flute can make") is indeed kitschy, but I think it's perfectly pitched: it's a moment when Holly lets his defenses down and admits to himself his love for the kid. I'm more bothered by the profusion of lifeless, useless adjectives on pages 160-161: yeah, Holly is now alone and lonely, but certainly that's no reason why he has to tell us what color the sand beneath his feet is. I'm more bothered by the all-too-fashionable achronological sequence of sections -- not quite flashbacks, certainly not quite revelatory of anything -- and find it curious to note how Huston moderates this halfway through by having both characters, one after the other, comment on the same events. But these are trivial complaints. Huston handles a, shall we say, delicate subject with a high degree of sensitivity and sympathy for/understanding of his characters. It's a shame he didn't have more time and opportunity to develop his talents.
Four stars.
July 9, 2023
solid book with alternating chapters that played well into eachother. the characters closely examined in such a slim volume with tones of soap opera and early 20th century faded hollywood vibes. would recommend.
November 17, 2014
Every word in this short novel is well chosen and necessary. I understand both Holly and Jed perfectly. There was no need for Huston to write more; I know what happens.
July 20, 2025
Terrific man-boy love story. 13 year old Jed runs away with Hollis (Holly), his tutor. The story is told by each character in alternating chapters. The sexual issue of underage sex is tastefully handled without much graphic descriptions. Bo Huston, unfortunately died young of AIDS and this is probably his best realized work, although I did love "Remember Me
as well.
as well.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews