The Last Party

There was a place where virtually all the themes and energies of the seventies - disco, the cult of celebrity, the coke and the ludes, the glam and the glitter, the pre-AIDS sexual abandon, the emergence of gay culture, newly uninhibited women, and the general air of pre-fin de siecle debauchery - were played out with maximum flamboyance. It was a place that epitomized an era and exemplified the zeitgeist. That place was Studio 54. No one is better suited to chronicle the Studio story than Anthony Haden-Guest. He has re-created the scene and rendered the action in vivid detail from his personal experiences and intimacy with the key players: the owners, bartenders, and bouncers; the celebs and the dealers; the divas, DJs and doormen; even the prosecutor who busted the owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager for tax evasion. The Last Party is more than a biography of one place. It also tells the story of Nightworld, a realm spawned by Studio 54, comprising past and present clubs. Nightlords, and nightpeople, their doings and their secrets, which is still unfolding and getting darker all the time. Haden-Guest ends with in-depth interviews with beleaguered club-lord Peter Gatien and attended the last party of Club Kid/murder suspect Michael Alig.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.