In 1984, the young American writer David Leavitt had his first collection of short stories published. He was then 23 and his book, Family Dancing, was short-listed for both the National Book Critics' Circle Award and the Pen/Faulkner Prize. The stories are accomplished, subtle, shrewd, elegant and often funny excursions into the messy world of relationships, and a recurring theme is middle-class homosexuality.
Two years later Leavitt's first novel, The Lost Language of Cranes, appeared to fine reviews. Bleakly sensitive, disciplined and elegantly written, it tells the story of a long-married couple devastated by the husband's hidden homosexuality which in turn has overshadowed that of their son. It also displays extraordinary control and left no doubts as to Leavitt's gifts. Along with the praise, however, some cautionary views were expressed at the time as to the writer's possible need to find another subject, and quickly.
Time passed, and a new novel, Equal Affections (1989), was published. Same assured, mature writing, same sensitively observed narrative, similar theme - a forty-year marriage sustained by lies while the homosexual son and lesbian daughter pursue their own lives elsewhere. He had not, however, abandoned the short-story form. In 1990, A Place I've Never Been was published and whatever the title may have implied, the territory remained the same. Interestingly, the title story re-introduced Celia and Nathan, the central characters from the final story of Family Dancing.
Few writers could point to such consistent critical acclaim, establishing himself as a mainstream gay writer - and all before his 30th birthday. Then, in 1993, he experienced his first major professional crisis. Ironically, it coincided with what appeared to be a determined break from his characteristic East/West coast contemporary US setting. While England Sleeps looked at 1930s English society facing the upheaval of war. It also explored the homosexual life of that time. Almost as quickly as the pre-publication hype began, another, far bigger fuss started to run simultaneously. Objections were raised by the English poet Stephen Spender, convinced that Leavitt's material was drawing too closely on his life during those years. A plagiarism charge seemed probable and the novel was withdrawn by Leavitt's British publisher. Two years ago, however, it was published with some changes in the United States by Houghton Mifflin. Spender died in July of that year. The contentious novel, with some further changes, will finally be published in Britain next spring.
Meanwhile, Leavitt has battled sufficiently with disappointment and writer's block to write the trio of stories collected in his disappointing, often self-conscious new book, Arkansas (Abacus, £14,99 in UK). Needless to say, it has nothing to do with Arkansas. Instead, in the opening story, the reader witnesses the bizarre manner in which the subtle control of Leavitt's work has given way to an explicit and clumsily autobiographical tone. The narrator of "The Term Paper Artist" just so happens to be a famous writer called David Leavitt whose last book has encountered legal difficulties. "I was in trouble" he begins. "An English poet (now dead) had sued me over a novel I had written because it was based in part on an episode from his life. Worse, my publishers in the United States and England had capitulated to this poet, pulling the novel out of bookstores and pulping several thousand copies." Why is he telling us this?
It is a crudely written story. The narrator lopes along, helpfully briefing the reader on his recent adventures. His days appear pretty vacant. When not haphazardly reading instead of doing research for his next book, he is cruising, renting porn videos and calling sex lines. At his father's home he meets the doped, but straight, son of visitors. The youth is in trouble at his college. On meeting Leavitt, he devises an idea that could save him. He wants the famous writer to write his English term paper for him. In return he will allow him to have oral sex with him. Leavitt agrees. Before long, several heterosexual college boys are approaching Leavitt in the hope of his securing A grades for them in exchange for sex.
Not only does Leavitt apparently want it on the record that he received A's for every essay he ever wrote as a student, he also parades a self-conscious intellectualism complete with multiple literary and historical references throughout. Wilde, and more obviously Forster and James, are called upon - and all in a story which lacks any trace of Leavitt's considerable gifts. It is as if he has somehow mislaid the abilities he demonstrated so effortlessly in his first stories and since then. Intent on humiliation, the narrator of the story even asks the students to give him their soiled underwear. The story ends predictably.
In "The Wooden Anniversary" Leavitt again calls upon Celia and Nathan. This time they are joined by another friend, Lizzie, who appears far more in control than in her previous appearances. In fact, Celia and Lizzie seem to have become blurred in Leavitt's mind. The quality of the writing, while more determinedly literary than in the opening story, is laboured and over-descriptive, while his characterisation has lost its sharpness. Again the homage to Forster proves clumsy and arch. For the first time, the elegant formality of his previous writing, and the wit which has always permeated it, are at the mercy of a crude heavy-handedness. None of the love-sick outpourings convince. The only surprise of the story is that a writer as good as Leavitt can perform as poorly as this.
It is worth persisting, however, in order to reach the final story. "Saturn Street" is not the best of David Leavitt and it does appear to echo much of the background drawn on in the opening story, but at least as a narrative it engages, and some of the dialogue works well. Much of the uncomfortable languor of the previous story yields to a first-person narrative voice of interested urgency. Also, as he has done many times in the past, Leavitt here captures the ache of lost love. Elsewhere, however, he displays his failure to achieve the unnervingly benign candour of his countryman, Edmund White, possibly the only writer capable of making material such as this succeed.
