The Page Turner
by David Leavitt
The titular pun points to the easy pleasures of David Leavitt's giddily engrossing fourth novel, The Page Turner. This tale of 18-year-old Paul Porterfield, an aspiring Julliard pianist who comes to realize that his musical talents are more prosaic than prodigious while bumping through a series of starry-eyed but eye-opening love affairs in tony Rome and chic Manhattan, is the fleetest, most gobble-upabble piece of prose Leavitt has ever crafted. Sure, its got rich undertones of the bittersweet familial ache and exurban American angst that earned the author his reputation as a capital-L Literary wunderkind with Family Dancing and The Lost Language of Cranes, but—as Leavitt sledgehammers home with his choice of title—those things are not what this book is about. The Page Turner is a glittering example of pure storytelling power. It's not the New Yorker stuff we already know Leavitt can do, it's a speedy sweet of a piece, a one-sitting surprise that—like last year's out-of-the-box post-modern novella Arkansas and the period novel, While England Sleeps, before it—reminds you that David Leavitt is no Johnny One Note. There's a whole magic shop of tricks up his impressively prolific sleeve.
Betcha he still gets crucified.
Never mind that The Page Turner is one of the swankiest little prosebonbons readers have had the opportunity to treat themselves to in a long while (In the realm of brain candy, Leavitt has hereby staked his claim as Lady Godiva); I expect most critics—and those wannabe authors who make up a sizable portion of Leavitt's faithfully backstabbing regular audience—are going to jump around like tick-itched monkeys, screeching "sell-out" and "shallow" and "Commercial" (Oh, the horror!).
Two things. First: It's none of that (except maybe, maybe commercially potent—my fingers are crossed). Second: He did it all on purpose. Duh.
Embedded in Leavitt's text—along with plenty of the beautifully epigrammatic turns of phrase that are the author's hallmark—are some pretty clear indications that he's foaming up a self-consciously soap operatic good time in The Page Turner and inviting readers along for the fun. After the French farce-worthy moment at which Paul Porterfield and Pamela, his fortysomething ditzoid-divorcee mother, realize that they've both gone swoony for the same concert pianist, there's this bit of tubthumping dialogue:
"You're a walking disaster, you know that? The best thing you could do is just go home, get on with your life and leave me alone...I don't need your help. You need help."
"It's horrible, I might as well just kill myself, just go over to that window and throw myself out. Then you'll be rid of me..."
"Don't be so melodramatic."
Oh why not? High dudgeon is certainly an appropriate tone for a book told from the perspective of an artsy, budding adolescent homosexual. And it makes for an incredibly entertaining read, a clever hybrid of Leavitt's traditionally keen insight (when Paul first meets his musical idol—and soon-to-be lover -Richard Kennington, the author notes: "...He'd never had the opportunity to touch something so precious before...Yet...Kennington's handshake [did not] transmit to Paul the magic that happened when he sat down in front of a piano") and to-the-hilt moments of Jackie Susannish scenery chewing. Perhaps the biggest fault in Leavitt's previous body of work was an excess of restraint. Here, he swings all the way toward excess itself. It makes The Page Turner a rip-snorter and will likely filter down in lesser degrees to enliven future capital-L Literary efforts.
Finally, it must be said, that while tapping the world of classical music and musicians as the perfect background to convey a sensuous-yet-intellectual, decadent-yet-honorable setting for his novel, Leavitt is not appropriating this milieu as shorthand wallpaper. Not since Mark Salzman's The Soloist in 1993 has such an accessible, inspiring adoration for classical music floated up through a fictional text. In fact, after finishing The Page Turner one recent afternoon, this pop-crazy critic sprung up from his couch and spent an evening at the orchestra, for the first time in five years.
