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May 27, 2004

Dinner With David

On Tuesday, May 25, I went to hear David Leavitt give a reading from his new novel THE BODY OF JONAH BOYD at The Free Library of Philadelphia, where I used to work. We went to dinner afterwards with some former students of his from the University of Florida. Lots of good literary gossip, including a repeat of a very juicy tale I also heard from Ed White when he was in town a few months ago. Not safe to put in writing here, alas...Invite me out for a few Henny Pennies (see next blog entry below) and perhaps I'll spill!

I've followed David's writing career since he first published a story in the New Yorker in 1983 and have interviewed him on a couple of occasions. While we've spoken on the phone from time to time, I hadn't actually seen him in person since the mid-80s when we did an interview for THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES in Berkeley (I was living in SF and doing a story for an alt weekly in the Bay Area).

The thing that's impressed me so much about David over the years is his diligence and prolificness (real word?) even in the face of some of the nastiest and most uncalled for backbiting I've seen in the literary world. The early commercial success and marketing push o FAMILY DANCING and THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES in the early/mid 80s generated lots of inappropriate resentment from an earlier generation of gay writers who felt that Leavitt was somehow unfairly benefitting from their pioneering efforts while they went unrewarded. Of course, that means 'unrewarded' in terms of dollars and celebrity -- never mind that the ability of a young gay author to get mainstream attention should have been understood as a great reward in and of itself: a significant indicator of social progress. Later, Leavitt had to deal with generational rifts again as Stephen Spender got absurdly huffy and dangerously censorious over WHILE ENGLAND SLEEPS. And then there was the Esquire hub-bub over the wickedly delish novella THE TERM PAPER ARTIST.

Anyway, I really admire David for never getting discouraged by controversy or caught up in opportunites to turn himself into a personality/cause celebre. He's a real writer, which is not such an easy thing to be in this age of hype, even if you are financially successful.

There's an interview I did with David a few years back that you can access via the GoBiblio section of this site. Just go there and click on the Author Interviews page to find it.