David Leavitt - Free Library Land Online

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"Very funny and unexpected, a material response to our times, plush as velvet." –Rachel Cusk

"A wickedly funny and emotionally expansive novel about all the bewildering ways we seek solace from the people and things that surround us." – Jenny Offill

David Leavitt returns with his signature "coolly elegant prose" (O, The Oprah Magazine) to deliver a comedy of manners for the Trump era.

It is the Saturday after the 2016 presidential election, and in a plush weekend house in Connecticut, an intimate group of friends, New Yorkers all, has gathered to recover from what they consider the greatest political catastrophe of their lives. They have just sat down to tea when their hostess, Eva Lindquist, proposes a dare. Who among them would be willing to ask Siri how to assassinate Donald Trump? Liberal and like-minded-editors, writers, a decorator, a theater producer, and one financial guy, Eva's...]]> Wed, 02 Dec 2020 22:48:24 +0200 The Lost Language of Cranes: A Novel https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169267-the_lost_language_of_cranes_a_novel.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169267-the_lost_language_of_cranes_a_novel.html

David Leavitt's extraordinary first novel, now reissued in paperback, is a seminal work about family, sexual identity, home, and loss.
Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, The Lost Language of Cranes tells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man. Philip's parents are facing their own crisis: pressure from developers and the loss of their longtime home. But the real threat to this family is Philip's father's own struggle with his latent homosexuality, realized only in his Sunday afternoon visits to gay porn theaters. Philip's admission to his parents and his father's hidden life provoke changes that forever alter the landscape of their worlds.

From Library Journal

This first novel by the author of Family Dancing, a well-received collection of short stories ( LJ 8/84), reflects both the author's youth and his promise. The story focuses on Philip Benjamin, a 25-year-old New Yorker, somewhat naive but definitely gay, who is involved in his first "serious" romance. This situation is complicated by the struggle of Philip's father to deal more openly with his own longstanding, but thus far closeted, homosexual inclinations. With Philip's coming out, father is thrown into even greater turmoil, mother begins to realize the complete truth, and all are forced to reexamine the ties that bind them. Leavitt again proves adept at looking into the complexities of familial relationships and generational differences. At times the work seems self-indulgent and just a bit trite but is nonetheless recommended. David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A tour de force.a multilayered work of sensibility." (New York Times )
"Fascinating.lingers in the mind...Mr. Leavitt''s sense of pacing, his graceful sentences and his storytelling ability dovetail nicely." (Philip Lopate New York Times Book Review )
"A brilliant, wise first novel.the delight of the book is Leavitt''s style.it flashes with pathos, anger, and camp wit; it rises to a subtle urban lyricism." (Vogue )
"An amazingly perceptive novel." (San Francisco Chronicle )
"It places him firmly among the best young authors of his generation.Leavitt catches beautifully the terror and passion of new love." (Dorothy Allison Village Voice )

]]> Fri, 14 Nov 1986 11:33:41 +0300 Family Dancing https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169268-family_dancing.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169268-family_dancing.html

Thirty years ago, David Leavitt first appeared on the literary scene with a gutsy story collection that stunned readers and reviewers. Just twenty-three, he was hailed as a prodigy of sorts: "remarkably gifted" (The Washington Post), with "a genius for empathy" (The New York Times Book Review) and "a knowledge of others' lives . . . that a writer twice his age might envy" (USA Today). "Regardless of age," wrote the New York Times, "few writers so effortlessly achieve the sense of maturity and earned compassion so evident in these pages."In "Territory," a well-intentioned, liberal mother, presiding over her local Parents of Lesbians and Gays chapter, finds her acceptance of her son's sexuality shaken when he arrives home with a lover. In the title story, a family extended through divorce and remarriage dances together at the end of a summer party—in the recognition that they are still bound by the very forces that split them apart. Tender...]]> Fri, 14 Nov 2014 11:33:41 +0200 The Body of Jonah Boyd https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169276-the_body_of_jonah_boyd.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169276-the_body_of_jonah_boyd.html

]]> Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:33:44 +0200 Page Turner Pa https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169272-page_turner_pa.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169272-page_turner_pa.html

At eighteen, Paul Porterfield aspires to play the piano at the world's great concert halls. So far the closest he has come has been to turn pages of sheet music for his idol, the dashing, temperamental Richard Kennington, a former piano prodigy on the cusp of middle age.
Months later, while on holiday with his mother in Italy, Paul encounters Richard a second time. Their earlier attraction develops into an intense affair. As the innocence of first love becomes entangled with the quest for a more enduring happiness, Paul comes to realise that he cannot be a page turner all his life and that he has to confront his ambitions.
With artful storytelling, shrewd perception and arch humour, THE PAGE TURNER testifies to the bittersweet truths of strained relationships and the resiliency of the human heart.

]]> Sat, 14 Nov 1998 11:33:43 +0200 While England Sleeps https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169278-while_england_sleeps.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169278-while_england_sleeps.html

Set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, While England Sleeps tells the story of a love affair between Brian Botsford, an upper-class young English writer, and Edward Phelan, an idealistic employee of the London Underground and member of the Communist Party. Though far better educated than Edward, Brian is also far more callow, convinced that his homosexuality is something he will outgrow. Edward, on the other hand, possesses "an unproblematic capacity to accept" both Brian and the unorthodox nature of their love for each other—until one day, at the urging of his wealthy aunt Constance, Brian agrees to be set up with a "suitable" young woman named Philippa Archibald . . . Pushed to the point of crisis, Edward flees, volunteering to fight Franco in Spain, where he ends up in prison. And Brian, feeling responsible for Edward's plight, must pursue him across Europe, and into the chaos of war.]]> Fri, 14 Nov 2014 11:33:44 +0200 The Marble Quilt https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169269-the_marble_quilt.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169269-the_marble_quilt.html

David Leavitt displays his masterful range, his deep emotional intelligence and wit in these nine stories, a cosmopolitan selection set variously over the past century, from fin de siècle London to early-60s Hollywood, from Florida to Rome. Here is a survey of human relationships, from the most intimate to the most unexpected, and human experience, veering from the light into the dark, as in the title story, where a man tries to make sense of his partner's murder, and in "Black Box," about the alliance of two souls left grieving after a plane crash. His fourth story collection since he burst onto the scene at age twenty-three, The Marble Quilt shows Leavitt maturing into one of the most accomplished and agile writers of short fiction today.]]> Fri, 14 Nov 2014 11:33:42 +0200 A Place I've Never Been https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169273-a_place_ive_never_been.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169273-a_place_ive_never_been.html

David Leavitt's second collection of stories further confirms a talent deep and wonderfully creative in its empathy. A Place I've Never Been explores family relationships, friendships, and romantic relationships, among characters whose sexuality is fluid or uncertain — a barrier or under threat. A real estate agent happily married to a woman finds himself in love with another man in "Houses." A man entering a bold new world of gay hookups feels sheltered from the most intimidating attentions by his more attractive, charismatic friend. And Leavitt moves from the familiar American suburbs to Italy, where he's also spent time, to create a contrast with European concepts of loyalty and fidelity that transcends the usual stereotypes. A Place I've Never Been is clever and pleasurable, but also revelatory and wise.]]> Fri, 14 Nov 2014 11:33:43 +0200 In Maremma https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169271-in_maremma.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169271-in_maremma.html

Now with stunning illustrations and color photographs, this newly expanded edition of In Maremma recounts David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell's restoration of a dilapidated 1950s farmhouse in southern Tuscany. Beautifully written, witty, and concise, it recounts the process by which they became initiated into a part of Italian life foreigners rarely see. The pleasures of the olive harvest and picking wild asparagus are juxtaposed with the vagaries of political corruption and self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Landscape and weather provide the stuff of reverie, as do the benefits of boredom and the longing for peanut butter. A celebration and exploration of a little-known part of Italy, In Maremma is a fond if sometimes critical corrective to other more rapturous portrayals of Tuscany.]]> Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:33:42 +0200 The Indian Clerk https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169265-the_indian_clerk.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169265-the_indian_clerk.html

On a January morning in 1913, G. H. Hardy—eccentric, charismatic and, at thirty-seven, already considered the greatest British mathematician of his age—receives in the mail a mysterious envelope covered with Indian stamps. Inside he finds a rambling letter from a self-professed mathematical genius who claims to be on the brink of solving the most important unsolved mathematical problem of all time. Some of his Cambridge colleagues dismiss the letter as a hoax, but Hardy becomes convinced that the Indian clerk who has written it—Srinivasa Ramanujan—deserves to be taken seriously. Aided by his collaborator, Littlewood, and a young don named Neville who is about to depart for Madras with his wife, Alice, he determines to learn more about the mysterious Ramanujan and, if possible, persuade him to come to Cambridge. It is a decision that will profoundly affect not only his own life, and that of his friends, but the entire history of mathematics.Based on the remarkable true story of the strange and ultimately tragic relationship between an esteemed British mathematician and an unknown—and unschooled—mathematical genius, and populated with such luminaries such as D. H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Indian Clerk takes this extraordinary slice of history and transforms it into an emotional and spell-binding story about the fragility of human connection and our need to find order in the world.

]]> Sun, 14 Nov 2010 11:33:41 +0200 The Two Hotel Francforts https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169274-the_two_hotel_francforts.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169274-the_two_hotel_francforts.html

It is the summer of 1940, and Lisbon, Portugal, is the only neutral port left in Europe—a city filled with spies, crowned heads, and refugees of every nationality, tipping back absinthe to while away the time until their escape. Awaiting safe passage to New York on the SS Manhattan, two couples meet: Pete and Julia Winters, expatriate Americans fleeing their sedate life in Paris; and Edward and Iris Freleng, sophisticated, independently wealthy, bohemian, and beset by the social and sexual anxieties of their class. As Portugal's neutrality, and the world's future, hang in the balance, the hidden threads in the lives of these four characters—Julia's status as a Jew, Pete and Edward's improbable affair, Iris's increasingly desperate efforts to save her tenuous marriage—begin to come loose. This journey will change their lives irrevocably, as Europe sinks into war.Gorgeously written, sexually and politically charged, David Leavitt's long-awaited new...]]> Thu, 14 Nov 2013 11:33:43 +0200 Arkansas https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169275-arkansas.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169275-arkansas.html

Here are three novellas of escape and exile, touching and funny and at times calculatedly outrageous. In "Saturn Street," a disaffected L.A. screenwriter delivers lunches to homebound AIDS patients, only to find himself falling in love with one of them. In "The Wooden Anniversary," Nathan and Celia - familiar characters from Leavitt's story collections - reunite after a five-year separation. And in "The Term-Paper Artist," a writer named David Leavitt, hiding out at his father's house in the aftermath of a publishing scandal, experiences literary rejuvenation when he agrees to write term papers for UCLA undergraduates in exchange for sex.David Leavitt's first work of fiction sinceWhile England Sleeps, these novellas explore the themes of escape and exile. By turns comical, lyrical, and speculative, they testify to the redemptive capacities of both the human heart and the literary spirit. First serial to Esquire. 224 pp. National ads. Author tour. 25,000 print.

]]> Fri, 14 Nov 1997 11:33:43 +0200 Martin Bauman https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169264-martin_bauman.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169264-martin_bauman.html

David Leavitt’s deliciously sharp novel is a multilayered dissection of literary and sexual mores in the get-ahead eighties, when outrageous success lay seductively within reach of any young writer ambitious enough to grab it. Martin Bauman — nineteen, talented, and insecure — is enrolled at a prestigious college and wins a place under the tutelage of the legendary Stanley Flint, a man who makes or breaks careers with the flick of a weary hand. An irresistibly entertaining epic, erotic, honest, and funny, Martin Bauman “draws one character so masterfully that this character will stick in the reader’s mind as strongly as Magwitch or Harry Lime” (Philadelphia Inquirer).

]]> Tue, 14 Nov 2000 11:33:40 +0200 The Lost Language of Cranes https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169270-the_lost_language_of_cranes.html https://history.library.land/david-leavitt/169270-the_lost_language_of_cranes.html

Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, The Lost Language of Cranes tells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip Benjamin, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man. Philip's parents are facing their own problems: pressure from developers and the loss of their longtime home. But the real threat to the family is Philip's father's own struggle with his suppressed homosexuality, realized only in Sunday afternoon visits to gay porn theaters. Philip's revelation to his parents leads his father to a point of crisis and provokes changes that forever alter the landscape of the family's lives.]]> Fri, 14 Nov 2014 11:33:42 +0200