David Leavitt (/ˈlɛvɪt/; born June 23, 1961) is an American novelist, short story writer, and biographer.
Biography
Leavitt was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Gloria and Harold Leavitt. Harold was a professor who taught at Stanford University and Gloria was a political activist. Leavitt grew up in Palo Alto, California, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in English in 1983. After his first book's success, he spent much of the 1990s living in Italy working and restoring an old house in Semproniano in Tuscany with his partner. He has also taught at Princeton University.[1]
While a student at Yale, Leavitt published two stories in The New Yorker, "Territory" and "Out Here", both of which were included in his first collection, Family Dancing (nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award). Other published fiction includes the short-story collections A Place I've Never Been, Arkansas: Three Novellas and The Marble Quilt and the novels The Lost Language of Cranes, Equal Affections, While England Sleeps (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize), The Page Turner, Martin Bauman, The Body of Jonah Boyd and The Indian Clerk (finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award).
Leavitt, who is gay, has frequently explored gay issues in his works.[2] As a teenager, he was frequently frightened by gay novels that emphasized the ideal male body. He found this theme, and its suggestion that homoerotic fulfillment was reserved for the exceptionally beautiful young men, intrusive.[3] His writing explores universal themes such as complex family relationships and class and sex exploitation.[4] Illness and death are also recurrent themes in his work, inspired by his experience with his mother's cancer and death when he was growing up.[5]
Leavitt's 2004 novel The Body of Jonah Boyd is dedicated to the Palo Alto house he grew up in, 743 Cooksey Lane. This house has since then gained notoriety for being the site of Sam Bankman-Fried's house arrest.[6]
Despite writing many novels, Leavitt has said he feels more confident as a short story writer.[5] He has been criticized for writing too quickly, which he attributes to early experiences with death convincing him that his life as a writer would be short.[5] His work has been considered minimalist as well as part of the literary Brat Pack, but he has made "a fierce effort to disassociate" himself from both. He considers his works too long, emotional and descriptive to be minimalist.[5]
In 1993, the English poet Stephen Spender sued Leavitt for copyright infringement over the publication of his novel While England Sleeps, accusing him of using elements of Spender's memoir World Within World in the novel.[8] Viking-Penguin, Leavitt's publisher at the time, withdrew the book. In 1995, Houghton Mifflin published a revised version with a preface by Leavitt addressing the controversy.
In "Courage in the Telling: The Critical Rise and Fall of David Leavitt", Drew Patrick Shannon argues that the critical backlash that accompanied Spender's suit "allowed [critics] to reinforce the boundaries between gay and mainstream literature that Leavitt had previously crossed".[9] Subsequent reviews of Leavitt's work were more favorable.[10][11] The episode provided Leavitt with the basis for his novella The Term-Paper Artist.[12]
^Shannon, Drew Patrick (October 2001). "Courage in the Telling: The Critical Rise and Fall of David Leavitt". International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies. 6 (4): 305–318. doi:10.1023/A:1012221326219. S2CID140307128.
^Taylor, DJ (January 25, 2008). "Adding up to a life". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
^Freudenberger, Nell (September 16, 2007). "Lust for Numbers". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
^Bleeth, Kenneth; Julie Rivkin (October 2001). "The 'Imitation David': Plagiarism, Collaboration and the Making of a Gay Literary Tradition in David Leavitt's "The Term-Paper Artist". PMLA. 5. 116.
