Badpuppy Gay Today

Monday, 12 May, 1997

In 1984 David Leavitt burst upon the literary scene with Family Dancing, a collection of short stories. Since then Leavitt has won the devotion of readers and the envy of writers everywhere with his short stories and novels about gay men and those who love us. His first novel, The Lost Language of Cranes, was even made into a television movie.

Unfortunately, the last few years have not been kind to David Leavitt. His last novel, While England Sleeps (1993) earned its author a lawsuit from the venerable English writer, Stephen Spender, who thought that the plot was a little too similar to his own published memoirs. Leavitt's latest book, Arkansas, achieved a scandal of its own when one of its three novellas, The Term Paper Artist, was pulled from Esquire Magazine, which had intended to publish the story because of its explicit (homo)sexual content. Oh well. Leavitt got paid for his trouble and the Esquire hoopla gave Arkansas more publicity than it would have gotten on its own.

Arkansas takes its title from a quote by Oscar Wilde who, near the end of his life wrote that "I should like to flee like a wounded heart into Arkansas." Though Leavitt's position is not as dismal as Wilde's, his literary woes are enough to make him want to escape somewhere. Like Leavitt, the men in Arkansas seek recovery from personal or professional trouble through new surroundings, new projects, and new relationships.

Writers often disguise their lives as fiction. The thing they almost never do is disguise fiction as their lives." In The Term Paper Artist, the novella that got Leavitt in trouble with Esquire, Leavitt tries to disguise fiction as his life. It is the story of a writer, "David Leavitt," who develops writer's block after dealing with a crisis similar to the author's: "I was in trouble. 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 the bookstores and pulping several thousand copies." "Leavitt" escapes to Los Angeles, his own Arkansas, where he stays with his father and does research at the UCLA library for a novel about the Cleveland Street Affair. Needless to say, his research goes nowhere.

What gets in the way of David's research is Eric, a cute UCLA student who needs an "A" in English in order to graduate. Though Eric is straight, he knows that David finds him attractive--"the way I see it, you're gay and I'm sexy," Eric tells David--but won't put out until David writes him a Grade A term paper. David writes the paper, Eric lets him swing on his meat, and the next thing you know other straight male UCLA students are beating a path to David's door.

The basic plot of The Term Paper Artist--that of a gay man who writes term papers for straight college students in exchange for sex--would make a terrific sex story. Though The Term Paper Artist calls a blowjob a blowjob (which is why it was dropped by Esquire) it is, after all, a David Leavitt story. Much of the plot centers around the one student with a conscience: Ben Hollingsworth, a devout Mormon whose need for an A clashes with his moral scruples--both about homosexuality and cheating in class.

Most of the critical commentary about Arkansas naturally centered around The Term Paper Artist. This is unfair to the two other novellas, which are worth reading on their own. The Wooden Anniversary reunites Celia and Nathan, who Leavitt first introduced in 1990's A Place I've Never Seen. Saturn Street, the third novella, is the story of Jerry Roth, a screenwriter who suffers from writer's block (there is a pattern here). Living in L.A., with "a car..and nowhere to go in the mornings," Jerry volunteers to deliver lunches to homebound PWA's--and ends up falling in love with one of them.

All three novellas are well-crafted tales, but a letdown from the creator of Family Dancing and The Lost Language of Cranes. Leavitt is definitely in a slump, perhaps in reaction to the Spender debacle, and writes these stories to mark time until something better comes along. Still, David Leavitt at his worst is better than most people at their best, and Arkansas is no exception. We're certain that once he gets over his slump, Leavitt will amaze us once more with his creative genius. At least this reviewer hopes so.

IN BRIEF:

BISEXUAL CHARACTERS IN FILM: FROM ANAIS TO ZEE by Wayne M. Bryant Huntington Park Press; $17.95

This book is a valuable addition to bisexual studies. Bryant, co-founder of Biversity Boston, "examine(s) the previously unexplored topic of bisexual characters in film. This exploration covers more than two-hundred films made in twenty-five countries over a period of eighty years." Bisexual Characters in Film does all this admirably, though without illustrations, while bringing many Hollywood personalities out of the "bisexual closet."