Tribal frictions and relationships dominate the work of David Leavitt, the former literary boy wonder who has evolved into a stylish presence, writes Eileen Battersby, Literary Correspondent.
He is one of those very good writers, deliberate, careful and always capable of engaging his reader not through trickery, merely with subtle persuasion. Such is his understatement that it is too easy to allow Californian David Leavitt, author of The Lost Language of Cranes and Equal Affections, to slip from the front of your mind, if only until he publishes another new book. Then it becomes time to rediscover him all over again.
Still, it is odd that at the relatively youngish age of 43, Leavitt appears to have become one of the established group of distinguished US storytellers who tend to mind their own business, seldom becoming involved in public issues. But then, Leavitt has been around a long time, having begun his career with Family Dancing, an impressive collection of short stories published in 1984 when he was 23 and still a student at Yale.
"It does seem a long time ago. It was a long time ago," says Leavitt, open faced, funny, a good talker with a enthusiastc, friendly manner. I mention reading Family Dancing in the King Penguin edition. "Didn't it have such an ugly cover? I hated that jacket." Family was his first theme, and tribal frictions, as well as the study of relationships and illnesses, have continued to dominate his work.
Yet for a mainstream literary fiction writer who has written extensively about the gay experience, Leavitt, both in his novels and short stories, has always managed to keep his vision intense and focused but fresh. He makes a point of always trying to write a different book - and usually does.
His sixth and latest novel, The Body of Jonah Boyd, demonstrates exactly how good the best of Leavitt is. It is very funny and sharply, snappily different. "I got tired of reading and writing depressing books," he says.
"This has been the most positively received of all my books. I usually get mixed responses. But people really seem to like it and I'm, well, I'm really happy about it and it has a twist."
It is his first novel in four years and during this time he has moved back to the US after eight years in Italy. In true Jamesian style he wrote A Delicate Case, about Florence, borrowing a phrase from the great author and also chronicled living in Tuscany, where he restored a period villa. "I always knew I would go back home. Edmund White went back after 20 years in Paris. But there was also the fact I had got a job." He is teaching at the University of Florida.
PHYSICALLY HE SEEMS to have settled into sturdy middle age, but he still sounds young and remains interested in pursuing ideas and stories. Above all, he seems happy but not complacent, opinionated but never dogmatic. He is also a reader and although he is tone deaf, lives with a musician and "enjoys classical music", which proved useful in his fourth novel, The Page Turner.
Here is one former literary boy wonder who not only impressed as a young writer handling sensitive sexual material but has evolved into a mature, stylish presence without becoming either mannered or typecast. From all that early fame he also went on to experience legal action initiated by Stephen Spender, who was outraged by Leavitt's third novel, While England Sleeps, which the poet claimed, drew on his life. "That was difficult," he says with a frank shudder, then puts a question. "How much do any of us really own the facts of our lives?" Happily for Leavitt, the fuss has long since dispersed.
His literary masters are easily to identify: John Cheever, John Updike and William Trevor. In common with them, he is a born short story writer who also writes novels. He admires the work of the late Penelope Fitzgerald, one of the most gifted of 20th century English writers. "She wrote a different book every time," he says.
In the wake of the disappointing Booker outcome, Leavitt's witty, well-written new novel is even more welcome. He seems concerned about the attention being placed on Alan Hollinghurst as a "gay" writer as opposed to a writer.
"I don't like these labels. I mean what difference does it make? Maybe it would be better if we just said 'sex' or 'gender' fiction instead. In some bookstores, I'm in fiction, in others, I'm filed in the 'gay' corner. I could just as easily be described as a Jewish writer. I wonder which one is more important?"
The Body of Jonah Boyd, which is about need, desire and the business of writing, is not a gay novel. The narrator, Judith 'Denny' Denham, is the sort of mistress married men gravitate towards. "Well, she really knows what men want and I think that's very interesting," says Leavitt.
Candour is Denny's natural medium. Preparing to explain how she became sexually involved with Prof Wright, the psychology professor for whom she worked as a secretary at Wellspring University, she looks back over a period of some 30 years. When she begins her narrative, most of the principle players are dead. Her lover, Prof Wright, not the most sensitive of men, was murdered by one of his students. No, this is not a typical novel.
Few narrators manage to be as likeable and as terrifying as Denny. She certainly knows how to tell a story. Detail is something for which she has a feel: "I suppose I should say something more about what I was like at that time, I was 28, and had been working at Wellspring for just over a year. I was fat, with freckled, vigorous cheeks, and most of the time I wore men's Oxford shirts and denim skirts with elasticised waistbands. Perhaps because of this, most people assume me to be a sexless spinster, or short of that a lesbian, when in fact I have always had a fairly easy time attracting men."
Denny is a truth teller. "Wives be warned: It is not necessarily the glamorous woman, the woman with the pronounced cheekbones and the red hair piled loosely atop her head, who is the femme fatale. On the contrary, the homely secretary may pose a graver threat to your domestic security. For there is often a great disparity between what men actually want and what they feel, for the sake of appearances, they should pretend to want."
Denny is not the enemy, but she is clever and has learnt a great deal through having been underestimated all her life. It is a brilliant characterisation. Her narrative voice is the device upon which the book triumphs. But was Leavitt worried about her being too clever, too dangerous, too malevolent? "I was aware of that and I didn't want her to become a monster." She doesn't. Instead Denny develops into an convincing study of an outsider who knows what she would have liked to have in life, but instead was always ready to take whatever she was given.
She is an observer because life made her one. Beneath her bright confidence lies a well-concealed whiff of longing and controlled resentment. Denny is more than human, she is real. Anyhow, the narrative has a monster in Ben, Prof Wright's youngest son, who becomes a famous writer thanks to an act of theft.
LEAVITT IS ALSO a youngest son of a university professor and has an older brother and sister. "I was the youngest of three, and by nine years, so I really grew up as an only child. And like Ben, I wrote awful poetry and I was obnoxious, but I like to think I wasn't as bad as Ben."
Finding the voice of Denny took some time. When it arrived, it was fully formed and perfect. "At first, I was going to write it through a series of letters but decided against that."
Also central and almost a given, was the house. In the novel, Nancy, the professor's larger-than-life wife, is determined to break the university rules and keep the house, which, according to the college, must be kept for college staff only, in the family. This battle for the house becomes one of several subplots. "I had the house thing, because it was like that for us when Dad taught at Stanford. But then he did sell it. I have a house thing though, Howard's End is one of my favourite books." Shifts and twists lead the narrative from domestic comedy into something more sinister but still funny with the house in this new novel featuring as a major character.
He is writing a book about the Enigma code breaker, Alan Turing - "we share a birthday" - although Turing died seven years before Leavitt was born. The brilliant, tormented homosexual Cambridge mathematician who committed suicide in 1954, is a challenge for any biographer. "He ate a poisoned apple dipped in cyanide. He never forgot the Snow White connection. He's really interesting," says Leavitt, ever alert to the human and the real in the creation of story.
The Body of Jonah Boyd, by David Leavitt, is published by Bloomsbury (£14.99)