The Marble Quilt [Hardcover]

David Leavitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 2001

In these nine masterly stories, David Leavitt surveys the complicated politics of human relationships in families and communities, in the present day and over the course of the last century. A "wizard at blending levity and pathos" (Chicago Tribune), Leavitt displays here his characteristic grace and intelligence, as well as his remarkable candor and wit.
Here are stories that range in form from a historical survey to a police interrogation to an e-mail exchange. In "The Infection Scene," a young man's determined effort to contract HIV is juxtaposed with an account of the early life of Lord Alfred Douglas. In the title story, an expatriate tries to make sense of his ex-partner's senseless murder. In "Crossing St. Gotthard," the members of an American family traveling in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century find themselves confronting their own mortality as they plunge into a train tunnel in Switzerland. And in "Black Box," the partner of a man killed in a plane crash is drawn into an unholy alliance with a fellow "crash widow." Moving from Rome to San Francisco to Florida, from fin-de-siccle London to Hollywood in the early 1960s, these stories showcase the agility and sensitivity that have earned David Leavitt his reputation as one of the most innovative voices in contemporary short fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Leavitt's nine short stories take their cue less from contemporary short-attention-span fiction and more from the stratified ironies of a Malamud or a Cheever. In "The Infection Scene," Leavitt parallels the real life of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie"), with that of a fictitious but equally malign contemporary cock-teaser, Christopher, a San Francisco teen who has a romantically inaccurate fascination with getting AIDS. Although both Bosie and Christopher are walking disasters, they are also undeniably attractive, wayward na‹fs. Another, although lesser, naif, Ezra Hartley, is the con man in "The Black Box." Ezra comes to New York with a video he wants to sell the networks, showing footage of a plane that has just exploded on the way to England and the troop of school kids who were on board. He enlists Bob Bookman, a native New Yorker whose lover was also killed in the crash, to help him, drawing him deeply into a clockwork-perfect dance of delusion and lust. In the title story, the narrator, Vincent Burke, gives details of the life of his ex-lover, Tom, to two Roman carabinieri after Tom is found murdered. Although Tom's murder isn't solved in the story, the enigmas in his life from his friendship with patronizing "liberal" straight couples in San Francisco to his late-blooming obsession with marble in Rome become clearer. This story is infused with an anger that exists, like a lit fuse, just below its dense writerliness. Straining to contain his sense of the outrages of gay history beneath the luster of an accomplished style, Leavitt achieves an electric narrative energy. Author tour. (Sept. 4)Forecast: Though smaller in scope than Leavitt's recent novel, Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing, this is a more surefooted and emotionally complex effort and should please gay and straight readers alike.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Leavitt (Martin Bauman) here presents a masterly collection of stories that transport us from Italy at the turn of the 19th century, where we follow a small family on their first trip to Europe, to England and a fictional account of Lord Alfred Douglas's life (he was one of Oscar Wilde's lovers) to the United States and the tragedy of a plane crash off the Atlantic Coast. We watch a professional relationship grow and then collapse via e-mail and return to Italy, present day, to find the murder of an ex-lover. As always, Leavitt creates some of the most finely polished characters in fiction today; even minor characters feel real. While this is his greatest strength, it is also a weakness, as sometimes his characters seem to overwhelm the plot. But that is not the case in this fascinating collection of stories. Highly recommended for all collections.
- T.R. Salvadori, Margaret Heggan Free P.L., Hurffville, NJ
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (September 21, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395902444
• ISBN-13: 978-0395902448
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,347,247 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Still dancing around those family issues, May 18, 2002

By 

Charles S. Houser (Binghamton, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Marble Quilt (Hardcover)

There is little here of the pinched discomfort of educated middle-class white folk painfully disengaged from their own lives that distinguished Leavitt's first and most insightful short story collection, FAMILY DANCING. But there is still evidence that Leavitt is a keen observer of human behavior and modern life. (Although he sometimes sets his stories in another time period, I find it easiest to surrender to the ones that are firmly set in the present--even if that "present" spans a couple of decades, as in the title story of this collection.) He continues to reference the detritus of modern life (Filofax datebooks, email, automatic pool cleaners), but he does this selectively and, unlike Bret Easton Ellis and others of their generation, he does not overwhelm his readers with brand names and expect us to understand the relative prestige of every product named. His focus is on the workings of the human heart and will, though the social context of his characters is never out of sight. For me, his approach to story telling falls somewhere between that of de Maupassant and Checkhov.

Leavitt experiments in post-modern story telling in "Route 80," a two-part self-reflexive story about a pair of lovers who have broken up; "Speonk," a story with three possible endings about a recently retired soap opera star's efforts to reach the small town of Speonk on eastern Long Island one night and the way his daytime drama personality does (or does not) draw reactions from the people he encounters on the way; and "The List," a modern epistolary story told entirely through the emails exchanged by gay academics, some of whom have never met.

By far the most post-modern story in this collection is "The Infection Scene," the story of two young gay men who make a pact to have unprotected sex so that the uninfected partner can share in his lover's impending doom from AIDS, interwoven with a fictionalized historical account of Alfred Lord Douglas's equally destructive relationship with Oscar Wilde. The contemporary story has the ghoulishness of an urban legend while the historical story seems too confident of its own grasp of the facts to be believable. The ultimate effect (which I suspect is intentional) is to leave the reader questioning the validity and plausibility of any story. As cynical as it may seem, stories, Leavitt seems to be saying, can ultimately do little more than amuse. They cannot teach anything, reveal anything, or guide us through life. You, gentle reader, are what you choose to believe.

This theme also dominates the best story in the collection, "Black Box." Here, using very traditional story-telling techniques, Leavitt chooses one metaphor (the search for fallen commercial jet's black box) to hover in the background of his story. Although certainly written before 9/11/01, it addresses the Grand Guignol aspects of human behavior that have come to the fore since the terrorist attacks of that tragic day. One senses that the lives of people caught up in the numbing banality of modern life are so devoid of meaning that there is an almost romantic surrendering to tragedy and horror. As one character observes, "It's curious how hungry, almost lustful, people get for details. Especially if there's some horrible irony, like the person had just missed another plane" (p. 101). The question seems to be, where do people turn to find meaning and from what do we manufacture it?

Overall, a decent and thoughtful collection of stories, though not as unified and stunning as FAMILY DANCING.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Literary Force to be Reckoned With!, March 21, 2002

By 

Joseph J. Hanssen "Joe" (Upstate New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Marble Quilt (Hardcover)

I have to admit I've been a fan of David Leavitt's writing for some time, and I've read almost everything he has ever published. I had my doubts about his handling nine short stories, but after repeated reminders by my friends who loved this book that I should read it, I finally sat down and read the book right through in one evening. I wasn't disappointed in the least. Here is a book of short stories that are timeless, that I believe will be long remembered and become classics. David is truly experimenting with different forms of writing and styles here, and he is very successful....

Although all of the nine stories are exceptionally good, the three that stand out for me, and I believe the majority of readers, are definitely, "The Infection Scene", "Black Box, and the title story, "The Marble Quilt". "The Infection Scene" parallels the past and present of two different lives. It deals with the life of Lord Alfred Douglas, during and after his affair with Oscar Wilde, and the life of a fictitious young man named Christopher, who has an obsession with getting AIDS by having unprotected ...[realations] with his lover named Anthony, who is HIV- positive. It shows how restraint & doing the safe thing is just too hard for some people to cope with. It has the power, in this case, to make Christopher do a deadly thing, and not care about the end results. "The Black Box" deals with the death of Bob Bookman's lover... And "The Marble Quilt" tells the story of Vincent, who's ex-lover Tom, is found murdered in his apartment in Rome. Each story deals with death in a different way, and it's the intriguing results that affects the remaining partners' lives that make these stories so realistic and enjoyable.

These stories may sound depressing to read, but they're not. They are as much about living as they are about dying. You'll find yourself asking, "What would I do in the same situations". I'm still thinking about it myself. This is one of David Leavitt's best books yet. It's for sure, we can look forward to more brilliant writing like this from this wonderful author. Highly Recommended!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable stories, November 12, 2001

By 

"ivan1138" (Tallahassee,FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Marble Quilt (Hardcover)

"The Marble Quilt" is a remarkable and varied collection of short fiction by David Leavitt.
Contrary to most collections I've encountered, I found that each of these pieces were possessed of a certain captivating quality. Though I won't claim to have been mesmerized by each story, the majority are worthy of being singled out, though space permits me to mention only three. "The List" is an epistolary story for the computer age. "The Black Box" is an ironically timed piece which concerns a man coming to terms with the loss of his companion in a plane crash. "Crossing St. Gottard," is the first story in the collection and also first in my heart. An outstanding prose piece worthy of Forster. Erotically charged, yet never coarse. One is left contented if not quite sated.
These stories enhance Mr. Leavitt's already considerable reputation as a gifted chronicler of the American experiance.