A Place I've Never Been

by David Leavitt

A collection of ten stories which explore the joys and agonies of love and friendship. Each of the stories illuminates a dark corner of human existance. Some are amusing and some are tragic. The author also wrote "Family Dancing", "The Lost Language of Cranes" and "Equal Affections".

Contents:
A place I've never been --
Spouse night --
My marriage to vengeance --
Ayor --
Gravity --
Houses --
When you grow to adultery --
I see London, I see France --
Chips is here --
Roads to Rome.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Gay, Gay Fiction, Americana

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1990

About the author

Leavitt is a graduate of Yale University and a professor at the University of Florida, where he is the co-director of the creative writing program. He is also the editor of Subtropics magazine, The University of Florida's literary review.

Leavitt, who is openly gay, has frequently explored gay issues in his work. He divides his time between Florida and Tuscany, Italy.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, you know how people talk about a golden age of short story writing that took place during the 1980s? I often fantasize about that era, and try to find the writers who were part of it. This book was written in 1990, but Leavitt's first collection came out in 1984, and I wonder if he's part of the whole 1980s short story phenomenon. One of these stories made me cry, another gave me chills.
If you're wondering what kind of stories these are, they're hard realism (my favorite), contemporary subjects, and most, if not all, have a gay character or a few. The title, which is also the title of the first story, is partly a reference to the college drinking game "I've never," where people go around saying things they've never done (as I'm writing it here, it sounds like it could only be trite, but Leavitt manages to bring up the idea of the game again in the last sentence in a way that's both breathtaking and very sad). Another thing about this collection that I deeply admired is that Leavitt is gay and writes about characters who are gay, but the stories don't reek of identity politics the way a lot of stuff that was written in the 90s does. Nothing preachy or ideologically assertive here -- at the height of AIDS, Leavitt stood tall and wrote real literature about homosexual characters during a time when many writers merely made a slide from lampooning gay characters to treating them as one-sided tragic elements. Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on this -- the point is, anyone can enjoy this book. Particularly impressive to me was Leavitt's rendering of the difficulties of friendship.

[Glenn Sumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really elegant collection of stories about people encountering crises: dealing with grief at a hospital support group for the spouses of the ill or deceased; attending a lesbian ex-lover’s wedding (to a man); being smitten with someone new while at a Thanksgiving dinner with your longtime partner’s beloved family.

Some of the collection’s best stories deal with the fallout of AIDS (the collection came out in 1990). In the title story, once codependent friends Celia and Nathan (from Leavitt’s debut book Family Dancing) reunite and realize how they’ve grown apart, symbolized by a silly game they used to play at college, the spectre of their earlier sexual pasts catching up to them. In the beautifully compact story “Gravity,” a mother whose son is dying from AIDS-related illness tests his will to live with one Hail Mary gambit.

These tales are beautifully constructed, and his characters mostly compelling. A couple of stories set in Europe aren’t quite as memorable or as sharply defined as the American ones. But even within them Leavitt will impress with a stunning passage or two.

And if you enjoy reading about pets, three or four stories contain lovely portraits of cats and dogs. One character is a dog breeder, and the story “Chips is Here” ends with a story involving pets that will break your heart.

[John Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of short stories. Some I liked more than others.

Contents as follows with my “labels” where possible in brackets and a little more..Hopefully, no spoilers.

1. A Place I’ve Never Been ( Gay Man Hetero Woman) selfish old Queen with his long suffering life prop.

2. Spouse Night (Heteros) Coming to terms with bereavement!

3. My Marriage to Vengeance (Lesbian).

4. Ayor (Gay Men)

5. Gravity (Mother/Son)

6. Houses (Bi/Gay/Old Bag)

7. When You Grow to Adultery (Two Timing Gays – M)

8. I See London/I see France (Hetero Dating Agency “Romance”)

9. Chips Is Here (neighbours/ Gay? M and a cat)

10. Roads to Rome (A little bit of everything. Dying queen – straight, holding court over a mixed bag of others).

[Becca DeGregorio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some gay little short stories. Dated in a cozy way. You can tell a gay man wrote it but not a mean one.

[L · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wont ever forget finding a copy at the Strand, and reading as many stories as I could on the bus home to Boston.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read these stories in Leavitt's 'Collected Stories' (2001) which I read early in the millennium and enjoyed them and as I read more of Leavitt's work, particularly his novels I was of the opinion he was a better story writer then novelist. Now I am not so sure - not that I think he is a better novelist - I am just not sure how good he really is. He can certainly write, in a rather laboured way - but I don't think it is that great. There is a great deal of artifice in his work - maybe that is to be expected from the writer who had the first 'gay' story published in the New Yorker. But then maybe my sense of distance from Leavitt's work has a lot to do with him being the author of the first 'gay' story in The New Yorker.

I live in London and things like the New Yorker nor the sense of unreflective self importance that American gays had always rubbed me up the wrong way. Clearly that doesn't say great things about me but it does affect how view these stories now - and I can't help thinking that they are all written with the aim of being in the new Yorker or other prestigious literary journals. These are stories written as literature - but they aren't the type of stories I grew up loving - Maugham, Maupassant, Greene, Waugh, Fitzgerald - Leavitt's stories are so polished - no burnished - that they dazzle the reader with their classy importance. But they don't seem important now - stories about gay men in such funk over AIDS that they don't believe in safe sex appear risible - maybe living in a country that has a health free on the point of demand and which had launched AIDS awareness campaigns in 1986 such as the USA never would - affects my approach. It is not because the UK wass better, it was different, the USA had no monopoly on AIDS and AIDS was never a 'gay' disease - it was a virus and it would kill mostly those disease always kills - the poor.

I wouldn't say don't read these stories but I can't help thinking they are not as important as I thought. There are other things worth reading.

[John Treat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leavitt, a writer I've in fact warmed to over the years, still makes me cringe a little (or a lot) when he writes about gay men, which is nearly all the time. You wouldn't want to be any of them. All very prissily neurotic. But this collection of short stories made me realize the pieces with no gay men in them are worse. It's as if he's straining to find something else to write about, but that something is never interesting. He should relax and just be content to be the Henry James of gay men's literature, which is what he aspires to anyway.

[Lucas Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

*slaps the hood of this book*
You can fit so much yearning and sadness in this baby

[Samir Rawas Sarayji · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd say it's more of a 3.5 rating. I enjoyed the bulk of the stories here, although some more than others. Leaviit has a talent for writing stories with myriad characters that are still unique from one another and memorable (think of the opening chapters in War & Peace). Although it's not my flavour of tea with short stories, those that do have many interacting characters are still amusing to read and the heaviness of some themes is then masked by the consequent lightness of this style. The stories that are my 'Lady Earl Grey' are the slower, less busy and more introspective ones. Here, as in his collection of three novellas 'Arkansas', I'm wooed by subtle observations, minute characteristics and fully rounded characters.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of short stories, primarily gay themed. The writing is lyrical, smooth like beach glass. Some of the stories skim the surface, some are deeper, but all address universal issues in unique ways.

[Nahia · Rating 3 out of 5]

No sé si he entendido del todo bien la historia. No veo un principio y un final claros. No se si he terminado de entender el final. Pero bueno, es una lectura más de la universidad así que lo tenía que leer sí o sí.

[Katie M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were fine. But after reading pretty much all of Leavitt's books I have officially become so, so, SO done with neurotic white Jewish gay NYC narratives. So done.

[Mikael Kuoppala · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of truly original and well written strories that adress some very relevant themes concerning our western lifestyle.

[Kris Van Mierlo · Rating 4 out of 5]

De jonge Amerikaanse schrijver David Leavitt (1961), van wie ook in Nederlandse vertaling verschenen 'Familiedans', 'De verloren taal der kranen' en 'Eendere liefde', verzamelt in deze bundel tien verhalen. Vertrouwd maar telkens weer verrassend, want Leavitt slaagt erin de lezer na een aanvankelijke herkenning van een thema, een motief of een personage, mee te slepen in onverwachte wendingen. Vertrouwd ook vanwege de niet nieuwe thematiek van ziekte (AIDS), dood, liefde, drankproblemen en familieverhoudingen, maar wederom verrassend door de blijkbaar onuitputtelijke kracht waarmee Leavitt zijn thema's almaar verder uitdiept. Prachtige verhalen kortom, briljant geschreven, van hoog niveau maar voor iedereen begrijpelijk en amusant. Pocketeditie, kleine druk.
(Biblion recensie, Cees van der Pluijm.)
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[Vitt1 · Rating 2 out of 5]

La legge della (buona) scrittura vuole che l'autore scriva "2+2" lasciando a chi legge il compito di completare con "=4".

Ecco, Leavitt o scrive tutto o usa qualche segno sbagliato, falsando l'equazione. Un peccato, perché sembra che ci sia del potenziale, come mostra l'ultimo racconto della raccolta, l'unico che valga la pena leggere (motivo per cui sono 2 stelle e mezzo).

Spero che "Il linguaggio segreto delle gru", il prossimo libro di Leavitt che leggerò tra molto molto molto tempo, non abbia la stessa scrittura piana e ingenua 💅

[Rubén Balanta Mera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las historias que permean y que se vuelven el hilo que trasciende todas las historias son los sentimientos de desamor, decepción, dolor, angustia, tristeza, habla de personas que nunca han estado en el lugar que quisieran estar. Son historias cortas que de una u otra forma hacen sentir al lector identificado. No sé trata de gente gay, se trata de personas que sola que busca aferrarse a algo que los haga sentir de forma diferente, y de esta manera solo logran hacer más honda su miseria.

[Steve Charters]

Re-reading it thirty years later on the whole it stands the test of time. I still enjoy Leavitt's style, prose and the way he unfolds a story. But the foregrounding of each narrator's Jewishness, the similarity of their working lives and life-styles, the Italian connection and the repetition of motif gives it the whiff of fictionalised autobiography.

[kent shereve · Rating 3 out of 5]

some descriptive brilliance in almost every story; mostly uninspired plots, with the two most ambitious stories closing out the collection; contrived, soapy dialogue throughout; an exploration of late 20th C gay life that is at once variegated, narrow, and clumped up; a couple transcendent passages of character development that spoke to me truly

[Valentina G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Come spesso accade nei libri di racconti ci sono quelli migliori e quelli meno riusciti. Ho sicuramente apprezzato di più Ballo di famiglia, pur trovando che Leavitt abbia una scrittura piacevole e scorrevole.
L’ultimo racconto, Le strade che portano a Roma, aveva un sapore vagamente “à la Özpetek”, se così si può dire, e non so se sia un pregio o un difetto. Lascio qui il dubbio.

[Tracy M · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a book from one of my honors classes in college where we only read a story or two, so I wanted to go back and read the whole thing. That said, I am not a short story girl. The form just isn't my jam. So none of these really stood out to me EXCEPT....the last one, Roads to Rome, which I thought was wonderful and heartbreaking all at the same time.

[Sean Kinch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it, start to finish. From “My Marriage to Vengeance”: “Rich people are like that, I have noticed. They think a love affair is like a shared real estate venture they can just buy out of when they get tired of it.”

[William Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful collection that still more than holds up. The only stories I didn’t like were “I See London, I See France” and “Roads to a Rome,” both of which completely bored me. “Chips Is Here” was interesting but felt more like a Lorrie Moore or AM Homes sort of story. All the others: superb.

[George Fenwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple, lovely collection of stories

[Zachary Ibarra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was impressed by how emotionally invested I became in stories no longer than 20 pages. They were incredibly smart and beautiful, I really loved this book.

[Sustraiak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me quedaron algunos relatos por leer. Hubo un par de excepciones que me gustaron bastante, pero en general me pareció por debajo del nivel de Leavitt.

[G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag, some good most mediocre. I like Leavitt when he is relatable, these are not. They feel like aborted stories that were supposed to be longer.

[Marieke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah yeah, this was good. Lots of relationships between people, some of it healthy. Lot of cheating, which I don't condone, but it is literature, so... par for the course?

[Petzopa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kontakizunak dira, oso onak.

[marcos_.02 · Rating 3 out of 5]

algunos cuentos me han gustado mucho y otros me han dejado un poco frío, pero me ha sorprendido seguiremos leyendo a este señor

[Antonella Sacco · Rating 4 out of 5]

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