Old Acquaintance

by David Stacton

With Old Acquaintance (1962) David Stacton embarked upon his third literary triptych, this one on the theme of 'The Sexes'.'Even in these one-worldly days of cultural colonies and jet-setters, most US authors trying to depict European sophistication seem indefinably out of their league, like children sashaying around in grown-up shoes. Not so David Stacton, who here recounts with relish and delight a nostalgic encounter between two Old World celebrities at an international film festival.' Time'The old acquaintances are Charlie, a successful novelist with four wives and a succession of young men in his past, and Lotte, a German singer and movie star, now American. Their acquaintanceship dates back thirty years to their youth in Berlin... David Stacton has a spectacular, erudite way with the fun and games...' Kirkus Reviews

196 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Aka Bud Clifton

David Derek Stacton (1925–1968) was a U.S. novelist, historian and poet. He was born on 25 April 1925 in Minden, Nevada. Stacton attended Stanford University from 1941–43, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1951. He served in the Civilian Public Service as a conscientious objector then lived in Europe from 1950–1954, 1960–1962, and 1964–1965. Stacton wrote under the pseudonyms Carse Boyd, Bud Clifton, David Dereksen and David West. Most of his books were originally published in England. He died of a stroke 19 January 1968 in Fredensborg, Denmark.

Stacton's novels are often low in dialogue, and his better novels are instead full of his witty scornful comments on his characters and life. At his best Stacton had an epigrammatic style and enjoyed a sophisticated irony, although antipathetic critics took him to task for pretentious vocabulary, a tendency to florid paradoxes, and anachronistic allusions (i.e. describing a 14th century Zen garden using phrases from Marianne Moore and Peter Pan). In 1963, Time magazine praised his work as "masses of epigrams marinated in a stinging mixture of metaphysics and blood" and suggested that "something similar might have been the result if the Duc de la Rochefoucauld had written novels with plots suggested by Jack London". His other literary influences include Walter Pater, for his choice of characters with frustrated artistic and emotional longings, and Lytton Strachey for his witty attention to history. Several of Stacton's novels feature homosexual characters prominently. Fans of David Stacton include John Crowley, Thomas M. Disch, and Peter Beagle.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Stacton is one of my great discoveries of 2024. He was widely admired when alive and efforts have been made, and may they continue, to resurrect his popularity. This novel is enchanting, it is a love story on many levels but most profoundly between friends, Charlie and Lotte are two exiles from the demise Wiemar Germany who have prospered in the USA and are on the verge of leaving middle and moving onto old age. Not that either of them accept that they are or are worried if they are. Both of them have lived too long, travelled too far from their roots and acquired the patina of the homeless cosmopolitan, to admit or surrender completely to any obvious emotional need, except the need to not be alone.

There is so much I love in this novel because it is wise and witty and pours forth from David Stacton's incredibly rich knowledge which is surprisingly current:

"Did it ever occur to you," (Charlie) said, "that in the really good Russian novelists, which is to say Turgenev, and perhaps Sologub, who suffered from brevity, and Tchekov (sic), but Tchckev's longest efficient reach was the novelette, and Goncharov...and of course Gogol, the books always begin in the same set way:

"'On a certain morning in March, 18-, a Mr. Y- walked up the steps of No. - C. - Street, in the City of C-; and instead of being annoyed, you couldn't feel that the world was more comfortable. You know right where you are.'"

This peroration of Charlie's tops and tails the novel and provides a leitmotif to the type of mental world Charlie lives in. I don't know of any American or English author of this era who could mention Russian novelists, particular Sologub and Goncharov and not appear heavy handed and pretentious. Stacton doesn't and what is more his references, instead of sounding of their time, appear completely current. His cultural mainstays, Robert Musil, Ernst Lubitch, Petrouska, Der Kreis, even Faberge (see my footnote *1 below) were largely unknown or forgotten then but not now. Even his obscure references like Cleo de Merde are more relevant to today than 1966 when this novel was published. Stacton reads, if not as current, then timeless. His world, like those of Waugh, Dickens, Austen or even Wodehouse (there is much humour in Old Acquaintance), is absolutely true and believable but conjured up with the minimum of fuss. Everything is right but there is no need to admire his research or craftsmanship. It is invisible, it is like looking at paintings by Goya or Caravaggio and only afterwards realising how immense the talent was to create such perfection.

I want everyone to read this novel and love it. Why? Let me list the reasons:

He describes the sky 'turning to chrysopase'

He describes Palladio's Theatre at Vicenza as 'Monteverdi Rome built by jewellers for the use of dwarfs' (Palladio was another master barely known or mentioned outside the cognoscenti in Stacton's day)

He says things like:

'French politicians go out of date as fast as movie stars. Although, come to think of it, they come back sooner.'

'Courtesy is like that. We give the example to people to whom it should be habitual. We behave better than they do. We exhibit the Grimaldi charm, while remembering that that was also the name of a celebrated clown.'

I could go on, I have a dozen other examples noted for use and many, many more fill the pagers of this wonderful wise and beautiful novel, but that would be to over flavour the pot. As a final word I would say that this is a novel not of the bildungesroman but of the realisation that the gaining of wisdom is only the property of age and even they have to remind themselves of it.

An utterly perfect, wonderful, beautiful and at times poignant and on the knife edge of heartbreaking. But Stacton has immersed himself far too knowledgeably into Charlie and Lotte, children of Weimar, refugees from Hitler, to fall into sentimentality.

Just read the novel, or any of Stacton's novels (all of which I will be buying, and reading, in the future).

*1 Not many years before this novel was published the Metropolitan Museum in New York turned down the Lillian Thomas Platt collection of Faberge Easter Eggs and other works because Faberge was not worthy to grace its hallowed halls.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stacton writes so cleverly and yet with feeling, sort of like a cross between David Slavitt and W. M. Spackman.