A set, restored to print

In the back pages of rmbl there is

to be found an outcry on the adop-

tion of imagery of this conduct to

portray anything but self-destruc-

tion. It happens to suit a discus-

sion of David Leavitt's latest ef-

fort, The Two Hotel Francforts, an
impressively popular rumination on
survival.

The book comes to us with blurbs

immunising it almost against com-

prehension, much less any further

admiration. This is too bad. It's

worth reading, even if one cannot

qualify as such an innocent as to

share Edmund White's sense of be-

ing manipulated by a "master." It

is a totally serviceable portrait

of a set whose play with sex and

money is intimidated, and thereby

wasted, by indulgent privilege. I 
study the paradox, not quite as a
first impression.

Such is the patrimony of our con-

ception of homosexuality, that a

Hispano-Suiza is, like the Kelly

bag, or an indenture at Groton, 

simply neutered whenever it may

make its entrance. It does no

good to mourn the faux libera-

tionism in a tale of morbid mat- 

uring millionaires*, mouthing mi-

metic medial parts, when, after

all, there is much to mesmerise

in the allusions they can mus-

ter, to literature, painting or

sculpture which remain tragical-

ly alien to the common mind. And

such an enviable part, on these

occasions, too.

The common mind suspends its
natural truancy from works on
pompous parlour games, if sex
might be conjugated en route.
Intellectual tasting of life
will not supersede muscular
activity, Mr Emerson warned,
anatomising our experience. 
Drawing from Chaucer, Leavitt
goes so far as to ask its help. 
This is not the least of what

one can extract from this os-

tensibly superficial text, be-

cause it is not to be put past

this writer to be discomfiting
the settled, even as he might

hoist a living from the pruri-
ent, fashionbound, and dazed.

He has an attack to mount on

treachery to privilege, and, 

aw, shucks. Hear him out. It
isn't every day, our enter-
tainments dare go near the
water. He serves, who also 
shills.

  You know, you're wrong to       think I'm smart, [Edward         Freleng] said. The truth is,     I'm just a junk heap. All       these allusions and             references, these little         associations I draw - they're   junk. And all I do all day is   sift through them, line them     up, move them around. 

David Leavitt

The Two Hotel Francforts

  A Novel

Bloomsbury, 2013©

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essays: Second Series
  Experience
1844
David Mikics, editor
The Annotated Emerson
op. cit.

* the dollar in 1940