PEARL K . BELL
93
World Within World,
the autobiography Stephen Spender published in
1948. But where Spender spoke of "friendship" and "paternalistic feel–
ings," Leavitt has laid on with a trowel the clinical and scatalogical details
of gay sex. (Even his title is secondhand, since it deliberately echoes
J.F.K.'s
While England Slept.)
Furious, Spender filed suit against Leavitt
and his English publisher to prevent the book's publication in the U.
K.
As this is written, the case has not yet come to trial in London.
Of course this is hardly the first time a novelist has appropriated ma–
terial not of his own devising, nor can we automatically condemn a writer
for doing so. What matters is the transforming imagination, the percep–
tion and language he brings to that material, making it his own. Merely
altering the fate of the working-class lover - Leavitt kills him off, Spender
brings him safely home- is not an act of imagination. Neither is the slick
superficiality of Leavitt's approach to the political and social climate of
England in the mid-1930s: "Now history was pressing down from all
sides, and sensibility seemed more than insufficient; it seemed criminal.
Soldiers, not writers, determined the fate of the world." What arouses
Leavitt's most zealous passion is not "the fate of the world" but the once–
draconian laws of England against homosexuality. If there's such a thing as
the crotch theory of politics, that is the level of Leavitt's comprehension.
Mter such simple-mindedness and squalor, Laurie Colwin's
A Big
Storm Knocked lt Over
is a treasure beyond counting, the last of a series of
novels in which she explored the domestic territory that was so distinctly
and memorably her own as a writer. The public world outside the
boundaries of her private fiefdom is scarcely mentioned in her work: no
politics, no social problems, no global turmoil. What fascinated Colwin
was the agony and wonder of family life, the way clannish obligations
shape an individual's pursuit of happiness, and bear down on the pain and
pleasure of love . Few novelists these days pay much attention to happi–
ness: it seems a bland idea (except for those who find it); it smacks of sen–
timentality; it blunts the sharp edge of irony; it's hard to define and harder
still to dramatize. (As Clifford Odets once in all seriousness remarked,
"Happiness is no laughing matter.") But Laurie Colwin is neither em–
barrassed nor intimidated by the possibilities of this eminently desirable
but elusive state ofbeing.
In
Happy All the Time
(1978),
Family Happiness
(1982), and
Another
Marvelous Thing
(1989), Colwin focused her wit and clear-eyed intelli–
gence on men and women, on the whole likeable and decent, who ought
to be perfectly content with their lot but feel that something is missing.
Yet they can't quite figure out what it is, or why they are restless and
edgy. Most of them are well-educated, well-off New Yorkers, with good
