David Plante - Böcker

'An absorbing and zesty read, both high-minded and full of high gossip. In short, a rare and unexpected treat' Melvyn Bragg____________________The writer David Plante has kept a diary of his life among the artistic elite for over half a century. It is an extraordinary document, both deeply personal and a rare window onto disappearing worlds. This extracted memoir spans the 1980s, a period of exploration and growth for Plante and his lover Nikos Stangos, a partnership which will endure for forty years.David Plante and Nikos Stangos first made a life together in London in the mid-sixties, when as newcomers they were introduced by Stephen Spender to his circle, connections criss-crossing, dazzlingly, through the air of their adopted city, interconnecting so many admired figures.Now navigating worlds beyond London – from a house-share with Germaine Greer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a trip to Jerusalem with Philip Roth; from the loss of parents to the growing spectre of AIDS; and in New York, Umbria, Lucca, the Aegean and rural Ireland – these are stories of expanding horizons and of a deepening and developing love: the challenges of monogamy, the strains of separation, of a growing maturity and awareness – and of what it is to belong.Worlds Apart is a poignant, moving portrait of a relationship and a luminous evocation of a world of writers, poets, artists and thinkers.

Brought up in a secularized Jewish household on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Nancy Green knows little about her parents’ past. She knows they were World War II Jewish refugees who were able to escape Germany with precious family heirlooms that are constant reminders of a lost life and a world about which Nancy knows very little. The longing Nancy has for some kind of spiritual connection first leads her to an encounter with a Hasidic Jewish man who, unable to find meaning in his own religion, has taken vows to become a monk. She then becomes romantically involved with Yvon, a Catholic college student in Boston where she is studying for her master’s degree in English literature. Yvon, trying to escape the clutches of Catholicism and his overbearing mother, finds temporary refuge in Nancy and sees her as an escape from the insular enclave of Franco-Americans where he has spent most of his life. Their highly erotic, tempestuous relationship frightens both of them until a tragedy in Yvon’s life eventually pulls them apart. Devastated by the breakup, Nancy ends up marrying a Jewish man from London, hoping to find herself with a man of her own religion. However, her new relationship pales in comparison to her deep emotional connection with Yvon and, sadly, ends, inspiring Nancy to go back to Boston to track down the man who, she realizes, is the great love of her life.

In London, Ted, a lapsed American Catholic married to a British woman encounters a friend’s child who is studying for his first communion. The boy, Jonathan, is terminally ill and believes the ritual of his first communion might miraculously heal him. Ted sees himself in the boy, and vividly recalls his childhood self. The idea of an eternal afterlife comforts Jonathan, but for Ted the idea represents a kind of dislocation: Is life merely something to be endured in preparation for eternity? Ted believed that as a child and now, in Jonathan, he finds the same beliefs taking hold. He must find a way back to his life and rediscover the profound joy that anchors him in this life, rather than in eternity.

In this short, masterful gem of a novel, David Plante’s seasoned narrator contemplates the connection between physical beauty and love, drawing on literary references and personal experiences to explore these themes.The unnamed narrator of this brief, urgent novel, a young novelist making his way in the literary world, writes of his fascination with two enigmatic, troubled young men, one a Boston Brahmin and the other a lofty undergraduate at England’s Cambridge University whom the narrator meets during his writer-in-residency. With each young man the narrator engages in a complex relationship filled with intellectual and erotic tension and each relationship leaves him feeling unfulfilled. By contrast, the narrator relates the story of his deep and abiding romantic life with an English poet, who introduces him to the remaining members of The Bloomsbury group as well as E.M. Forster and who guides him toward the publishers who bring out his early work. However, the poet dies young, and the narrator is once against cast adrift and his quest to find new, intimate interactions with the tragic young men he encounters causes him to reflect on the nature of beauty, love, and the intellectual life, emphasizing the transient and often unfulfilled desires that drive human connections.