Word: leavitts
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Cranes is also about "coming of age." As the young writer struggles to gain control of his talent, the young adult similarly searches for love and happiness. Like Philip, Leavitt frequently lacks perspective. Still, the parallel somehow makes the excesses of the author and his protagonist a bit more tolerable. Writing, like romance, works best when the participants are mature, confident, and know when to be silent. Both David Leavitt and his main character are still maturing...
PHILIP'S FLOUNDERING attempts to come to grips with his past, to achieve a sense of well-being and "self-containment," drive the book forward. The route he travels is scattered with daunting problems and wonderful characters, both of which Leavitt treats with sympathy and skill. Jerene, Eliot's roommate, does graduate work in Linguistics. She studies lost languages, which are a heavy-handed symbol for the derailed communication and crushed spirits littered throughout the book...
Heavy-handedness, in fact, pervades Leavitt's work; even the most empathetic reader will sometimes find his urgency, wistfulness and sentimentality excessive. When Eliot initiates Philip into the fraternity of nick-free shaving, it is Leavitt's prose that does the most bleeding...
...open the champagne. Lines like this, no matter how heartfelt, become exhausting after a while and beg to be parodied. Still, Leavitt, like Philip, must be taken with a grain of salt. Both 25-year-olds need time to mature, to stop pandering for approval. But they also have much to offer, and their occasional well-meaning lapses can, when viewed with the right attitude, make them all the more endearing...
...Lost Language of Cranes seems to have confirmed Leavitt as a promising young talent. He may need to drive a bit more cautiously, but at least he's at the wheel of a Rolls Royce. And that's not bad for someone just three years out of Yale...