“I don’t write much about the critical receptions of my novels in my diary because I do not want to show I care that much about the receptions that I would write about them, and partly because I am more interested in other aspects of my life.” So writes novelist David Plante who, in Becoming A Londoner, the first volume of his diaries published in 2013, told of settling in London and establishing a lasting relationship with the poet and publisher Nikos Stangos, who had been the boyfriend of the poet and writer Stephen Spender. Towards the end of this new collection of diaries, Plante chooses to become a British citizen because his “life has evolved in this country more than in America”. Nevertheless, his novels – admired by critics – are informed by his American experience.
The fact that Plante’s novels are rarely mentioned here (except over an anguished few pages when he discusses difficulties about a new book with his agent and his New York publishers) indicates the degree of his personal editing for publication of the diaries he has kept for the past 40 years, many of the entries written as soon and as copiously as possible after an event or encounter. In these extracts, although it is clear that they cover the 1980s, no dates are given and no reference is made to Plante’s criteria for selection other than that he considers the diary to be “lived experience”. From it he has chosen people and events that, he says, interconnect and form a self-sustaining narrative.
His narrative is certainly frank. People sometimes ask him not to talk about a conversation, and he doesn’t; but if he has not been asked not to write about it, he will. Thus we see, in various states and stages of undress, distress, discontent and disappointment, 68-year-old Stephen Spender living with his neurotic and depressed wife Natasha, but in love with 18-year-old zoology student Brian Obst. Philip Roth feels like a foreigner in London and no longer understands why he keeps writing: “Who understands? Who?” Roth’s wife, the actress Claire Bloom, is affectionate but unhappy. Melvyn Bragg confides that “he can’t talk freely about his life. He never can. He wishes he could.” David Hockney collects gay porn and has issues with RB Kitaj about figurative art. New York artist Jennifer Bartlett wants a baby with David Plante. Germaine Greer, with whom Plante shares a bed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, does the Times crossword while he admires her beautiful breasts. Plante’s mother’s last words to him are “I know that you are a homosexual, living with that Greek in London"; and of course “that Greek” is Plante’s best-beloved Nikos Stangos.
In many ways, this book is about love. The surprising opening pages show Plante in New York, in bed with Jennifer Bartlett, who says, “But you’re supposed to be gay.” He says, “I am. I don’t know what’s happening. I suppose I should be confused, but I’m not. I’m not going to think about it.” But as a friend later says later to Plante: “We all know your weakness for, even willing intimidation by, strong neurotic women.” He is also quite willing to be overwhelmed by interrogation about his life, by Philip Roth, which leaves him disturbed by the vastness of things unknown or unthought of – little questions that demand big answers.
The existential and elementary questions of Plante’s life arise like hydra-headed monsters from the complicated literary and high-bohemian milieu in which he and Stangos live. Stangos is occasionally having sex with Paul (a colleague), while Plante is still infatuated with his first love, the beautiful Turkish Oci. Spender and Stangos and Plante are loving friends and collaborators, and Plante acts as the go-between by receiving letters from Obst for Spender so as not to upset Natasha who is already aware that her husband is basically not only gay but also misogynist. Then, shockingly, young Obst dies and Spender, his elderly lover, weeps for the love of his life.
Very often, the upshot of social confusion, sexual guilt and separation anxiety detailed in these diary entries is feelings of isolation, doubt, loneliness and vulnerability which are patched over with promises and compromises, tears and kisses, the need to love and be loved. Plante’s frankness in his serial remembrance of time past is significant as a primary source for future historians and biographers. It is an exercise in self-awareness and an act of personal courage, but equally – to be less high-minded – it is a vividly entertaining first-hand view of modern literary anecdote and social gossip. Fortunately, there is a lot more to come.
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