David Leavitt Does the Math

Your portrayal of gay life in this movie was so—
It's not a movie yet.

Oh, sorry! Did I say the word movie?
There's a screenplay being written by Stephen Fry, so it may be a movie.
 
Who do you want to play Hardy?
Jude Law.

Well, what I meant to say was that you've said that you wished the portrayal of gay people in literature was more mainstream.
You know, there was a point when it was very important politically, because there was so much denial of the very existence of homosexuality. In the '60s and '70s it was essential to say, "We're here. We're queer. Get used to it." Well, in the last 10 years people have gotten used to it. I mean, you just have to turn on the TV and you're going to see Rosie O'Donnell, you're going to see "Queer Eye," you're going to see "Will and Grace." In other words, the time has come now where we have to say, "Okay, we're here. We're queer. Get used to it. And now let's talk about something else."

Well, has that ever gotten you any criticism from the gay community? Because I think that for a lot of people the issue is still very political.
Oh, I absolutely agree with you. Look, I am totally out. I am a very outspoken gay man. I am perfectly willing to voice very loudly my support for gay marriage. From a political standpoint, I think these things are really, really important. But I think it's also important, particularly for writers, that we not be imprisoned within a limiting identity. It's really important to get beyond the point where you are a gay writer, and that's all you're allowed to be by the media, by the publishing world, even by your own peers.

When you came out with "Family Dancing" in the mid-'80s, you were hailed as one of the preeminent writers of your generation. Twenty years later, how do you think that played out?
I was really distrustful of it at the time. I remember a period when I was living in New York, and I seemed to constantly be invited to things. It was the so-called literary brat pack, you know, with Jay McInerney and Tama Janowitz and Bret Easton Ellis. There was that brief moment when being a young writer in New York was very trendy. I didn't actually go to them very often. My sense was that that degree of attention almost always turns around and bites you.

You based a tiny bit of a past novel, "While England Sleeps," on the British poet Stephen Spender's life, and you were excoriated for it. Were you gun-shy with this novel, which again takes real characters and fictionalizes their stories?
In that case I think what Spender objected to is, he said, "You've taken my life and you've copied it and you've made it into pornography." It was about fictional characters. There was no character called Stephen Spender. This book is about real people. This is explicitly a novel about G. H. Hardy and Ramanujan. I haven't changed their names. I wasn't really gun-shy, but I did feel it was important to really document the sources.