Worlds Apart: A Memoir
by David Plante
This is the second volume taken from David Plante's lengthy fifty-year diary, Worlds Apart: A Memoir (2015), is a companion to his first volume, Becoming a Londoner. The memoir, which mostly focuses on the 1980s, depicts Plante's life with his longtime partner, poet and art publisher Nikos Stangos, as they move through high-society literary and artistic circles in London, Italy, New York, and Oklahoma.
The memoir offers frank, unvarnished insights into well-known cultural personalities. Highlights include visiting Israel with Philip Roth (who might have taken inspiration from Plante for a character in The Counterlife), living in a Tulsa home with feminist critic Germaine Greer, and hanging out with poet Stephen Spender and artist David Hockney.
Plante considers his forty-year collaboration with Stangos in great detail. He examines the conflicts of faithfulness, jealousy between partners, self-doubt, and how long-term love changes. Set in the 1980s, the story documents the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic among his friends, juxtaposing moments of grief and mortality with high-society rumors. It is a fascinating exploration of the life of one of my favorite authors.
View all my reviews
The memoir offers frank, unvarnished insights into well-known cultural personalities. Highlights include visiting Israel with Philip Roth (who might have taken inspiration from Plante for a character in The Counterlife), living in a Tulsa home with feminist critic Germaine Greer, and hanging out with poet Stephen Spender and artist David Hockney.
Plante considers his forty-year collaboration with Stangos in great detail. He examines the conflicts of faithfulness, jealousy between partners, self-doubt, and how long-term love changes. Set in the 1980s, the story documents the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic among his friends, juxtaposing moments of grief and mortality with high-society rumors. It is a fascinating exploration of the life of one of my favorite authors.
View all my reviews
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