Arkansas: Three Novellas was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1997. The collection contains three long stories — each between fifty and ninety pages — that demonstrate Leavitt’s command of the novella form: longer than stories, more concentrated than novels, with the space to develop complex situations while maintaining the intensity of a single sustained narrative arc.
The title novella, “Arkansas,” follows an academic couple — a professor and his wife — on a sabbatical year in Italy, where the proximity and isolation of expatriate life expose the fault lines in their marriage. The second novella explores a gay man’s relationship with a male escort, tracing the emotional and power dynamics of a relationship that begins as commercial transaction and becomes something more ambiguous. The third follows an Italian-American family confronting secrets about the grandmother’s past.
Each novella demonstrates Leavitt’s characteristic strengths: psychological precision, social observation, the rendering of desire and its complications, and a prose style that achieves its effects through restraint rather than display. The form suits him particularly well — the novella allows the development of situation and character that his best short stories sometimes strain against, while maintaining the discipline that his novels occasionally lack.
The collection confirmed Leavitt’s position as one of the most technically accomplished fiction writers of his generation — a writer whose reputation rests on craft, intelligence, and emotional subtlety rather than on scope or ambition.
Collecting Arkansas
First edition (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1997): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$30
- Very good/very good: $5–$15