David Leavitt.

The expatriate writer takes five questions about Florida, Tuscany, dirty hotels, and his dishy new book

David Leavitt may be the only American writer who can say things like "I've never had a real job before, unless you count the semester I taught at Princeton" without sounding disingenuous or snooty. He has a "real job" now, however, as a professor of creative writing at the University of Florida, a post for which Leavitt has returned to America from his home in the Tuscany region of Italy. While he's been away, his literary canon, which began with 1984's Family Dancing, has continued to expand with best-sellers such as The Lost Language of Cranes and the remarkable Arkansas. On the eve of the publication of his newest novel, the semi-autobiographical Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing (Houghton Mifflin, $26), Leavitt discusses the purpose of literature and the joys of living abroad.

1 Everyone is going to ask you if this book is a roman a clef.

I know, and it isn't. Because the whole point of a roman a clef is to play a guessing game: Which character is based on which real person? And that wasn't my intention at all. A roman a clef has no literary purpose. I've written a novel about a writer's life in New York City, something I know well. I'm not going to pretend the characters aren't based on real people, but they changed a lot as I wrote them, so they barely resemble those people in the end.

2 So it troubles you that a reader might be more interested in who's who than in the story or the writing?

Yes, but I think that's a temporary phenomenon. People lose interest in the who's who rumor after a while, and then the story has to stand on its own. A hundred years from now no one will be guessing whom I might have been writing about. They'll just read the book.

3 Martin Bauman writes that he is "no longer sure that a multiplicity of gifts is any great advantage to an artist." Have you also found that to be true?

As someone who has never been able to do anything but write, I find that people who throw themselves into too many things at once become proficient in everything and good at nothing.

4 Why do you live in Italy?

Mark Mitchell, my boyfriend ... my partner ... there's really no good term, is there? Anyway, we went to Italy in 1993, and we never left. We've reached the point where it's difficult to go home because we're so Europeanized. I find that being abroad and out of my own language is a benefit to me as a writer. I think more creatively. So we bought a house and restored it. We love it there, but we also miss America. So when this job came up, I was glad. Now I split my life between Gainesville, Fla., and Tuscany.

5 How is Florida different from Italy?

Well, I love America, but I'm struck by how much dirtier it is than Europe. In Italy you might stay in a hotel that is dreary and depressing and lit by a 5,000-watt bulb hanging from a string. But it will be clean. I was appalled, when I first got back, with how dirty everything is.

I'm sorry.

Well, on the other hand, there's a lot I'm enjoying about being back. Like the incredible ease of doing practical things. In Italy we had to get Italian driver's licenses. The process took six months! But when we got to Florida, we needed to get Florida licenses. It took seven minutes. I know because I timed it.

Find more on David Leavitt and links to related Internet sites at www.advocate.com

Pela is author of the forthcoming Filthy: The Weird World of John Waters.