Obviously any fiction is going to be a combination of what is invented, what is overheard, what is experienced, what is experienced by people close to you, what you are told, what you have read, all mixed together into this kind of soup which, like any good soup, at the end you cannot really distinguish the ingredients.

Some critics have since noted Leavitt's career has never recovered from the plagiarism charge and that a once-promising author is now considered a marginalized gay writer with limited scope. The publiDavid Leavittrs also agreed never to publish the manuscript that had become the subject of the charge of plagiarism. In addition Spender claimed that Leavitt had fictionalized his life especially by adding graphic fantasies attributed to the character modeled after Spender (in particular "allegedly using his relationship with 'Jimmy Younger'").

David Leavitt (born June 23 1961) is an American novelist.