In ''Family Dancing,'' his first book of finely wrought stories of personal drama and family relations, difficult subjects like cancer and homosexuality sometimes explode in front of the TV, incorporating its idiom, or at suburban swimming pools. The stories, some of which appeared in Harper's and The New Yorker, are done with deft touches, with poignancy and gentle comedy. Mr. Leavitt published his first story as a student at Yale in a magazine he started that no longer exists. Family Dancing'' earned him a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1985. It was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN Faulkner Award.
Television is in the new book, too.
Philip says he can think of no more pleasurable life than that in a situation comedy. But the new novel does not use pointillist strokes to suggest life's complexities. Mr. Leavitt said. A voice from the past generation, Philip's mother raises the question of whether all secrets should be revealed. One of Mr. Leavitt's intentions is to break new literary ground by bringing homosexuality out of the closet and into the mainstream of the fiction of George Eliot, Jane Austen, Alice Munro and Cynthia Ozick, ''writers who value clarity and who are interested in the psychology of relationships and in families.'' ''I want to write about homosexuality in that context, which has not been done,'' he said, ''and not just for a gay audience.'' ''The writers I admire most are women,'' added Mr. Leavitt, who has many female friends.