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Specimen Days: A Novel by Michael Cunningham Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005 Review by J. Michael Lennon

As Virginia Woolf is the presiding spirit and an actual character in Michael Cunningham’s 1998 novel, The Hours, so too is Walt Whitman in Cunningham’s latest novel, Specimen Days. Whit- man has only a cameo role in the new novel, which like The Hours has three related narratives, but his poetry has been memorized by several characters in all three. Hardly a page goes by without one of a half-dozen characters quoting a line from Whitman’s magnum and only opus, Leaves of Grass. One char- acter has memorized “Song of Myself,” the first and greatest poem of Leaves of Grass; another has papered the walls, ceilings, and floor of her apartment with his verses; a third, an android, has had the entire volume electronically engraved on its mem- ory circuits. Why? The engineer-creator believes that the poems might help the android, Simon, “cope with events I couldn’t foresee. I thought that if you were programmed with the work of the great poets, you’d be better able to appreciate the conse- quences of your actions.” Many high school English teachers have felt the same way. There is a wonderful scene in the novel when Simon talks with a droid friend who is programmed to quote Emily Dickinson. The dialogue throughout the novel alternately sparkles with poetry chips and bristles with dread. In a very real way, the central question of this audacious novel is whether or not poetry, and the artistic imagination behind it, can save us, not just as individuals, but collectively as a race, not to mention the earth, the “great round wonder rolling through the air,” as Whitman put it. The novel’s premise is All of the major characters in Specimen Days are unmistakable that the human race is despoiling the planet. Maybe it is our individuals, both surprising and memorable, especially those in destiny to do so, maybe not. If not, there must be a countervailing the final novella. energy that is more creative than destructive, a way of using Cunningham links the three novellas in several ways, some of technology that doesn’t pollute and homogenize. Whitman, with them quite subtle. Whitman’s poetry is the most obvious and his urges and yawps, his passion for technological progress, and perhaps the most effective interleaving device. Characters blurt out his belief that there are no insignificant lives, is the clearest mani- the bard’s lines in telling, inopportune, and sometimes comic ways. festation of this force; he is the bard of bards, the poet as savior. All Cunningham uses lines not only from “Song of Myself,” but from the Whitman-quoters in the novel believe in the salutary effects of several other poems, including “The Sleepers,” “Song of the Open his verses, and act with conviction on them. These actions-under- Road,” “To Think of Time,” and the relatively obscure “Song of the poetic-inspiration, bold actions, constitute the novel’s plot. Answerer.” Another linking method is the repetition of characters’ If Cunningham had not added “a novel” to his title, it would be names. There is a Lucas (or Luke) and a Simon in each of the three almost accurate to say that Specimen Days (the title is borrowed stories; they have more in common than their names. There is also from Whitman’s magnificent memoir of his work as a nurse in the a recurring horse motif. Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, with its Civil War) is really three one-hundred-page novellas, all set (mainly) massive figure of healing and purification, the Angel of Waters in New York City. The first, “In the Machine,” is a story with super- statue, is the novel’s key setting, a magical place where several of the natural elements that takes place in the late 1850s or early 1860s major characters are transformed. There are other echoes and and deals with the stultifying effects of the Industrial Revolution reiterations which readers will happily discover on their own. But on workers generally, and specifically on a family of immigrants the most important way that the stories are tied together, cannot be from County Kerry, Ireland. Whitman looms up briefly in this stated without giving away, well, the whole thing. Suffice it to say section: “His face was like brown paper that had been crushed and that Cunningham has created what theater people call “a through- smoothed again. His eyes were bright as silver nails.” The second line of action,” one that ingeniously ties together a 19th-century story, “The Children’s Crusade,” takes place in the anxious time ghost story, a 21st-century thriller, and a 23rd-century science shortly after 9/11 and centers on an African–American policewoman, fiction tale. It may be that one of the ways, unnamed here, that he Cat Martin, who receives and evaluates nutty, usually harmless marries the three novellas is not necessary, but the key links are well telephone calls from various deranged and/or drugged zealots and and wisely forged. Specimen Days is a daring and thought-provoking crackpots. Some of the most destructive of them quote Whitman. narrative tour de force, one that ends with intimations of a brave new The final novella, “Like Beauty,” has as its chief characters the world where Walt Whitman stops somewhere waiting for us to arrive. android, Simon, and a female lizard-like alien, Catereena. She is the most sharply drawn and memorable character of this part of the J. Michael Lennon is Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University and

SPECIMENnovel, WRITER which is set 150 years in the future, after a major nuclear President of the Norman Mailer Society. He edited Mailer’s The Spooky meltdown has depopulated the middle of the United States. Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (Random House 2003). 2005 P-ARTS+5 6/14/05 12:42 AM Page 141

Michael Cunningham A FIRESIDE CHAT

By Christopher Busa

SPECIMEN DAYS futuristic vocabulary in the riveting third part of Specimen Days. Two years ago, following the movie release of The “Astrohair, as I conceive it,” Michael said, “is Hours based on Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer artificial hair grown on the head of a bald person. Prize–winning novel, Paul Lisicky, in an interview It can be any color you want. It’s synthetic hair in Provincetown Arts, asked Cunningham, that grows out of your scalp.” “What’s next? How is your work changing?” “What’s a mercury suit?” I asked. At the time, Cunningham was deep into his “A mercury suit is made of this shimmer silver new novel, Specimen Days, published this June, and fabric, like Mylar mixed with silk.” he predicted, “It’s going to be very, very different “What’s a liquid suit?” from The Hours. It’s going to be three linked “A liquid suit? I think that’s a nickname for a novellas, each done in a different genre. There’s a mercury suit. It had a liquid texture.” gothic horror story, a romance, and a science “So it’s another way of describing a mercury fiction story. Of course, if you check with me a year suit?” from now, this book may have turned into some- “Yes.” thing else entirely, as my books generally do.” “A character who wears such a suit uses a Ger- Specimen Days progresses across great plateaus man phrase, Was wollen sie? Why?” of time, marching not as a 300-page novel but as “It means What do you want? He was a German three novellas, obliquely linked as any one gener- tourist. Manhattan had become a tourist attrac- ation is to the people who came before or after. tion.” Each century runs about 100 pages. In the Machine In the future that Cunningham imagines, takes place in a time before we were born; The Manhattan has become a theme park where peo- Children’s Crusade occurs in our own time; and Like ple can hire others to help them experience per- Beauty will take place after we have died. Set in the versely delicious fantasies. Muggers can be hired 23rd century, something magical happens in this by the hour to do the “menacing” that gives satis- third part. The tone of his prose elevates, and faction to the menaced. The transfer of money becomes so confident that a character, who makes dysfunctional behavior instantly function- suffers from a form of Tourette’s syndrome, is al. This future form of prostitution shows how an compelled to quote involuntarily from Walt economy of pleasure persists despite a growing Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, in fits and bursts. This awareness of its perversity. The future is a period is foreshadowed by the young Lucas in the first of time when people engage in game playing that part, who sputters Whitman’s poetry on the offers primary satisfactions, and they pay money streets of Manhattan, overheard by Walt Whit- for playing the game in a controlled way that mea- man himself. The living Whitman is astonished sures and monitors the level of hurt they wish to to hear himself quoted by a child: “I hear the receive. Rather than have sex, you can get beaten talkers talking their talk, the talk of the beginning up, paying a set rate for the pleasure. and the end. But I do not talk of the beginning In the novel, Cunningham arranges levels of and the end.” Cunningham suggests that his book inquiry that succeed in breaking your heart, is less about the beginning and the end than brutally, step-by-step. Sometimes he says things about examining technology before our own so directly that he made me swoon: “Simon technology is as advanced as that in the story. dreamed of a woman who wore a secret around I met with Cunningham in early May, drop- her neck.” From writing The Hours, Cunningham ping by his waterfront apartment in Province- said he learned to make the connective tissue of town’s East End. A small fire flickered in a events much like a necklace that could be fireplace in which the facing bricks were painted described in precise detail. In the science fiction white. I sat in a frail rocking chair near the section of Specimen Days, evolved robots exist friendly embers. Michael stretched his lanky whose flesh is joined seamlessly with titanium form along the length of the couch. He wore a bones. Cunningham confesses simply, “I have to worn T-shirt that may have been the same one he say I took the liberty to imagine a technology wore for our cover photograph, taken a few that may not at all be plausible.” weeks earlier by Joel Meyerowitz in Cunning- Certain people in the future that Cunning- ham’s spartan Greenwich Village writing studio. ham depicts are called “Players.” They live in their In Provincetown, the setting casual and own residential complexes, clusters of tall towers homey, it seemed strange to be discussing the on the margin of the city. These Players comprise

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the staff of the amusement park that New York in the mountains of Colorado. The underlying City has become. Their function is to impersonate principle of this section is that the future will be various citizens of New York for the benefit full of technology that does not work very well. of tourists. Others spray Central Park with Cunningham said that the future he imagined chlorophyll-scented breezes. These future people as a child has, “to a real extent,” come about. often use strange stimulants for control of their “Compare technology now to the late ’50s when moods. Exedrol, an advanced version of Thalido- I was a kid. We didn’t expect it to be so shoddy mide, is taken by pregnant woman in the future, and temperamental. We imagined machines that producing highly intelligent, but deformed babies. functioned perfectly and lasted over a lifetime. Of course, it’s taken immediately off the market. Experience has taught us otherwise.” When Cunningham talks about Specimen Days, Cunningham’s books reveal his keen concern he alludes to Walt Whitman, author of a memoir for generational range. Home at the End of the World called Specimen Days. A specimen, according to is a contemporary experiment in a new family Whitman, is a type of heroic character. “As I structure invented within a single generation by understand it,” Cunningham said, “a specimen is three people. In Flesh and Blood Cunningham an individual meant to stand for the whole. This graduated to three generations; the Greek preserved violet is a specimen.” Specimens evolve like families in Flesh and Blood have children; their family names, the names of children becoming children have children. “There’s a triangle,” Cun- parts of the names of their elders. DNA moves on, ningham said. “There are three in that book, telling the common human story, not the too.” In Specimen Days he needs three centuries to individual story. “Which is why Whitman chose it express the range of his voice. for the title of his journals,” Cunningham said. Like Leaves of Grass, Ulysses, James Joyce’s I asked Michael if the word specimen sounded, magnum opus, is structured on the recurrence of perhaps, too medical. He said he liked the term, myth; it takes place on a single June day in but that the title would have to be changed in Dublin, but, symbolically, covers all human almost every foreign edition—in most other experience. Cunningham is certainly aware of the languages specimen means a bottle of urine, ready high standards of classic literature. He said, “I to be taken to the lab. Right now, Cunningham don’t find that a single day in a single life is suffi- was e-mailing back and forth with his Spanish ciently, metaphorically indicative anymore. I find translator about an alternative title. myself putting more and more people into my The first part of the novel reinforces the con- novels, spanning greater and greater periods of ception of the 19th-century Industrial Revolu- time, in an attempt to tell a story that feels com- tion given by Charlie Chaplin in the film Modern mensurate with the size of the world we live in.” Times, in which the sadness of the clown increases Cunningham’s books transcend the small as he adapts to the demands of his factory job. domestic traumas they depict. He finds density of The second part of Specimen Days takes place life in bland, unremarkable experience. The post-9/11. Here, psychotic children seem to be in domestic detail floats like smoke to a higher, more control of our culture. They can’t even quote universal plane, curling into a question mark away Whitman correctly. The enemy is no longer the from our perception. The author delights in machine, but something born of our flesh. disappearing in the interstices of his own text. Previous centuries take place within our experi- Now he is rather astonished that his future char- ence, but in the section devoted to the future acters are Whitman’s posthumous readers. there are robotic people who speak as clearly as Cunningham had what he calls a “surprise “biologicals,” whom, we all know, are not perfect. success” with The Hours. Besides winning the People from a planet called Nadia, named after a Pulitzer Prize, the novel was adapted as an Oscar- Spanish astronomer, have immigrated to Earth, winning film, starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne where they are becoming assimilated like any Moore, and Meryl Streep, with Kidman receiving other immigrants—that is, extremely slowly. Like Best Actress for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf. Russians of the previous century who cultivated A new nose was created for Kidman in the film, vodka from potatoes, the Nadians have allowed rather large, making the movie star look more like themselves to become dependant on laser a serious writer. blades for their looks; routinely they take a little Dermalith with their morning coffee. THE SWITCH As we continued our conversation, Michael brought me a cup of coffee, which I sipped and In making the switch from Virginia Woolf to Walt then set on the wobbly table between me and the Whitman, Cunningham followed his instinct for fireplace. Michael mentioned that the table was seeking literary guidance from the spirit of a purchased by his partner, Ken Corbett, at a yard deceased great writer, a cultural spirit that Freud sale in Wellfleet. Two knots in the table were missing, might describe in terms of some secular religion, and there were empty, teacup-sized holes where these echoing the way Dante, in the Inferno, was guided knots used to be. The fire in the fireplace was at low through the underworld by the shade of Virgil. ebb, but it had been burning for hours. The chimney The guide is the spiritual force of an original voice, was radiant, throwing a steady heat. going on and changing into the voices of others. “Did you invent these terms?” I asked. When Michael walked by on the beach last “Everything in there is invented.” summer, I was sitting on the sand with my friend Hoverpods are the universal mode of trans- Tony Jackett, a popular Provincetown personality portation, but in the Denver of the future, horses who was captain of a fishing boat that I fished on are making a comeback. Hoverpods are less useful for two winters many years ago. Tony loves to

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reflect tranquilly on trauma and is a good story- discovered in our present time) is a four-and-a- COOKING: SACRED CEREMONY teller, typical of the generations of garrulous half-foot lizard with beguiling features, bordering Portuguese fishermen who immigrated to on the beautiful. Catherine in the 19th century Jumping back to Cunningham’s earlier novels, Provincetown in the 19th century, becoming the was Lucas’s boyhood love, a prostitute he saved we can remember that there is a lot of emphasis core of its legendary fishing fleet, now so dimin- from dying in a fire by obliging her to come to on cooking; making a nice cake is a central event ished. Tony, who is something of a philosopher, the hospital during a crisis when he lost his fin- in his first two novels. Knowing Provincetown, I was speaking of Plato and his concept of ideal gers in the machine shop. Cat, in the post-9/11 couldn’t help but think of Billy Forlenza, a fine forms when Michael walked by, looking diminu- time, is a weirdly related character from the next chef who ran a lively little sidewalk café during tive in the distance. He was making his way century; she is a film-noir detective, darkly intel- the ’80s; I had seen Michael in his café on sunny across a vast sandbar, the surface baked dry as a ligent, a female Bogart. And because she is also late mornings, having breakfast, his face buried vanilla wafer. Michael’s hair flashed so blond in beautiful she would be a contemporary hit on in the New York Times. Michael and Billy were the bright light that I thought of his description the crime best-seller list in any particular centu- great friends who simply enjoyed being in the of Claire’s hair in Home at the End of the World, after ry, whether as a speaker on a street corner that atmosphere of the other’s company. I saw bits of she dyed it orange and it appeared to “bristle as if Whitman might have passed on one of his walks Billy in Cunningham’s novel Flesh and Blood in the her brains were on fire.” in Manhattan, or on a TV talk show or holo- characterization of a young restaurant cook in Specimen Days displays Cunningham’s facility graphic video grid from future inventors. New York. Billy was also a natural dancer whose for making a character quickly vivid. His descrip- Catareen appears in the third part, which was body swayed to music the way a leaf would move tions are made more memorable by their piercing largely written at the Santa Maddalena Founda- with the slightest encouragement of a breeze. offhandedness. The author seems to exhibit tion in Tuscany. The property belongs to Beatrice The Billy I knew was a guy who knew he was not disdain for his own magic, much the way the von Rezzori. “An extraordinary woman,” he said. a great novelist and had no need to be. He loved poet Byron began an epic poem, invoking the “Her husband was Gregor von Rezzori, a writer cooking, he had talent for cooking, and he muse in a most routine fashion, “Hail, Muse, well known in Europe, but less known in Amer- enjoyed the company of the people he cooked etcetera!” and went on to sing his song in the ica. When Gregor died, nine years ago, Beatrice for. Cunningham’s respect for passion and excel- rapid cadence of anapests, without future need for found herself alone in this gigantic house on a lence in ordinary accomplishments, such as inspiration. Although Cunningham’s previous farm in the country, and started inviting writers cooking or dancing or gardening, animates his novels demonstrate mastery of the form, the new to come out, simply stay there and do their writing. The limitations of character become the novel challenged his expertise. work. There are usually three, maybe four at a vehicle for expressing their sufficiency. In the first part of Specimen Days, set in the time. I was there with Zadie Smith, the English “Inspiration and special feelings come and 19th century during the Industrial Revolution, writer who did White Teeth, and a Hungarian go,” Cunningham reflected, letting his winter Cunningham’s characters function like cogs in a writer. I had the top two floors of an old signal toes unfold, enjoying the dwindling fire in his grinding wheel, as easily smacking precise dents in tower. I was only there for four weeks, but I got seaside getaway. “This is true of everything I’ve steel plates as chewing up the fingers of any hand an amazing amount of work done. I was just written. There are hours, even whole days, when caught in the machine. I asked Cunningham, starting the final section, the science fiction sec- I write in a kind of ecstatic transport, and there “Does Lucas make the dents six across and four tion, and I knew I wanted a sort of robotic man, are other hours, other days, when it’s just a slog. down, or is it four across and six down?” Cun- plus a woman from another planet. I wanted I look and see one leaden, inert sentence after ningham surprised me by saying, “Oh, you know, very much to create a character that was believ- another. What really powers me, on a daily basis, you would think I would remember. But I’m no able but not human. Not just a human in alien is blind faith, a mulish persistence. That strikes authority on what I’ve written.” skin, but a palpably different being.” Perhaps it me as fundamental for a novelist. This obsession The cog in the wheel, this machinist, Lucas, is would be more accurate to say that Cunning- that keeps you working and working may even making housing, but we do not know, nor does ham was seeking not a believable person, but a trump talent.” he, what these housings will house. He is working believable entity. Artists tend to be people with paranoid very hard. His brother Simon died making hous- He was constructing this entity from the streaks developed to protect their motivation ings at the same machine, when it swallowed ground up, but he was mindful of difficulties: to continue doing their work. I know it was not him whole, taking what followed from his “It’s differently challenging when that person easy for Cunningham to survive the ’80s. He fingers. The comedy of the mechanical repeti- comes from a planet you’ve invented. Every arrived as a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center tion, which did not seem to matter which way it morning a beautiful green-grey lizard would run in Provincetown. The year was 1980. His first was repeated, alludes to the post-factory hours back and forth on my windowsill. I was alone. novel was vaguely underway, an embryo of of Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, when he Spouses are not invited. You have to go by your- what it would become. He had won an NEA keeps twitching his hands in unison, unable to self. The utter strangeness of that lizard was what grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship before the stop the compulsive habits of mechanical repro- I used in trying to create this character Catareen.” novel was published. Like most artists and writ- duction acquired from his robot job. This is the The lizard was alien to Cunningham because ers, he worked many years without much comedy of Cunningham’s Industrial Age; it reads it had characteristics intrinsic to itself, not to the money. The recognitions he received were pres- like a witty warm-up act for the main event. That, author. She was a small, “incidental” Italian tigious, encouraging, but they did not prepare I suppose, is the hope of any moment for some- lizard, Cunningham said, about five inches long. him for winning the Pulitzer Prize for The thing better. I loved Cunningham’s first two Because of the longish tail of the lizard, Cun- Hours, a novel with a compelling conception of novellas, but the third, the main event, is ningham assumes the creature was female. He what might be called “literary time,” or a time an epitome of contemporary narrative art. His regrets that he did not give the actual lizard a in which an influential author, deceased, plays characters now seemed released from their own cameo role in his book. He enjoys seeding his a formative role. “You publish something and fictionality. novels with secret references only one or two peo- it looks like you are newly hatched out of ple will recognize, however much any reader will nowhere,” he said, “when in fact you already THE ITALIAN LIZARD be convinced of the veracity of the detail, so telling feel old and worn and haggard. Yes, I struggled in its own parabolic way. He enjoys inserting as does most everybody. I’ve been fortunate in The character of Catareen began as an effort by episodes that come along in the process of work- that I didn’t receive widespread recognition Cunningham to go beyond the reach of realistic ing on a novel—little asides that allude to some until relatively late. That is not what I wanted fiction. Each part of his novel has its own shared, private experience known only to that when I was 25. Now that I’m 52, it seems like integrity, time frame, and characters, but there person and the author, yet available to the reader the best thing that could have happened to me. are eerie echoes of past and future in every age. as a shared intimacy, the privilege of overhearing It is more difficult to get all that attention Catareen, born on Nadia (a planet yet to be a trusted revelation. when you are very young.”

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THE PERFECT STORY Motherwell’s own house, the “Sea Barn,” next Cunningham put it this way, “It’s someone for door, was used to house various summer guests whom there is no there there. It’s someone who is A previous cover subject of Provincetown Arts, who visited the artist across the three decades he trying to impersonate a person because he doesn’t Sebastian Junger, made a clear decision following produced three-quarters of his year’s work in the have a sense of a core being. Much about the pro- his early efforts to write fiction; he came to three months he spent in Provincetown. cess of acting feels familiar to me as a writer. believe more in the oracle of a weather forecast Just as some things can be said in an abstract Everything I hear from actors, especially the than in the possibility of writing a perfect short painting that cannot be said in a figurative one, effort to abandon themselves and enter the mind story. So he wrote The Perfect Storm instead, a non- so the fiction writer seeks to explore what more and body of a character, is very much like what I fiction best seller, grateful for the constraints of can be imagined outside conventional character- go through when I’m writing a book, inventing circumstance that gave him the entire story com- ization. Motherwell made many remarks about people for a novel.” plete, like a gift of destiny. Cunningham, in con- the artist’s relation to the medium, considering it Recalling Flesh and Blood, I remember distinctly trast, was determined from the beginning to be a primary. Work could achieve the primary relation how Cunningham moved surely from one strictly novelist. Of his five books, only the recently that one has with a loved one. One fell in love with controlled point of view to another. The same written Land’s End, an impressionistic history of one’s work. Motherwell said to me once that he scene gets repeated from another’s perspective. Provincetown, is nonfiction. In Land’s End, his wanted his painting to have all the texture and Few things in literature are more pleasing. I first novelistic voice will sound familiar with its reality of a living person. I was fascinated by this recognized it in Shakespeare. There would be a revelatory anecdotes about Cunningham’s many concept: once you conjure some creature from battle; you would be at the fighting. Then a char- friends from the Provincetown community, who your own medium, you establish a relationship. In acter who was at the battle would rush back to become like characters in a novel. The book’s Cunningham’s books, a sustained relationship is tell the king what had happened. First, you expe- cover is a painting of a beach cottage by John the essential arc of his various narratives. rience the battlefield directly, then you hear it in Dowd, who figures also in the book as part of an impassioned report, then you hear the debate Cunningham’s constellations of friends. Indeed, RELATIONSHIPS and further details. Cunningham likewise shifts the author’s gift for friendship may be directly effortlessly from what Shakespeare’s Banquo related to the novelist’s drive to span generations. For 17 years, Cunningham has been in a bonded calls “one coign of vantage” to another. Following the success of The Hours, in the relationship with Ken Corbett, a psychologist How does he manage this switch of selves? “To middle of the writing of Specimen Days, Cunning- with a practice in New York. In their Province- what extent I am able to is slightly mysterious to ham received a call from Random House asking town digs, Michael has his writing room on the me,” he said. “I am aware of keeping my characters him to write a short book about any place he first floor and Ken has a photography studio both consistent and surprising. You want not liked, for a series the publisher was doing of above, reached via an outside stairway. There is a only to account for people’s coherence, but for “walks” taken by notable writers of their particular ship-like feeling to the place, each sailor having a their contradictions. A big concern is to let my inspirational haunts. Frank Conroy wrote about private cabin. The water bangs concussively on characters be full and real, human, true to them. Nantucket, and Cunningham was thrilled to the bulkhead twice a day, as the tide comes and Where it comes from? There are aspects of writ- write about Provincetown. “I would have never goes from the high-water mark. On stormy days, ing that are purely craft, and I understand how thought to write it on my own. I write fiction. waves break on the beams of the bulkhead and they work. Tuning in a character is magical and Part of the trick, especially when you are younger, spray in a light-inflected mist as high as half the mysterious. I got to know Julianne Moore fairly is figuring out what exactly is it that you do.” house. Robert Motherwell’s series of drawings well during the filming of Hours; she is one of our I asked, “One of the problems with imagina- Beside the Sea was inspired by the gestural bursts most gifted actors, but she has no idea how she tion is the very freedom allowed, permitted, sanc- of the smashing waves; he discovered that to does it. She does a bare minimum of rehearsal. tioned, the poet’s very license to lie. Every artist embody the gesture of the wave he had to use She worries that if she looks at it too closely, it needs restrictions, limits, yellow lines. How do you, very strong and heavy paper that could absorb will disappear. I understand that.” as a novelist, with the range of your possibilities, the force of his loaded brush. Living close to the approach the opposite need of the art, which is to water, witnessing its evolving moods, one builds MIXED SOCIETY formally contain what you imagine? If your char- one’s house like a ship, with running decks on acters go to a certain place, we see how they got different levels, and gangplanks that guide you In all his novels, Cunningham’s descriptions of there; we know the kind of doughnut they ate at with parallel handrails. The wide deck shared by heterosexual sex are sharp and pungent, as good an airport. Basic questions of ordinary living are four friends is bordered with green shrubs that as his descriptions of homosexual sex, revealing answered so fleetingly, on the run, that they thrive in salt air. The ghost of the artist next door in fact similar power struggles. His details are become what lawyers call ‘excited utterances,’ inhabits Cunningham’s space. Michael and Ken acute—a certain position of the body will reveal things people say under emotional compulsion. believe, as Motherwell said just before he died, “I an interesting crease in the skin tucking around What ways do you use to go beyond the situa- know there is a world of the spirit that can be the buttock to the back of the leg. The detail tions you construct?” approached, that its being is undeniable once becomes our access to the experience. Here in “For every book,” he answered, “I invent my one has experienced it.” Provincetown we have a lot of writers happy to be own set of rules and restrictions and function If we pair a novelist with a psychologist, do we known as gay novelists, but Cunningham, from within those. That may be the only difference create a discussion about who is doing the more the beginning, was a mainstream writer who between people who write fiction and those who essential work? Cunningham feels that both Ken included gay characters in his novels. The Hours, write nonfiction. People who write nonfiction and he are doing the same kind of work: “He is certainly, received more mainstream acclaim usually take on the constraints of the real world. trying to penetrate the mystery of actual people; than either of his earlier novels. We novelists make up our own set of restrictions I’m trying to penetrate the mystery of people But in Flesh and Blood, sex on the grass of a golf and then operate within those. Life has to have I’ve invented. It’s not all that different.” For course between the young couple, Susan and consistency. It is naturalistic or not naturalistic. Cunningham, literature and psychology are like Todd, is as compelling as the best sex scenes in D. But it’s all over the map if it feels like a different a married couple, impossible to separate. H. Lawrence. Told from Susan’s point of view, universe from chapter to chapter or paragraph to “Frankly,” he said, “they are much related.” the two-page encounter has a delicious inno- paragraph. It’s not going to cohere.” In Specimen Days, Cunningham uses certain cence, completely fresh, and punctured by sharp Cunningham’s obvious artistic need to cohere, terms that refer to psychological types. He men- shafts of fleeting illumination. Under constella- to glue together, made me think of why artists like tions, for example, Phyllis Greenacre’s “as if” tions of stars that Cunningham recurrently to cook. It’s a way of gathering the tribe together. personality, a quintessential description of the names, we are with the couple during their pri- Michael’s retreat-by-the-sea is part of the com- actor’s personality. No role to play, no identity. vate time. She imagines him to be ignorant of his pound formerly owned by Robert Motherwell. Many actors feel this way between roles. own masculinity: “He seemed to find it unre-

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markable that his fingers could grip a soup bowl “I think of Henry James, Virginia Woolf, people around its edges and that his feet filled shoes who were incapable of having sex who would massive and potentially lethal as cinder blocks.” probably have had gay sex if they could, but it was She quells the panic rising in her stomach by just too difficult or ‘icky’ for them. I look forward shifting attention to his uniquely male organ: with great anticipation to the day when it just “To take her mind off her own fears she focused doesn’t matter. We are seeing a change. But now on his cock, its veined shaft and purple, strangely we are seeing a great deal of backlash. There are innocent head . . . She wondered if he understood laws that criminalize gay relationships. It’s a dark her loyalty’s depth and breadth. She wondered if period.” this diligence, this scrupulous and clinical interest “Maybe it’s the final resistance before genuine of hers, was what people meant when they spoke change?” about love.” “That’s my sense. When you start to make real Cunningham said that he feels his ideal reader progress, something like this resistance is bound is a little bit like himself. Who is Cunningham? to happen. Any attempt to hold a body of people His father worked in a large advertising agency. down is doomed to failure.” He was very close to his mother, to whom Specimen “Doomed by its very structure, I would say. It Days is dedicated. He had dark moments in his would be one thing if the gay rights movement early years, mostly issues having to do with per- had a malicious desire to harm someone, but sonal relationships. He has a sister, two years when a person simply loves another person, why younger than him, who lives about 50 miles north should anyone be offended?” of Los Angeles. She works as a lab technician for a “This is the question,” Cunningham respond- pharmaceutical company; she’s married without ed, “that I would love to be able to ask all those children. “The DNA stops with us,” he said. “The people out there, ‘Why do you care, why does it dark moments of depression are triggered if matter to you?’ One of the things I love about there’s too much going on; my sensory apparatus Provincetown is that it feels not so much like a gets overloaded. Whether it’s too much good gay town but a town where it just doesn’t seem to stuff or too much bad stuff, it is much darker make any difference.” than wanting to retreat and be alone, much “The guide I followed in developing Province- darker than my mother’s death or winning the town Arts is what I call the ‘John Waters Model of Pulitzer Prize.” Integration into Straight Society.’ It is a mixed Cunningham grew up in Ohio, moved to Cali- society of gay and straights who share some fornia, and went to Stanford University, majoring various beliefs and purposes that unite them. In in English. He received financial aid as a scholar- Provincetown, Waters always prefers to go to ship student. He worked. He studied English. mixed bars rather than gay bars.” Years afterward, he did time as a bartender. I asked “I feel the same way. My friends are not all gay. Michael if he was straight during his bartender I don’t read exclusively gay writers. I read whatever years, and he said, “You know, I don’t know if I was is interesting to me. The sexuality question is ever straight. I think I was impersonating a relatively minor.” straight guy, as so many gay people do. The Here our conversation moved to a crux. Cun- choices people make can keep opening. I hope the ningham had been quoted several years ago in banishment of choices is something that is dimin- Provincetown Arts as saying that Oscar Wilde was ishing with each new generation—being gay and the source of a statement that guided his practice refusing to acknowledge it.” in writing about sex: “Everything in life is about Provincetown, historically, has proven to be sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Whether an unusual experiment. Its gay population is Wilde said it or not does not detract from the fully accepted within a mixed community. This wisdom the utterance offers Cunningham. Even magazine has always been a strong supporter of if the attribution is apocryphal, it is a truth that gay rights, and Cunningham is the seventh cover encodes Cunningham’s description of human subject who is gay or lesbian. mating behavior. “I find that line especially use- D. H. Lawrence could depict the sexual power ful in contemplating writing about sex,” he said. of a female from the point of view of a man, and “Eroticism, for me, is impossible to do on the the sexual power of a man from the point of view page. I find it possible only if I can do so in terms of a female. People who read Lawrence do not of what it tells us about who’s in power. If I think know what to think about his sexual orientation. of it as a sort of negotiation or battle, rather than Such an author is artistically polymorphous, and in terms of erotic pleasure, then I can write about understands how a particular person can feel it. Otherwise, it’s too amorphous and too sexual attraction for another particular person. idiosyncratic. What’s sexy to me is not only going Anyone can read Cunningham’s material and get to be not sexy to you, it’s not going to be sexy to a sense of other lives we could have lived. Michael another gay guy. Our circuitry is so personal. and I discussed this aspect of his work. “I think writers need to be acquainted on a He remarked, “Somebody said the only differ- firsthand basis with a range of human feelings. ence between people is whether they are sexual or Any writer can write about anything in the world not sexual.” without having experienced it, except emotions. I replied, “I think almost all people are sexual. You cannot write about love if you have not loved. Was Thoreau sexual?” You cannot write about despair. I’ve had depres- “Certainly not his writings. I don’t know what sion, more and more as I get older. It’s not helpful. his sex life was like.” You need to get out of it in order to get to work. “I think he was gay,” I said, “but asexual.” Mild depression or mere blues may be different.”

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are children all over the place. Melanie Braverman and Molly Perdue, his neighbors in the Province- town compound, with whom Ken and Michael share an expansive deck, have an adopted child named Sam, who watches while Michael, Ken, Molly, and Melanie do the gardening around the borders of the deck, a kind of common ground. Here the role of gardening recalls the first chapter in Flesh and Blood, when the little boy on the Greek farm creates his own garden on a barren hill. He works his father’s farm during the day and carries at the end of day a mouthful of dirt, mixed with manure, up a hill. Day by day, he creates a small patch of fertile ground that is his own, where he grows tomatoes before he immigrates to America and then fathers three generations.

DANCING

In Specimen Days, machines have their clumsy rhythm, however perfected by the future. In Home at the End of the World, Bobby is the dancer: WHITMAN’S POEMS MAKE be subspecies aeternitatis, or the view of things from “Bobby swayed his hips in rhythm and soon GOOD WALLPAPER an eternal angle, rather than a momentary per- began to dance. Watching him in his cheerful, spective. They were looking through a large slightly baffled progress through the day, you In Specimen Days, it is clear that Cunningham has frame. Another character will say, “Shut the fuck could forget what a dancer he was. It was one of absorbed Whitman thoroughly. In the second up! I’m sick of your poetry.” When I first read his surprises. The moment a note of music part of the novel, The Children’s Crusade, children that line, I erupted in laughter. I wondered if sounded he could move with such grace and have grown up in a bedroom where the walls, ceil- Cunningham chuckled when he wrote that, and buoyancy. He appeared to shed some interior ing, and floor are papered with hundreds of pages he said, “Yeah, sure I did.” weight. A ghost of the flesh, all gristle and bone of Whitman’s poems. The poems were plastered Cunningham’s first reader, after himself, is that dissolved at a guitar’s strum or the first bleat like wallpaper, and the growth of the children is Ken Corbett: “He’s not only my first reader, but of a horn. On the record, a woman backed by measured by the wisdom they absorb as they live with him I live in an atmosphere of intelligence maracas and guitars sang full-throated in Spanish, with every word, day by day and line by line. Each and discrimination and appreciation of a really with shamelessly simple passion. Bobby, who generation has people who are obsessed with good joke. It’s difficult to imagine writing without loved all music, good and bad, danced as the last Whitman. Their names are altered slightly, but him. He is an integral part of the process. Maybe sun disappeared.” they retain core etymological associations, often I’m a little corny, but I agree with the Beatles that By contrast, Jonathan, Bobby’s boyhood biblical and historical sounding, as if we’ve love is, in fact, all you need. It’s just hard to get it, friend, with whom he shared a homosexual known such types, precursors, or prophets before. hard to hold it.” encounter, “was an elegant if contained dancer. Lucas becomes Luke. On the distaff side, which Here two thoughts flashed through my mind. He moved within a small column of air, the exact does not seem to care much for Whitman, First, the last section of the book, Like Beauty, boundaries of which he never overstepped.” Catherine becomes Cat becomes Catareen. Either seems to refer to Aristotle’s definition of poetry as Later, having left the Midwest to live in New York way, the fascination with the ur-author persists. being “not truth, but something like truth.” Truth as adults in an interesting ménage with a female This name-changing reminded me of an is factual history; something like truth is poetry. interested in having a baby, Jonathan has a tête- embryonic effort in Home at the End of the World, “Why?” Aristotle asked. Because poetry is more à-tête with Bobby, asking, “The things that we in which Bobby attempts to change his name, philosophical than history; poetry makes eternal used to do together. The, well, sexual things. I graduating from a childhood nickname to a what dies every day. Cunningham explained that mean we never talked about it, and after school more adult-sounding name, the new name the concept of beauty in the novel meant some- we just stopped. I guess I’m wondering what you bestowing new identity. That little detail in the thing that was “better than useful.” My second thought about it.” early book stood out in retrospect as the source thought was a passage I had read in which a Here Cunningham subtly examines the of the wild succession of slight name changes in Cunningham character declared that he had teenaged boys who could go either way, then the three epochs of Specimen Days. believed that romance would bestow dignity, compares them after they have chosen their ways. “It’s sort of autobiographical,” Cunningham destiny, and direction upon a person; but instead Bobby remembered that, years ago, he’d made explained. “My family, my biological family, called romance soured, became rank, like a sick spouse love with Jonathan because Jonathan had wanted me Mike when I was growing up. I didn’t come to sitting on the toilet. Cunningham manages to use to, and because Bobby loved Jonathan. Still, be known as Michael until college, in the ’60s, these disappointments to make his characters when he did it, “nothing quickened or struggled when nobody was named Mike. You were called realistic and accessible, like us. for release.” In New York, Bobby said, “We were Michael. I can never get my family to call me Many of Cunningham’s friends have small kids, Johnny. That was years ago.” Michael. I gave up trying years ago. They call me children. Marie Howe, the poet, Cunningham’s Cunningham thinks of language as a medi- Mike. My father is still alive. My mother died a few close friend from his Fine Arts Work Center days um that is just as much about music as meaning. years ago. They simply refused to call me by the and present neighbor in Greenwich Village, has On the page the rhythms of the sentences, and name every other person called me. It feels indica- an adopted daughter that Cunningham cherishes how each one dances with the sentence that pro- tive of what is great and terrible about one’s as if she were a niece. His friends Don and Lee in ceeds and the sentence that follows it, matters biological family. You remain a five-year-old.” California have Sam and Ben, who visit in the about as much as what he actually says. He has Each generation in Specimen Days has another summer. I was swimming in the area a few sum- an untested idea that he should be able to read generation of Whitman-obsessed people, who mers ago and I heard a child splashing out of the his fiction to somebody who does not speak call his writings “the book.” They may as well call water like a talking fish, squealing with glee English and his spirit would come across even if it the Bible. The wisdom contained is assumed to “Uncle Michael!” It made me grateful that there they didn’t know what his language meant.

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to look ahead to—would we ever get to it in one at the Bradford on weekdays in the afternoons if, Notes on a Time piece? And of course, Michael and I shared books and ONLY IF, we had had a good workday and we were reading. I remember how polite Michael we felt we had made breakthroughs. The Brad- Remembered was when I returned his new copy of Doctorow’s ford was a dangled carrot for us. We had to have Loon Lake after I had dropped it in the bathtub. our pool game midday before I had to run to get P-TOWN 1980 Michael was horrified, but he just gulped and my daughter at the grade school, but at that time didn’t scream at me. When Michael’s pretty sister of day the Bradford has a homey feel, with just a By Maria Flook was visiting from California he brought her over little bit of daylight streaming in so you could for dinner, but she was girlishly squeamish about actually see the craggy regulars, landlocked cap- eating a lobster. And when I made a serious stab tains, and other brethren like Skillings and Michael and I met in Iowa City the year before we at preparing my version of an Art of French Cooking- Skoyles, at the bar the way their moms might see came to Provincetown as fellows. That winter at type-dinner for my neighbor Stanley Kunitz them on Sundays. Everyone there seemed to tol- the Fine Arts Work Center we were lucky to have (I was at 34 Commercial, next door to Stanley). erate Michael, the tall and lanky Californian, and one another until we found our legs, and we often Stanley came over with Skoyles, the writing chair me, the single mom with a punk “Monkey shag” hooked up after a workday or at moments of at the Work Center at that time, and I invited haircut, both of us in ripped jeans and T-shirts, reprieve from our demons in our little cubicles. Michael to round out the table which was too top like FAWC Bobbsy Twins. We took a couple of drives together, and one time heavy with poets. It was a sublime Kunitz evening, Michael also helped me get my first P-town we ended up out at Highland Light at midnight, and we were a happy foursome. Stanley had job, at his new boyfriend’s Commercial Street just to feel the churning beacon close up, when it brought over his own big jelly jar of martinis, but Breakfast Bistro “Christie’s.” Working for Christy still had its gorgeous fresnel lens that swirled in I remember how Michael helped me when Kunitz Randazzo was a wonderful experience, waiting wide golden wedges over the High Head cliffs. We asked for a fresh “twist” and I didn’t have any on tables in May, right on the harbor when the were listening to the Clash’s “Train in Vain” and more lemons. Michael and Skoyles stood over plankton was blooming, that phenomenon every we just jumped out of the car and hopped and my kitchen garbage bin and searched through all spring when the water smells green as flowers. danced around like banshees beneath the the gooey table scraps looking for a discarded whirling light. We did our legitimate dancing at lemon wedge that could be doctored and given to MARIA FLOOK’s recent books are Lux, a novel, and the Back Room and I remember it was Prince’s Stanley and Stanley didn’t seem to mind. Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on “1999”—that we loved most, and how the hit had In the worst blears of winter, Michael and I Cape Cod seemed like such a preposterous and distant date made a pact. We said we would meet to play pool

I ASKED IF HE COULD SAY Cunningham had read Whitman since from the main selections, interest him. Ten years SOMETHING ABOUT WHITMAN’S college. Much earlier, by chance, he had read ago, he said, he wrote a series of horror stories IMPORTANCE Virginia Woolf, who became, he said, “entwined that never came to anything, and he never tried with my DNA.” He does not feel that Whitman is to publish them. When he prepared to write Cunningham said that when he started Specimen entwined with his DNA: “I think most of us who Specimen Days, he said, “I read tons of science Days he had no intention of including Walt care about books have a small body of writers fiction and thrillers.” Whitman. He had just published The Hours and who are bloodstreams; other writers we revere. Like most people who love Provincetown, did not want to be described as the guy who takes Whitman is more the latter to me, a writer I love, Cunningham shares a love for eccentrics. He a famous dead writer and glamorizes her or him but whom I came to read later.” himself is not especially eccentric, but he is often in rip-off books. “Yeah,” he said, “I cashed in on I was curious if Michael recognized the same surprised by the general population who are Virginia Woolf and now I will take Whitman to concept of manliness that I saw in Whitman. The instinctively repelled by eccentricity. He has seen the bank as well. As I was doing my research for iconic hero of American poetry sauntered freely such types nervous in the presence of a particu- the first part, about New York in the late 1800s, along the main boulevards of the city, and loved larly sexy drag queen that happened to have one of the things I was made aware of was that the stagecoach ride down Broadway, where he sat Mercurochrome-colored hair. In Cunningham New York was a really difficult place then, at the in the roof seating, waving to friends. During the country, the people of the future have no word beginning of the Industrial Revolution. A handful height of the Civil War, he chose to go to hospitals, for valuations that exceed usefulness. They have of people were doing well, but almost everybody bringing candy, oranges, stamps, and tobacco to a term, keeram, which means something like was working 12-hour shifts in factories, beneath the wounded, and talking with them, offering the beauty, but it is only an approximation of our a coal-smoke sky 20 feet above everybody’s head. solace of recognition with his attentive ears. That earthly expression. Roughly, the term translates At that time, Manhattan was Lower Manhattan. shows instinctive compassion. His robust voice, as “better than useful.” There were few houses, if any, in what is now the his rolling catalogues of information, make it The author is a fine specimen of a novelist, 50s and above. Whitman was walking around, marvelous that Whitman belatedly became a but he knows his limits. He prizes surprise in saying, “I sing the body electric!” and “Every atom major poet. The future does not care that Whit- poetry, but claims not to have a gift for writing that belongs to me belongs to you.” How interest- man lived to be applauded. Cunningham said, poetry. “A narrative that aspires to a poetic ing that our difficult and dehumanizing time in “He had a hard time at the end. His poetry had cadence is the closest I’ll ever come,” he said. “I American history should also produce our great, not really taken off. One of his ambitions was love to dance. I’m not especially good at it, but all transcendentalist poet. I put him in, peripherally. never realized, which was to create a poetry that the songs in my books are from records that mat- He became a bigger figure and it became clear he would be read by everybody, not just the educated tered to me. Music is my very favorite of all the was going to be part of the glue that held the elite, but by working people, which, I am sorry to art forms. If I had any talent as a musician, I novel together. First, because he was there. Then I say, has not happened to a significant degree. But would play music. I am convinced that if an began to want to work with Whitman because the now, here he is, still very alive in a very real way.” extraterrestrial appeared right now and said, novel, to some degree, is meant to chart the arc of I would not have associated Cunningham I only have half an hour. What can you tell me about ‘progress,’ beginning with the Industrial Revolu- with an interest in science fiction until I read life on earth? we would play him a Bach cantata. tion and ending with cloning and interstellar Specimen Days. He read a lot of science fiction We would not read him a chapter from a novel.” travel. Whitman, our great humanist, our great until he was 15 or 16, then realized the impor- celebrator of life in every conceivable form, ought tance of reading other literature as well. Genre CHRISTOPHER BUSA is editor of Provincetown to be there as a complement or counterpoint.” books, those subcategories in bookstores, away Arts.

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