Michael Cunningham

Quiet as plucked wires...

The above is one many quotes I scrawled on my program during Michael Cunningham’s recent presentation at the Denver Post-Rocky Mountain News Pen and Podium series. On Monday evening, February 20th, the Pulitzer- and PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author spoke at the University of Denver's Newman Center for the Performing Arts on a variety of topics including genre, the writing life, and his current novel, Specimen Days (from which he read the glistening "plucked wires" simile).

Now, one thing I should clarify before proceeding is that I am not an author groupie. I've attended dozens of writer's conferences, readings and book signings and have always conducted myself with the utmost propriety. Michael Cunningham, however, is no run-of-the-mill prize-winning novelist. Nope. He’s the best: the crème de le crème, the Albert Einstein of writers, my idol, God. I told him as much on Monday night. Well, I left out the dairy, physicist and divinity references, but I did inform him that he is my favorite living writer. And okay, since you insist, I’ll jump ahead to the book-signing portion of the session during which Cunningham and I spoke personally...

After standing in a long line conversing with two engaing gentlemen who happened to be not only fellow writers but admitted gays "in crush" with Cunningham, I approached the signing table. I handed him four books: two copies of The Hours (my all-time favorite novel), one copy of Specimen Days and a copy of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (on which The Hours is based). While he signed the books, I introduced myself, telling him that I was a writer and had just completed my master's degree. "Michael," I said (we were now on a first-name basis), "I know this may sound trite—and I'm sure you hear it all the time—but I need to say it: You are my favorite contemporary fiction writer. Ask anyone who knows me well, and they will tell you that I've been saying that for years. Of everyone writing today, it is you I most want to emulate." (Hey, for those of you now cringing: at least I didn't gush a la Misery, "I'm your number one fan!") He said he was honored. He also asked about my graduate program and said that he thought it was "great" that I was quitting my full-time job in order to pursue my writing dreams. Beaming, I asked him if he was acquainted with the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke. "Are you kidding?" he said. "I bow down to the guy. Letters to a Young Poet is one of my very favorite books." I almost erupted at that point. "See!" I wanted to say. "I knew it! We're kindred spirits!" Alas, determined to exude restraint—and because I knew for a fact that he was likewise aware of our deep kinship—I simply nodded knowingly. When he opened my personal copy of The Hours, I said, "May I ask you a personal question?" He said sure. "You disclosed in tonight's Q and A session that [Hours character] Mrs. Brown is based almost exclusively on your mother." He nodded. "Does this imply that Mrs. Brown's son, Richard, is based on you?" He said no, that Richard was based on poet Theodore Roethke. Then I asked if he would pose with me for the above picture. He graciously obliged. Finally, I hugged my books securely to me (you never know whom you can trust, after all) and thanked him. Cunningham said, "It was nice to meet you, Susan. Again, I can't believe you just quit your job in order to write. That is so great!" I said good-bye and dashed around a corner where I immediately flipped open my copy of The Hours. On the title page he had written, "To Susan: With blessings on your own future books. Michael Cunningham."

Cunningham is a genuinely nice guy. I'm sure he writes similar inscriptions in other groupies'—er, I mean aspiring writers'—books; however, I can assure you that none is as treasured as mine.

The following is a random sampling of quotes from Cunningham's presentation...

• I'm a promiscuous reader.
• I try to listen to the big, hungry impulse of the world.
• [When asked about how he approaches the delicate issue of basing a character or scene on an actual person or event...] A gift from a novelist is like a gift from a cat.
• [On the writing craft...] Never, never give up.
• [On being a writer...] I'm a farmer at heart. I'm a creature of habit. I do my best work during consistent, measured intervals—like someone plowing a field.
• If I know too well where a novel is going, the most it's going to do is get there.
• I always want to end up with a book that is a little smarter than I am.
• [On why he often employs multiple genres in his novels:] We live in a bigger world than ever before. One story doesn't always cut it anymore.
• [When asked about his perceived audience:] I write for my companion, Ken, and about half a dozen others; otherwise, it's too abstract.

While discussing Specimen Days, which consists of three novellas tied together by a common thread of allusions to Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass, Cunningham explained that he employed the genres of horror, thriller and science fiction, respectively. He then read excerpts from three stories that informed his own: Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, a title by Raymond Chandler that now escapes me (sorry), and Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains." Writers," he said, "borrow from one another all the time. I will be the first to admit that Specimen Days was influenced by these three authors—as well as many, many others." He continued: "Authors who protect their work as if it were a baby or a sacred text need to lighten up. It's just a book, after all." Asked if it bothered him that David Hare, screenwriter of the motion picture version of The Hours, had altered the story for his adaptation, Cunningham responded with a resounding, "No!" It was, he revealed, quite the contrary. "I saw it as an expansion. The Hours is now two stories. I love it when things evolve; it helps them endure."

No doubt Cunningham's art will endure. I hope to someday crawl in the dirt tread of his footsteps.

Note to Self

Note to self after quitting full-time job in order to follow writing dreams: As you struggle once again with risk and change—and the fear that accompanies them—revisit the following wisdom of Rainer Maria Rilke:

"You should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to break out of it. This very wish will help you, if you use it quietly, and deliberately and like a tool, to spread out your solitude over wide country.People have, with the help of conventions, oriented all their solutions toward the easiest side of easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it." (Letters to a Young Poet, 53)