"This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw materials at hand."
Michael Cunningham
One of my favorite books of 2011, so far, By Nightfall is an exquisite, slyly witty, warmly philosophical, & urbanely eviscerating tale of the mysteries of beauty & desire, art & delusion, age & love. It was a book that I had to slow myself down with, fighting an urge to find the fate of the narrator & still wanting to savor the luxurious writing on each page. Full of shocks & aftershocks, it made me think & feel deeply about the uses & meaning of beauty & the place of love & desire in life.
He is responsible for some of the best reading I have ever been given over to the pleasure of being lost in a great book. The Hours transported me in a way that it’s jumping off point- Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway never did. The deeply moving-The Hours won the Pulitzer Prize & was made into a brilliant film, but it isn’t even my favorite Michael Cunningham novel, that would be the amazing 3 generation family saga- Flesh & Blood. I own & have read all of his work, starting with the New Yorker short story that would eventually become A Home At The End Of The World (made into a good film with Colin Farrell, Sissy Spacek & Robin Wright). I even enjoyed the problematic Specimen Days which ends with a section with an alian & a reptile having sex. I think he is an important, brilliant, elegant & very accessible author & a really great looking,sexy man. He is on the faculty at Columbia University & lives, with his partner of 22 years- psychoanalyst/artist-Ken Corbett, in NYC & Provincetown. Cunningham turns 59 on this day.
Here he is, looking sexy,chatting about writing with my former lover- James Franco. They are almost too hot to watch:
"We'd hoped vaguely to fall in love but hadn't worried much about it, because we'd thought we had all the time in the world. Love had seemed so final & so dull...love was what ruined our parents. Love had delivered them to a life of mortgage payments & household repairs; to unglamorous jobs & the flourescent aisles of a supermarket at 2 in the afternoon. We'd hoped for love of a different kind, love that knew & forgave our human frailty but did not miniaturize our grander ideas of ourselves. It sounded possible. If we didn't rush or grab, if we didn't panic, a love both challenging & nurturing might appear. If the person was imaginable, then the person could exist."
Michael Cunningham
One of my favorite books of 2011, so far, By Nightfall is an exquisite, slyly witty, warmly philosophical, & urbanely eviscerating tale of the mysteries of beauty & desire, art & delusion, age & love. It was a book that I had to slow myself down with, fighting an urge to find the fate of the narrator & still wanting to savor the luxurious writing on each page. Full of shocks & aftershocks, it made me think & feel deeply about the uses & meaning of beauty & the place of love & desire in life.
He is responsible for some of the best reading I have ever been given over to the pleasure of being lost in a great book. The Hours transported me in a way that it’s jumping off point- Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway never did. The deeply moving-The Hours won the Pulitzer Prize & was made into a brilliant film, but it isn’t even my favorite Michael Cunningham novel, that would be the amazing 3 generation family saga- Flesh & Blood. I own & have read all of his work, starting with the New Yorker short story that would eventually become A Home At The End Of The World (made into a good film with Colin Farrell, Sissy Spacek & Robin Wright). I even enjoyed the problematic Specimen Days which ends with a section with an alian & a reptile having sex. I think he is an important, brilliant, elegant & very accessible author & a really great looking,sexy man. He is on the faculty at Columbia University & lives, with his partner of 22 years- psychoanalyst/artist-Ken Corbett, in NYC & Provincetown. Cunningham turns 59 on this day.
Here he is, looking sexy,chatting about writing with my former lover- James Franco. They are almost too hot to watch:
"We'd hoped vaguely to fall in love but hadn't worried much about it, because we'd thought we had all the time in the world. Love had seemed so final & so dull...love was what ruined our parents. Love had delivered them to a life of mortgage payments & household repairs; to unglamorous jobs & the flourescent aisles of a supermarket at 2 in the afternoon. We'd hoped for love of a different kind, love that knew & forgave our human frailty but did not miniaturize our grander ideas of ourselves. It sounded possible. If we didn't rush or grab, if we didn't panic, a love both challenging & nurturing might appear. If the person was imaginable, then the person could exist."
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