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Specimen Days

3.51 of 5 stars 3.51 · rating details · 3,203 ratings · 401 reviews

In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, his first since The Hours, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost story that takes place at the height of the industrial revolution, as human beings confront the alienating realities of the new machine age. "The Children's Crusade," set in t...more

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published June 7th 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published January 1st 2005)

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Apr 10, 2013 Teresa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Teresa by: James Murphy

Before reading this book, I came across a couple of comments (one that I heard directed to Cunningham himself at the Tennessee Williams Festival in N.O. last month) that addressed Cunningham 'copying' himself, that he was doing here with Whitman what he did with Woolf in The Hours. It is true that each writer has a lot to do with each respective novel, but beyond that I see no similarity.

At the aforementioned literary fest, I heard Cunningham call himself a 'language queen' and then later in the...more Before reading this book, I came across a couple of comments (one that I heard directed to Cunningham himself at the Tennessee Williams Festival in N.O. last month) that addressed Cunningham 'copying' himself, that he was doing here with Whitman what he did with Woolf in The Hours. It is true that each writer has a lot to do with each respective novel, but beyond that I see no similarity.

At the aforementioned literary fest, I heard Cunningham call himself a 'language queen' and then later in the day a 'language crank,' meaning that what he looks for when he reads are beautiful sentences. He writes them too. Last night after finishing this book, I dreamed of his sentences, a sure sign of a book that has implanted itself in my brain.

The first section was my favorite, not surprisingly, since it's set in the 19th century. The writing, with the foreboding and visionary thoughts of Lucas, is exquisite. At times (as in each of the later sections as well) it's even creepy and tension-filled. Maybe it's meant to evoke a sensational novel of the time period, and though I know it can be read as a ghost story, I think it can also be read as not one. (A la James' "The Turn of the Screw"?)

Even in the second section, which is of a crime-thriller style (not my favorite genre), I was won over, though I wasn't sure of it at first and in certain passages. It may not have been a fit for me, but looking back on it, I think it fit the overall pattern and scheme of the book.

To say what I liked about the speculative, dystopian third section might spoil the experience for another reader. I'll just say that it addresses what it means to be human, and what it might mean to be human in the future, and that who turned out to be a Whitman figure in this section surprised me and perhaps is what turned the whole work from 4 to 5 stars for me -- that, and my dreaming of its sentences.

I have my friend James Murphy and his review to thank for my reading this novel, and for my seeing the parallels to Dante (I don't know Dante well enough to have seen that on my own), making the read even richer. Now I wish I had read this before the Fest, so I could've asked Cunningham about that!(less)

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Sep 28, 2008 Lavinia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2007, fiction

I never really liked Whitman, but since Cunningham makes him his book’s hero [remember Woolf and The Hours?] he becomes more accessible. Directly or not, he is present in all three parts of the book, being hidden by Cunningham behind the characters that populate a New York from different periods of time [same pattern as The Hours], thus speaking and existing through them. I really liked the first two parts, the third one is S.F. and I’m not quite a fan. In the end, Walt doesn’t seem so impossibl...more

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Jan 05, 2011 Schmacko rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I generally LOVE Michael Cunningham, but I felt he was copying his "literature borrowing" idea from The Hours. He was experimenting with form, but it didn't work for me. Three stories linked to one work - the author shows up in the earliest story - that's what he borrowed from The Hours.

In Specimen Days, Cunningham offers three novels based on Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. In the first novella, set in Victorian NYC, a mentally-challenged factory worker has taken his dead brother's job even a...more

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Jun 18, 2008 Dale rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I haven't done this in a while, but today seems like a good day to bring it back to the fore: I started my current job exactly one year ago, June 18, 2007. I've been doing the Metro commute for a whole year. And today, as the Blue Line train pulled into Crystal City, I finished my sixty-fourth book. (Don't worry, I have number sixty-five with me as well, to start on the commute home. I've gotten pretty good at knowing when I'll finish a book and having backup available.)

I wanted to spread around...more I haven't done this in a while, but today seems like a good day to bring it back to the fore: I started my current job exactly one year ago, June 18, 2007. I've been doing the Metro commute for a whole year. And today, as the Blue Line train pulled into Crystal City, I finished my sixty-fourth book. (Don't worry, I have number sixty-five with me as well, to start on the commute home. I've gotten pretty good at knowing when I'll finish a book and having backup available.)

I wanted to spread around the kind of books I was reading, so how did I do?

Classics: 9
Modern Lit: 24
Genre (sci-fi/fantasy/horror): 17
Non-fiction: 14

Considering that I probably could have spent the past year reading nothing but genre-dork stuff, I think that's pretty good. A little slack on the classics, but I did read both Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow in the past twelve months. I expect that number will be higher in the next year.

But let's pause a moment in appreciation of Specimen Days, which I filed under "Modern Lit" for my tallying above, but which actually has a pretty high genre content level as well. The book is actually three stories told consecutively which aren't so much interwoven as indebted to one another. It starts with a tale of immigrant factory workers in late 19th century New York City. The middle part concerns a forensic psychologist dealing with terrorist-inspired murders in early 21st century New York City. The last third chronicles the pilgrimage of a cyborg man, an alien woman and a mutant child from NYC to Denver in an unspecified future (though for symmetry's sake and from other clues I'd guess early-to-mid 22nd century). The connective threads (besides New York) are slight - a beautiful painted bowl that passes from owner to owner, the names of the main characters (always variations on Simon, Catherine and Lucas), the poetry of Walt Whitman cropping up in almost entirely non sequitor ways. Each story examines what relationships are, what they mean, how they work - and if that isn't a summary that applies to almost every single book I've read in the past year, I don't know what is.

Cunningham looks at a lot of old things in new ways and gets to a lot of truths, and I enjoyed reading the stories very much. The only know I have against the book is that it claims to be "A Novel" but in my opinion it's really not. I was expecting the third story to tie everything together and show me the hidden connection between all three by the time it ended, but that never happened. Or maybe it did and I'm a bit too obtuse to see it, but the three stories seemed to be distinct and separate with some clever overlaps but no real unity. Still, whether it truly deserves to be called a novel or is just a short collection of long stories, it was worth reading.
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May 10, 2008 George rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Specimen Days is divided into three sections -- each set in a different time period in New York. A man named Simon, a woman named some variation of Catherine, and a boy named Lucas/Luke appear in each section (rotating who takes the lead in each), and a couple of settings, as well as a minor character or two, also repeat. The poetry of Walt Whitman also threads through the whole book, with Whitman himself actually making a cameo at one point, in the kind of gratuitous appearance that you expect...more Specimen Days is divided into three sections -- each set in a different time period in New York. A man named Simon, a woman named some variation of Catherine, and a boy named Lucas/Luke appear in each section (rotating who takes the lead in each), and a couple of settings, as well as a minor character or two, also repeat. The poetry of Walt Whitman also threads through the whole book, with Whitman himself actually making a cameo at one point, in the kind of gratuitous appearance that you expect from a bad television show (or from the Simpsons), rather than from a book that has this kind of literary pedigree.

In the first section, we're in New York in the 19th century. There are lots of exciting changes afoot -- it's the Industrial Revolution after all. The star of this section is Lucas, who works in a factory, but has no idea what exactly he's making (I love that part). Lucas spouts Whitman poetry in the midst of normal conversations, something that grows old pretty quick (I can only imagine how quickly it'd grow old if you were actually talking to the kid). I'm torn between whether this section should have been longer or shorter. As it is, it reads like one of Stephen King's lesser short stories.

The second section zooms us forward to a more modern New York. This time we've gone from Stephen King to a crime show -- not a Law & Order type, but one of those ones where we get to follow the detectives home after work and realize that they're human too. There's a glimmer of something interesting in this section (I admit it, I'm a sucker for those crime shows), and I think it's overall the strongest of the three, but on the last page, Cunningham manages to suck all life and hope right out of the story in a matter of a couple of sentences. That's fine -- I was an English major, I can handle that kind of thing -- but it was a disappointing end to a fairly promising set-up.

The final section is where Cunningham tests how many readers can give up on a book after reading 2/3 of it. I, for one, can't, so I followed him from crime show to science fiction -- fearfully, because science fiction is a genre that should be attempted by precious few "serious" writers. Unfortunately, Cunningham is a weak science fiction writer, and seems to have nothing to offer here other than a pasted-together version of half a dozen other books and movies (and don't get me started on his choice to name a character Tomcruise).

What's going to save this book for me, I think, is trying to connect the three stories. The repeated themes of love, sacrifice, and discrimination are all relevant, important themes, and maybe this book will go down as capturing some sort of post-9/11 zeitgeist. I have not read The Hours, so I came to this book with some uncertainty about what to expect. I can appreciate an author's foray into genre fiction (Michael Chabon has demonstrated both the good and the bad sides of this), but there was something about this one that read a little bit like a writer's workshop exercise (I imagine the as-yet-unpublished fourth section takes us to the world of fantasy, where Simon is a gallant knight, Lucas a gnome abandoned by his parents, and Catherine a talking unicorn). All in all, it just felt a little too slight for an author of this supposed caliber.(less)

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Jul 06, 2007 Doogyjim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As an admirer of the films of Michael Cunningham's novels (A Home at the End of the World & The Hours) I thought I better get round to actually reading one of his books. Specimen Days sat on my shelf since September of last year when I bought it with an Amazon voucher but for months was ignored as I'd run my finger over the spines looking for my next read. I'd notice it in passing and feel a little sheepish as it sat there, so unassuming with its stark black and white jacket design. Judging...more As an admirer of the films of Michael Cunningham's novels (A Home at the End of the World & The Hours) I thought I better get round to actually reading one of his books. Specimen Days sat on my shelf since September of last year when I bought it with an Amazon voucher but for months was ignored as I'd run my finger over the spines looking for my next read. I'd notice it in passing and feel a little sheepish as it sat there, so unassuming with its stark black and white jacket design. Judging books by their covers is bad habit of mine.

Just as The Hours is a voyage round Virginia Woolf, this novel is haunted by Walt Whitman whose work is quoted throughout the book and who makes a cameo appearance at one point. Indeed the same three characters appear in each of the three sections (Cunningham structures many of this works around trios) and all have the same personal traits as if they have been reincarnated. Names, events and objects echo through the book, creating a sense of unity and transcendence. Cunningham never lets his creations have an easy time of it and their fate at the ending of each section remains ambiguous - but the thematic and visual leitmotifs woven throughout hint at a coherence behind the scenes, as if a grand scheme is afoot.

The first section concerns a boy in 19th Century New York who's convinced his brother's ghost is trapped in the machine that killed him. In the second a NYPD officer is trying to track down a squad of child suicide bombers and the last concerns a cyborg and extra-terrestrial escaping a dystopian future. Poetry, escape, transcendence, mortality and trust are the focuses.

Boldly, beautifully written, it faltered only in the final section for me. The first part I thought hugely moving (the tears could just have been my hangover), the second gripping - I had imaginings about the thriller he could have written based on the child suicide bombers. But the third really wasn't my cup of tea. Sorry, lizard romances just don't do it for me. Maybe I'm not open minded enough. Though at least in future I'll listen to that nagging voice coming from my bookshelf. Now, where did I put that copy of of Finnegan's Wake.....?
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Jun 24, 2007 Jae rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I put off reading this for a while, even though I'd liked The Hours, because the reviews kept dwelling on the science-fiction-y third part and as I'm not a big fan of sci-fi, I thought I wouldn't like it. But I was wrong! This was really beautiful -- the writing was incredible, dizzying at points, dense and lyrical and intense. The book is structured in three thematically linked sections, each set in NYC and inspired in different ways by Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The first section, In the Machi...more

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Jun 19, 2007 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of The Hours and everyone else in the world

A preface: It has been a good long while since I read this book, and whether or not my glowing review is one-hundred percent genuine or I've simply romanticized my enjoyment of it based on my preconceived notions that it was going to be a work of genius and my subsequent recommendations to anyone and everyone I know who likes to read (you know, when the book comes to mind, at any rate), remains to be seen.

And that's not even true, because how could I ever recapture how I felt after reading the...more

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Jun 16, 2007 stephanie rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporaryfiction, would-never-rec, historical-fiction

i was SO looking forward to this book, it's kind of ridiculous. i mean, i own the first edition copy, because i BOUGHT it right then.

and then. it was so disappointing. part of it may be personal, but i don't think all of it.

he does (or tries to do) what he did with The Hours, but i think he fails spectacularly. there are three stories, in three separate time periods, and there are things interwoven between each of the stories that links them together. instead of virigina woolf, it's walt whit...more

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Sep 16, 2007 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: brews before screws

Shelves: fiction

3 stories. Walt Whitman's word bubbling up on the lips of all three protagonists, in all three stories. The same character names rearranged.

1. A kid with an awful life and effectively dead parents in industrial revolution-era NYC laments his dead brother, is eaten by machines, falls in love with a prostitute. Things are so desperate he starts hallucinating.

2. Present day cop realizes her rich white stock broker boyfriend likes her because she's exotic. There's a child terrorist plot. She abducts...more

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Jul 13, 2007 Brandon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i went to a reception for this book, had never read anything by him, had never seen the movies. sounded like a terrible novel. wanted to shoot myself.

i ran into him in the bathroom and somehow i started telling him about some personal problems, he listened and gave me advice. on that alone, i decided to read the book.

the first story. done, couldn't do it.
the second story. no way.
the third story... the lizard in the future love story with a robot? i thought it was great. i don't even like fantasy...more

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Feb 27, 2009 Djrmel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, science-fiction, mystery, contemporary

audiobook read by Alan Cumming - What a magical thing it would be to spend a day inside Michael Cunningham's head as he observes the world around him. It is through his power of noticing details and then being able to describe those details that makes his writing so damn good. Specimen Days is no exception to his string of stories that are not only very readable, but will come back to haunt you for days and weeks and who knows how long. In this book, we have three short stories that share a lot...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

When an author follows up a PEN/Faulkner and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel with one that shares a similar structure, critics swarm. Call him audacious, but Cunningham, author of The Hours (1998) and At Home at the End of the World (1990), has again written three interrelated stories and incorporated a major literary figure, swapping The Hours

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Sep 14, 2012 Aina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, contemporary, science-fiction, strange, 19th-century

As a German with only a less then basic knowledge about English language poetry I had not even heard about Walt Whitman before picking up this book. So reading this book was an introduction to not only his poetry.

It also is three very dreamlike and sometimes eerie stories that could not be any more different. All of them have a surreal air to them, but play in very different times and have an all together very different feel to them. Sad, scary, suspenseful and downright funny and absurd, this b...more

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Jul 21, 2012 martha added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2005

[2005 review.] I really love Cunningham's writing, which is why he can get away with writing books which are basically a step away from fanfic about Virginia Woolf (The Hours) or, in this case, Whitman. Specimen Days is a bit of a departure for Cunningham in that it plays with different genres -- historical fiction, sci fi -- but he sticks to the triptych formula from both The Hours and A Home at the End of the World. Anyway, the book is thoroughly excellent -- I loved it even though it was very...more

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Feb 17, 2012 Jon Huff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It isn't The Hours, but it would have been unfair to expect it to be. I'm not sure you can hit that level of... well, greatness (though that seems a strangely wrong word for it) too often.

But I found it a beautiful novel. It's odd. There is a part of me that was left a bit lost by it at first. It plays with genres with which I'm well versed, but in a way I wasn't expecting. Having Cunningham, who was so adept at bringing the present to life in The Hours, bring to life the past seemed natural. W...more

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Mar 22, 2011 victoria rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wonderful, wonderful Michael Cunningham, who, better than anyone else, can tell a story across time and place and space, reminding the reader that the stories of those in the past are similar to the stories we experience now and that others will in the future.

This particular book uses Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as the thread across three tales: one in turn-of-the-century New York when machines were becoming a part of daily and work life; then in early twenty-first century New York set again...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Tancredi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: preferiti, statunitensi

"Siamo questo adesso. Eravamo stanchi e sfruttati, vivevamo in stanze minuscole, mangiavamo dolci di nascosto, ma adesso siamo raggianti e pieni di gloria. Non siamo più qualcuno. Siamo parte di qualcosa di più grande e meraviglioso di quanto i vivi possano immaginare."

Grande, grandissima letteratura. L'ultima fatica letteraria di M. Cunningham lo conferma come un brillante genio letterario. Ha una struttura che riprende quella di "Le ore": tre racconti, tre epoche diverse, tre voci diverse. Tre...more

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Jul 19, 2010 Holly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Part Victorian ghost story, part urban thriller, part science fiction, Cunningham's "Specimen Days" (like "The Hours") is both an ode to Walt Whitman (vs Woolf in "The Hours") told in three parts spanning 300 years in New York City as well as the search for soul, meaning, stroth.

The parallels (reincarnations?) of the characters (in a nod to Whitman and his stars and grass and energy continuium) makes for a fascinating read; I love the tangled web of connections, of cause-and-effect, of circulari...more

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May 31, 2010 Glenda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I recently flew coast to coast, and time dissolved thanks to the book in my hand. It isn't often that a novel is filled with language that makes you pause and marvel... both evocative and liquid, a sharp, alien experience in the mind, one of delight and curiosity. Michael Cunningham's SPECIMEN DAYS is a trio of linked novellas ranging from Victorian England to an imagined future. All three with clues, objects, and characters that echo an anchor note of Walt Whitman, the last Great American Visio...more

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Nov 05, 2009 Cameron rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

They say Walt Whitman's beard drew butterflies. This book, I think, would probably draw something far stranger if left out in a field.

A triptych of tightly-wound exercises in genre--a Machine Age ghost story, a whodunnit set in the Patriot Act hysteria of the mid 00s, and a scifi roadtrip through a blighted America featuring lizard people--Specimen Days baffled the hell out of me. Is it an extended meditation on the machinations and strangeness of our bodies? A sly, Marx-friendly comment on how...more They say Walt Whitman's beard drew butterflies. This book, I think, would probably draw something far stranger if left out in a field.

A triptych of tightly-wound exercises in genre--a Machine Age ghost story, a whodunnit set in the Patriot Act hysteria of the mid 00s, and a scifi roadtrip through a blighted America featuring lizard people--Specimen Days baffled the hell out of me. Is it an extended meditation on the machinations and strangeness of our bodies? A sly, Marx-friendly comment on how we dissolve into our occupations, often without a peep? A hallucinatory glimpse of the humanity behind "terror"? Is Cunningham just outing a long-dormant Blade Runner geekdom?

All these things?

I dunno. The title makes me think that Cunningham's aware of the Frankenstein nature of the book.

But, as other reviews note, Walt Whitman is the glue holding together the cobbled-together pieces of the book. Cunningham, I think, is jostling elbows rather uneasily with Whitman and his legacy of heavenly and bodily affinities. "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you," once sang Whitman, and Cunningham finds not only solace and empathy in this declaration of our common lot, but also horror. In the novel's second act, orphaned boys become suicide bombers in New York City, quoting Whitman as they fatally embrace random strangers. Joining together the disparate, and "doing something" about the specialized, fragmented mess of our everyday lives, is both the theme and craft of Specimen Days. But Whitman's organic, circular nature of existence, and his view of death as something "different from what any one supposed, and luckier" seems to give Cunningham the willies. Death may really only be birth disguised, but Cunningham skews this revelation in interesting, not-entirely-comfortable ways: when people die in Specimen Days they return not as benign lyrical grass, but as oily ghosts, haunting phone calls, and alien corpses that must be buried.

In its uneasy relationship with its literary patron, Specimen Days is an interesting departure from the glowing, perhaps uncritical relationship Cunningham fostered with Woolf in The Hours. Cunningham's craft, too, has expanded here: he writes with abandon about a wide swath of humanity (and nonhumanity), and the result is dizzyingly pleasing. His characters are compelling, especially in the final two stories, I think. And his ability to shuttle between philosophical musing and plot advancement is inspiring, not ham-handed as some reviewers have complained. (Most fiction, I think, engages in existential inquiry and some degree of navel-gazing... it's just that Cunningham lets himself do it aloud, rather than letting the story's machinery do it for him, and occasionally I *like* to have little pithy axioms thrown out at me.)

While I think other books do a more complete job of teasing out the thematic threads present in Specimen Days (Evan Dara's The Lost Scrapbook comes to mind, especially, and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas does a better job juggling multiple genres, from what I've heard), few so honestly portray the odd weather of our interior lives. And few writers so incisively take the scalpel to specific moments in time and how events unfold before characters in slow, Brownian motion--the novel's title again comes to mind. And few writers have Cunningham's gift for pacing and pleasurable images. Highly recommended.

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Apr 25, 2009 Serena rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone

Recommended to Serena by: Deborah Hunn

Specimen Days is a collection of three short stories which are interwoven with references to Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The first is set in the past, the second is contemporary, and the third is set in the future. These short stories are in a shared universe - events in one are referenced in another. All three stories are dystopic. By far my favorite is the middle story, The Children's Crusade, which resonates in me even now, followed by the futuristic Like Beauty. I enjoyed In The Machine the l...more

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Jan 28, 2012 Roger DeBlanck rated it 3 of 5 stars

Similar to the strategy he employed in his award-winning novel The Hours, the three distinct narratives in Specimen Days take place in different eras and they each have a lose association to one another. Drawing upon ideas from the immortal Walt Whitman, whose poetry is noted throughout the novel, the theme of self-sacrifice to save others plays prominently in all three novella-length sections of this multilayered fiction. The characters have similar names in each section, which relates them acr...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Wendy Kobylarz rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel traces the lives of misfits in New York City, each with the name, or a variation of, Catherine, Simon and Lukas, and their oftentimes messy and devoted relationships to one another.

Cunningham divides this novel into three sections spanning about three hundred years.
Several threads tie these stories together: characters’ names, a white bowl with strange blue symbols on the side, and Walt Whitman’s poetry. References to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire are strong in the first stor...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Tiny Pants rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I was really between a two-star (it was okay) and a three-star (liked it) on this one. I wound up tipping the balance toward two because I felt like in the end, all the elements didn't come together -- if this was an entry in the Great American Novel race, it didn't work.

It is interesting that Cunningham seems to keep progressing toward genre fiction (and in fact, the science fiction section of this book worked the best for me, with the sort of crime/detective coming in second), and has stuck w...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Casey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

Cunningham has written three wildly different genres in Specimen Days, each chaotic and bittersweet in their own way, knit together by the poetry of Walt Whitman. Specimen Days reflects Whitman's celebration of humanity, the awful and the grand, and explores that same subject - the protagonist in the last third of the book is an android, who to me at least seemed the most accessible character out of all of them.

I mean, I'm not going to lie. It's a grim book. There aren't a lot of moments of true...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Hesse rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading a number of other reviews, I have nothing new to add. The first story in here is brilliant, the second is good, and the third, I couldn't even finish. I really, really tried! Seeing as The Hours is one of my favorite books, I desperately wanted this one to work, and it ALMOST did. Unfortunately, the moment I realized I was looking at a giant green lizard nanny in Central Park, I was done. I will never be able to get behind the idea of a giant green lizard nanny unless it ends with...more

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Apr 24, 2010 Mariam Al-Doseri rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I remembered with a smile a fellow teacher's revulsion after telling her that Michael Cunningham was (is) homosexual. It has delighted me to see the outrageous abhorrence on my co-worker's face.

Regardless of his sexual orientation, and my nonchalant approach towards contemporary literature; Cunningham is one of few contemporary writers that are able to write dexterously manipulative, terribly magnetic, and mind stimulating pieces of literature.
Instead of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, Cunningham u...more I remembered with a smile a fellow teacher's revulsion after telling her that Michael Cunningham was (is) homosexual. It has delighted me to see the outrageous abhorrence on my co-worker's face.

Regardless of his sexual orientation, and my nonchalant approach towards contemporary literature; Cunningham is one of few contemporary writers that are able to write dexterously manipulative, terribly magnetic, and mind stimulating pieces of literature.
Instead of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, Cunningham uses Walt Whitman's wondering soul as his corner stone in Specimen Days, as he stretches him -he who is large and contains multitude- over three brilliantly interwoven stories.

To summarize the three paralleled stories would spoil others' first hand encounter with the novel. However, it is rather essential to point out that not only do the three or four –but, then there is the bowl as well- main characters: Walt, Simon, Lucas\Luke and Catherine, linger throughout the book with various, though, slight variations, they also crisscross plots and events of the three seemingly detached stories if you would judge by each chapter's title.
Apart from that, the thematic connection between the novellas is Cunningham's paramount craft. The third novella being a sci-fi approach to the same theme deters me from using the word 'human' to declare a thematic coherence of the dilemma of 'connectivity'. Bounding would be an alternative, with a ghost in the first novella, and an alien in the third. In all chapters, Cunningham stresses a physical deformity in his characters as if to highlight their 'humanistic' relatedness malformation. Not only is the physical grotesque, the emotional as well is deformed.

As a continuum of Whitman's recurrent themes, Cunningham seems to find a reason to justify this emotional turmoil in our dependence on machinery. Lucas in the first chapter entitled 'In the Machine' is troubled by his dead brother's soul being incarnated into the machine that took it. In 'The Children's Crusade', the evidence may not be as clear, but the constant referral to telephones Cat's only means of communication with the anonymous boy who is later on given the name Luke. While the last chapter 'Like Beauty' is centered on Simon who is half-robotic.

Along with other themes Cunningham broads on in his novel, such as those of love, life, and death to name a few basics, he does as well utilize a basic triangle of love to heighten the perplexing relations and longings for connectivity between his trinity of main characters. Lucas who dearly loves his late brother is agonizingly in love with his prostitute of a fiancée in chapter one. It can be psychologically interpreted that Lucas' desire for Catherine seen in the light of their age difference -13, and 25 respectively- and the absence of motherly affection in Lucas's wife is a case of replacement of a mother figure.
In the second chapter, Cat seems unable to fully let herself be absorbed by her emotions towards Simon; racial, academic, financial, and sub-cultural differences stand in the way. Her emotions however are turned towards the bomber-to-be in a projection of her suppressed feelings of guilt and loss of her own son Luke. Both novellas leave traces of a woman\mother, boy\son, and banished or dead man\father; an oedipal complex?
The third chapter might be the least psychologically suggestive as all characters replace other, older characters to one another. The triode of deformed characters forms a family: father, mother, and child; a temporary reconciliation of psychologically unstable characters.

Although Cunningham is a cunning plotter there are points at which the reader might be disappointed with the fluctuation of the narrative style. There are instances of discordance and unnecessary insertion of unexpected authorial –or omniscient- commentary. In spite of that, Cunningham is able to strike you as the complete opposite, just when you think that its time to put the book down and pick another, he catches you in a web of smart mouthed characters, bewildering events, and unexceptional twists.

Brilliant writer and a brilliant book.
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Jan 18, 2013 Patrick rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Like his book Hours, I enjoy Cunningham's use of parallel universe to tell a story. While the Hours was an homage to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, the Specimen is an homage to Walt Whitman. I wonder if Cunningham is trying to make a point on how mental illness lies in the continuum where depending what environment and how one chooses to express it, it is labeled sane and insane. For example, Lucas could be seen as heroic in trying to save Catherine while is crazy when he thinks it is a form of...more

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Sep 19, 2011 Nikola rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well this was a quick read! Still not sure whether to give it 3 or 4 stars, but since I dared give Rushdie 3 stars for one book, Cunningham can live with it. Especially if you try to measure up this book with The Hours, with which it shares the nearly identical narrative structure (including three stories running at/in different times) and the overall tone. Also, now it's all about Walt Whitman, and not Virginia Wolf.

There is a constant feeling of depression and despair emanating from the writer...more

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About Michael Cunningham

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize), and Specimen Days. His most recent novel is By Nightfall. He lives in New York.

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“I feel like there's something terrible and wonderful and amazing that's just beyond my grasp. I have dreams about it. I do dream, by the way. It hovers over me at odd moments. And then it's gone. I feel like I'm always on the brink of something that never arrives. I want to either have it or be free of it.” — 22 people liked it

“He wanted to tell her that he was inspired and vigilant and recklessly alone, that his body contained his unsteady heart and something else, something he felt but could not describe: porous and spiky, shifting with flecks of thought, with urge and memory; salted with brightness, flickerings of white and green and pale gold; something that loved stars because it was made of the same substance.” — 8 people liked it

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