Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham

I read firstly The Hours and I enjoyed it a a lot, I would say more than the movie (which was remarkable in its own right), as it emphasized the delicate balance between author, reader and hero, and, on a wider plan, between Creator, spectator and creature.

Once a book is created (let's play with words: once a creation took place), its life will depend also on the one who is contemplating it (the reader, the spectator, the witness), also on the hero (the creature, who starts an autonomous life immediately).

A book comes to us mediated through our culture, our experience, our challenges (that makes irrelevant a literal understanding of the Bible, for instance), and, as odd as it seems, the personages of the book render the intentions of the author mediated through their own experiences. Great writers know this too well and have the wisdom to let their heroes to evolve on their own.

I have read also Specimen Days, it says subtly the same: the poems of Walt Whitman giving the city of New York their mysterious life through very different periods of time.

• Michael Cunningham Praises the Book of Junot Diaz

Michael Cunningham has a column in today's NY Times just about this continuous translation of a book between author and reader. They say, traduttore traditore, and that's right; but it's the condition of any book, of any creation.

Read here the column of Michael Cunningham in NYT...



(A Life in Books)