Michael Cunningham
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. Cunningham's new novel- By Nightfall, just released in October, is sitting by my side of the bed & I look forward to being taken on a new emotional journey by one of my most favorite writers. 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.
Here he is, sexy at 58, chatting about writing with my current crush- 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."
