I have always been fascinated by these enigmatic writers such as michael cunningham. Guys who seem to write only when they have something compelling to tell, apparently without succumbing to editorial pressure or requests from millions of readers to indulge in new creations.
And yet, as soon as they get down to it, they seem to keep fresh a job that would otherwise seem untrained, rusty by inconstancy. Maybe it's that writing is like learning to ride a bike. You just have to sit in front of the blank sheet of paper and pedal naturally again...
Although, deep down, Cunningham has a trick, because thanks to his dedication to teaching creative writing, he will always have the tools to create new stories at his whim, in that wonderful moment in which the force of a new story assails him. no surrender possible.
His fiction bibliography, made up of 6 novels, invites you to a relaxed reading about flashes of life, about eternal moments that are presented for your literary dissection. The happiest or most turbulent moments concentrate doses of humanity worthy of becoming novels like Cunningham's, capable of peering into that eternity of the moment from different sources. Sometimes Cunningham remembers the Milan Kundera of Immortality or The unbearable lightness of being, only that in the case of the American writer, everything takes place at a more cinematic pace, more inclined to contemplate the characters, situations and reactions than to delve into the reasons that so exaltedly contributes Kundera.
Top 3 Recommended Novels by Michael Cunningham
The hours
Undoubtedly the best novel by an author who overturns his empathy with the different, with the disenchanted in this story with multiple planes. Empathize with Virginia Woolf It cannot be an easy task nor can it be undertaken from a presentation of a traditional argument, not at least to capture the strangeness that could rule the soul of the great writer.
So Cunningham divides the story into three different periods that are positioned from the beginning marked by a daily awakening of a mature Virginia Woolf, in those moments of transition between the dreamlike and the real...
What comes next, in future moments, distant spaces and under the prism of new characters perfectly serves the cause of Woolf's humanization and the extension of his tribulations to any other anonymous person like Clarissa or Laura.
The three women weave a tapestry that, as the end approaches, is seen in a brilliant range of colors and emotions around the idea that beauty and happiness are only appreciated as a counterweight to misfortune or melancholy.
The snow queen
A creative writing teacher like Michael Cunningham has been able to take the resource of atomizing stories and make it his greatest hallmark.
The corality of a novel always serves the cause of the brightness of the characters, of the dynamization of the narrative proposal that, under the prism of a multitude of eyes, always acquires greater dramatic tones.
Sometimes with a point of magical realism that takes us into the strangeness of loneliness, at other times with the direct voice of happiness or tragedy. The question is to offer different rhythms in the same novel so that the group addresses the basic magic of human feeling.
Everything focuses on the same moment, a few seconds in which each selected character from the great New York goes through their most transcendent moments. All of them end up succumbing to the light that makes its way through the cold that invades Manhattan.
When night falls
I could place in this third place another of those mosaic-type novels, like "Memorable Days" itself, but this time I have opted for this one-piece novel in which the author is more forced to delve deeper into the soul Of the characters.
It is not that in other novels it did not, because sometimes a well presented brushstroke says more than the most profuse description, but it is interesting to see how Cunningham in this case works his characters of Peter and Rebecca.
For the occasion, Cunningham focuses on a well-established marriage, perhaps with more years of past than future. Between them they have raised an exemplary family in raucous New York and share an intense social life.
But we all know Cunningham and we know that the thing will end up deepening in the deficiencies, the losses and the contradictions. On many occasions the crudest truths end up exploding between established couples when least expected.
The arrival of the helpless Ethan, Rebecca's little brother becomes the wick towards the unexpected, towards the least imagined conflict ...
I did not read the novel "The Hours", but I saw the film, which I thought was very good, excellent performances! ... I will have to start reading his works.
Without a doubt, Norma, don't miss it.