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Michael Cunningham has found an interesting
formula. He blew me away a few years ago with The Hours: I had never
before read a book structured in that manner. He writes three stories, all with
similar characters, that occur during different time periods. These vignettes
are strung together on a common literary thread. The Hours was tethered
by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway; his latest, Specimen Days, is
strung together by Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Also written as three different stories in three different époques, Specimen
Days uses similar characters throughout each section. Part one, “In the
Machine,” introduces us to Catherine, in mourning for her dead fiancé, Simon. At
the dawn of the industrial revolution in New York City, Simon has been crushed
at his factory job. Needing money, and a feeling of efficacy, his little brother
Lucas takes over this death machine. Lucas develops a ghost-in-the-machine
theory: “The dead returned in machinery. They sang seductively to the living as
mermaids sang to sailors from the bottom of the sea.” If humans are not paying
attention, these machines we rely on will eat us alive.
Lucas’s unique characteristic is his obsessive interest in Whitman. He uses the
poetry as a crutch for his inability to communicate directly with the older
people around him. He quotes from the book instead of speaking as himself – so
much so that when he finally warns Catherine about what he feels is true, he is
as ignored as if he had not said anything at all: “The dead search for us
through machinery. When we stand at a machine, we make ourselves known to the
dead.”
A century later, we see what the advent of industry has given rise to. Part
two, “The Children’s Crusade,” is about a group of young terrorists who were
clearly raised by a fanatic. Cat works as a cop with a terrorism hotline,
supported by her boyfriend Simon. She gets a tip from a kid (who eventually
names himself Luke), justifying the cause with another Whitman quote: “Nobody
really dies. We go on in the grass. We go on in the trees.”
In part three, “Like Beauty,” Cunningham speculates about a future born out of
our current society. A surprising “I, Robot” sort of turn, that I’m not sure if
I love or hate, poses the question of the source of consciousness... the
oft-wondered definition of the soul. Once again, we have our hero named Simon
(here he is a pseudo-robot) and his alien lady friend, Catareen. I know... I was
a bit uncertain about this last section also, but the book as a whole leaves a
reader with some interesting ideas. Do we keep returning to the same
circumstances again and again? Is this some kind of destiny or specific
purpose? I wonder about a reincarnation situation. As Whitman wrote, “the
smallest sprout shows that there is really no death.”
Where The Hours poked at me with young women in severe states of
depression, Specimen Days also echoes what I have long tried to justify
in myself. Some weirdoes live vicariously through obscure references and verse,
wanting something more from life... knowing there is something more, but not
understanding how to get at it. We can’t communicate precisely what we are
feeling, so we fall back on familiarity. We have our own private jokes, a
language that no one else understands. Perhaps they aren’t meant to.
Review by Rebekah Rine, August 11, 2005
Related review - Michael Cunningham's The Hours:
http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0103-006.html
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