Specimen Days
(a short comment, sorry..no time to study the subject in depth as I planned)
I haven’t read any Whitman, I confess. As we were packing my books the other week I looked at my copy of “Leaves of Grass” and thought if I should keep it out, then thought better…I’ll use the library and the Internet, sometime later this year.
Anyway, the book is good. I mean, GOOD. It’s again made of three different stories, linked together by Whitman’s poetry, but the characters are also somehow the same, reappearing in time.
We see old New York, the ghost of a dead brother and the vital beastly force of machines; we have New York of our days in a thriller, and New York of the future with androids.
It’s good read, and quick and strong.
The reviews I read on the website helped me seeing better the connection between them, as the boy of the first tale is also the potential brainwashed terrorist of the second, and the deformed child of the third; so the girl he is in love with in the first story reappears in the third, and his brother, a ghost at the beginning, is a business man (unimportant character, I would say) in the second tale, and the android in the third.
There is also a bowl.
A white China bowl.
Only one review mentions it, possibly because it has no role in any story apart from..well, being there. Being there when the boy buys it as a present to the girl he loves, which she re-sells, which is bought by the woman of the second story as a present to her boyfriend, which is still there (can’t remember how) in the journey of the android and his Nadian companion. I found it the most unsettling thing, a presence that silently reminds you of time.
The website is not very helpful, apart from some reviews.
But still, here is the link to Michael Cunningham’s work.
I haven’t read any Whitman, I confess. As we were packing my books the other week I looked at my copy of “Leaves of Grass” and thought if I should keep it out, then thought better…I’ll use the library and the Internet, sometime later this year.
Anyway, the book is good. I mean, GOOD. It’s again made of three different stories, linked together by Whitman’s poetry, but the characters are also somehow the same, reappearing in time.
We see old New York, the ghost of a dead brother and the vital beastly force of machines; we have New York of our days in a thriller, and New York of the future with androids.
It’s good read, and quick and strong.
The reviews I read on the website helped me seeing better the connection between them, as the boy of the first tale is also the potential brainwashed terrorist of the second, and the deformed child of the third; so the girl he is in love with in the first story reappears in the third, and his brother, a ghost at the beginning, is a business man (unimportant character, I would say) in the second tale, and the android in the third.
There is also a bowl.
A white China bowl.
Only one review mentions it, possibly because it has no role in any story apart from..well, being there. Being there when the boy buys it as a present to the girl he loves, which she re-sells, which is bought by the woman of the second story as a present to her boyfriend, which is still there (can’t remember how) in the journey of the android and his Nadian companion. I found it the most unsettling thing, a presence that silently reminds you of time.
The website is not very helpful, apart from some reviews.
But still, here is the link to Michael Cunningham’s work.
posted by Peggy @ 10:58 AM
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