Customer Reviews

Michael Cunningham's The Hours: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries)

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To do with words what Hendrix did with the guitar was the goal of former self-described slacker Michael Cunningham when he realized in his late 20s he wanted to give writing a serious go. It's an interesting phrase and one of many which shed light on the Pulitzer-winning novel "The Hours" in Tory Young's Reader's Guide.

In four clear sections, the novelist, the novel, the novel's reception, and its adaptation to film are discussed. One complaint: The film isn't discussed to nearly the extent the book is, and considering its quality, this seems a missed opportunity. Also, the book wanders into academic jargon of an insular and confusing kind on occasion.

Provocative and illuminating discussions of the difference between assimilationist and transgressive gay lit (David Leavitt, Hollinghurst, & Cunningham vs. J. T. Leroy & Dennis Cooper) help make this book worthwhile. So do descriptions of critical reactions to an American author "riffing" on a classic English novel (Mrs. Dalloway). Cunningham's weaknesses are discussed, but the Reader's Guide makes it clear that the deftness of his three interwoven narratives and the luminosity of his prose more than compensate.

I would have liked more biographical info about Cunningham; saying he's "guarded" about his personal life is no excuse not to learn and speculate about it. It's an interesting topic since Cunningham may be the premier living American author.

A lot will rest on his upcoming novel "Specimen Days," which I admit I am eager for; it's set for a June release. When I read Cunningham I am melancholic because he refuses to dodge the most difficult things in life: suffering, loss, and missed connections. There is plenty of death in Cunningham, but the wake is packed with the flowers of his pitch-perfect prose. His novels unfold with a sort of sad beauty; he shares Henry James' gift for the well-developed female character and her complex interior emotional life, most notably in "The Hours."

Get this trim handsome 80-page Reader's Guide if you're a Cunningham fan like I am. Thorough analysis combines with interesting tidbits to make good reading.

This is my third Continuum Contemporaries guide. The other two, Kazuo Ishiguro's THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Adam Parkes and A. S. Byatt's POSSESSION by Catherine Burgass are worth every cent. Both critics place their respective novels into a recognizable historical context and provide plenty of biographical information but never lose sight of the texts as literature, teasing out dozens of hidden meanings and innuendos. All in all, most books in the Continuum series are vigorous, to-the-point, and (most importantly) fun to read.

Not so with Tory Young. She is obviously very knowledgeable about "queer" literature of the 80s-90s period, and knows Cunningham's novel like the palm of her hand, but the overall presentation, in this book, of supporting critical evidence is soporific. Young's analysis sinks under a wealth of gratuitous academic allusions; there is a reference in almost every sentence (the bibliography at the end of the book is two pages long)! There is very little of Tory Young in all this. She merely collected what everyone ever said about the book and put it, rather nicely and coherently, together.

My other complaint is that she spends too much time talking about the movie. I love Daldry's film as much as I love the novel, but I bought this guide specifically to help me understand Cunningham's artistry in all its many nuances. Burgass's guide to POSSESSION is excellent in that respect. I go back to it each time I reread Byatt's book; the same goes for Ishiguro's REMAINS.

This guide, on the other hand, is not worth your money OR your time. You'll have a much more productive afternoon browsing through reviews on the Internet. A waste (at 87 pages) of shelf-space.