Specimen Days

by Michael Cunningham

Lucas, Catherine, Simon: three characters meet time and again in the three linked narratives that form ‘Specimen Days’. The first, a science fiction of the past, tells of a boy whose brother was ‘devoured’ by the machine he operated. The second is a noirish thriller set in our century, as a police psychologist attempts to track down a group of terrorists. And the third and final strand accompanies two strange beings into the future.

A novel of connecting and reconnecting, inspired by the writings of the great visionary poet Walt Whitman, Specimen Days is a genre-bending, haunting ode to life itself – a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Historical Fiction, Book Club, American, Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award & Pulitzer Prize), Specimen Days, and By Nightfall, as well as the non-fiction book, Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown. His new novel, The Snow Queen, will be published in May of 2014. He lives in New York, and teaches at Yale University.

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have concluded, and I remain mixed.
I can't say that I didn't have a good time reading. But I cannot classify it as the book I want to read again, that is for sure.
After reading the first part, I was afraid to find the same story repeated in two different eras, as indicated on the back cover.
In the book's second part, I tried to find Luke, Simon, and Catherine to see how the author would replace them and bring them together again.
At least there is originality; I did not expect to read the same story thrice. Only specific passages and individual descriptions were dense in my eyes. But I must admit that I prefer to let my imagination be activated rather than to see it fill all the tiny holes left by the author.

[Violet wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here, Michael Cunningham brings his storytelling prowess to the fore. I have to admit I initially assumed he had nicked the idea of this book from Cloud Atlas. But research shows Cloud Atlas was only published a year earlier so given how much time a publishing house needs to package and prepare marketing for a finished manuscript it's impossible he knew anything about Mitchell's book while writing this. And, one assumes, he must have been mightily miffed when he read reviews of Cloud Atlas and discovered his idea had been cloned while his ms was still sitting on some editor's desk because the similarities are uncanny. Like Mitchell, though more loosely, he uses an idea of reincarnation to fuse together stories set in different times and like Mitchell he pitches into two imaginary futures and like Mitchell he changes genre for every narrative. I think Cunningham is a better sentence writer than Mitchell. He's also more grown up - no trace of that adolescent silliness that can sometimes spoil Mitchell. But I think Cloud Atlas is a finer overall achievement. Mitchell's ideas run deeper. Cunningham seems a little fixated on the theme of life not meeting expectation, a skeleton which shapes all his books.

The first part (playful historical fiction) is set in New York at the height of the industrial revolution. It features a deformed young boy whose brother is eaten by a machine and who inadvertently quotes Walt Whitman whenever at a loss for words. He forms the idea that all the machines in the city are intent on eating their operators and sets himself the task of saving the girl to whom his brother was engaged. It's beautifully written and compelling.

The second part (crime thriller) is set in the near future and features a criminal psychologist who answers phone calls from people claiming to have information about a child suicide bomber. One particular caller, a child who quotes Walt Whitman, and refers to the bomber as his brother, lets it be known there is a family of child bombers, each with a specific individual target. It becomes clear she is this child's target. I was less keen on this part with its less than convincing portrayal of criminal psychologist. Maybe it was his aim to ridicule the profession? Whatever, I was never quite fully engaged.

The third part (dystopian science fiction) is set in the far future and features an android who is employed in role playing fantasies for tourists in a New York that has become a kind of theme park/virtual world. He too spouts Whitman when his circuits come up short. Governments and laws change from one day to the next in this New York and when androids are outlawed he has to flee. His only option seems to be to meet his maker. He secures unexpected help from a Nadian, one of the many migrant aliens from another planet. Not sure sci-fi buffs will love it with its lapses of cohering detail - aliens from another planet who haven't got beyond living in huts and are yet to evolve a written language somehow becoming technicians in a space program. But I loved this story. How it made androids of us all with our debilitating unrealised dreams and struggles to find lasting meaning.

I always love the obvious pleasure Michael Cunningham takes in writing descriptive passages - "Only at these subdued moments could you truly comprehend that this glittering, blighted city was part of a slumbering continent; a vastness where headlights answered the constellations; a fertile black roll of field and woods dotted by the arctic brightness of gas stations and all-night diners, town after shuttered town strung with streetlights, sparsely attended by the members of the night shifts, the wanderers who scavenged in the dark, the insomniacs with their reading lights, the mothers trying to console colicky babies, the waitresses and gas-pump guys, the bakers and the lunatics."

And I love the homage he always pays to Woolf in his novels. How often he uses the Wolf refrain, it rises and falls and rises again! But, of course, this book is a testament not to Woolf (he'd already done that) but of his love for Walt Whitman.
4.5 stars.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would guess David Mitchell provided a hefty dose of inspiration for this novel in three parts and different historical settings. All three narratives are set in an alternate New York. In the Hours Cunningham used Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway as the linking common dominator; here he uses Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. All three stories have a young disenfranchised and lost boy at their heart who quotes Whitman.
The first story takes us back to the beginnings of the mechanised age. Lucas' brother has just been killed at work by a machine. Lucas is to take his place at the factory. He falls hopelessly in love with his brother's fiancé. Soon he begins to believe it is the aim of all machines to kill their operators and sets out to save his brother's fiancé.
The second story, for me the least successful, is about a woman who handles emergency police calls and her relationship with a boy who is part of a cult, known as the children's crusade, brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers.
The third story is set in the future and features an android as its hero and an alien as its heroine. Sounds a bit daft but it was actually my favourite narrative of the three. Because it deals so brilliantly with what it means to be human with all our emotional equipment. This isn't as accomplished as The Hours but again there's lots of fabulous writing and I really enjoyed reading it. 4.5 stars.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I came across a couple of comments (one that I heard directed to Cunningham himself at the Tennessee Williams Festival in N.O. last month) that addressed Cunningham 'copying' himself, that he was doing here with Whitman what he did with Woolf in The Hours. It is true that each writer has a lot to do with each respective novel, but beyond that I see no similarity.

At the aforementioned literary fest, I heard Cunningham call himself a 'language queen' and then later in the day a 'language crank,' meaning that what he looks for when he reads are beautiful sentences. He writes them too. Last night after finishing this book, I dreamed of his sentences, a sure sign of a book that has implanted itself in my brain.

The first section was my favorite, not surprisingly, since it's set in the 19th century. The writing, with the foreboding and visionary thoughts of Lucas, is exquisite. At times (as in each of the later sections as well) it's even creepy and tension-filled. Maybe it's meant to evoke a sensational novel of the time period, and though I know it can be read as a ghost story, I think it can also be read as not one. (A la James' "The Turn of the Screw"?)

Even in the second section, which is of a crime-thriller style (not my favorite genre), I was won over, though I wasn't sure of it at first and in certain passages. It may not have been a fit for me, but looking back on it, I think it fit the overall pattern and scheme of the book.

To say what I liked about the speculative, dystopian third section might spoil the experience for another reader. I'll just say that it addresses what it means to be human, and what it might mean to be human in the future, and that who turned out to be a Whitman figure in this section surprised me and perhaps is what turned the whole work from 4 to 5 stars for me -- that, and my dreaming of its sentences.

I have my friend James Murphy and his review to thank for my reading this novel, and for my seeing the parallels to Dante (I don't know Dante well enough to have seen that on my own), making the read even richer. Now I wish I had read this before the Fest, so I could've asked Cunningham about that!

[J. Kent Messum · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know what it is about this novel, but I'm convinced there is some kind of magic weaved into the pages. I found it to be a captivating read, extremely well written, and certainly thought provoking.

'Specimen Days' is made up of three different novellas set in New York City that are separated by time (past, present, future) but deal with themes of society, humanity, and what happens when abnormality threatens the fabric of civility. They stand alone as individual stories, but are also connected through plot devices and the poetic works of Walt Whitman. Part literary, part thriller, and part history, Specimen Days covers a lot of ground, and covers it well. There are paranormal, noir, and science fiction elements in play which serves to create a book that certainly ain't like the rest.

From a ghost story set against the backdrop of the industrial age, to a thriller featuring a children's cult that have been brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers, to a barely recognizable NYC a hundred years from now where a lower class alien race and synthetic humans are being brutally oppressed by a society that has largely gone backward as much as forward, 'Specimen Days' is big book brimming with big ideas.

I’ve read the novel several times now and found it just as engaging and transformative as the first time. Cunningham’s prose and ideas always play on my mind long after I put the book down. Definitely worth checking out.


*This book was one of the '10 Books That Stuck With Me' piece I wrote. See which others made the list...

http://jkentmessum.com/2014/03/19/10-...

[Jennifer nyc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so different from the other Cunningham books I’ve read (The Hours; Flesh and Blood; A Home at the End of the World) that it made me question the whole idea of identity in writers and artists. At a time when I was turning to the familiar, this both did and did not disappoint: there were no gay characters, no withholding mothers, and the prose was open and almost free of exquisite pain; on the other hand, it was still MC, the emotions full enough, the relationships meaningful and connected and frustrated.

In fact, connection seemed to be at the core of this work, exploring the bond between two men and a woman in different time periods and across genres. The first and most enjoyable to me was historical fiction that took place in the early 1900s on the lower east side of NYC in a community of Irish immigrants. The second was a detective story of realistic and disturbing proportions in our contemporary world. The third took place in a future that was both speculative and sci-fi.

The female character in all three parts was outside of society, yet able to mesh with effort. One of the males was even more of an outsider, earnest, loving and magical. The third character, another male, fit into the mainstream of the times, yet was deeply intwined with the other two. The historical part was told from the POV of the physically challenged, earnest male, the crime case from the POV of the female black detective, and the future piece told from the POV of one of the many male cyborgs built by a genius.

Each piece eventually moved me, although it took a while to adjust to what was essentially a new short story each time. Each section had MC’s signature social commentary and the emotional confusions that come with intimacy. But this felt like Cunningham-light: none of the emotions weighed heavy on me the way they did in his other novels, and the whole experience was easier, breezier, and less impactful. Cunningham also played with a larger spiritual philosophy here that I enjoyed.

All that to say, I could see how people who don’t ordinarily like Cunningham—who maybe find him too slow, painful, and interior—might adore this. And for those of us who turn to him for those very things may find this fun, but slight.

I think Michael Cunningham is a true artist, and true artists experiment and evolve. Yet expectations color our experiences, sometimes to our detriment. I think of writers like Michel Faber, whose three novels I read were so different that difference is what I’ve come to expect. And I think of Margaret Atwood, who is a brilliant artist, always experimenting, and yet somehow at her core just so Margaret Atwood. But what about those of us who create from the heart more than the head and whose expressions may vary widely when the mood strikes? Is there a place for this, too? I hope so, but I don’t know.

A true 3.5

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cunningham is one of the great underratted writers. He’s had some recognition, true. But he deserves much more. Each of the connected novellas here is like a little hand grenade going off in the mind. I’ve been reading with deliberate slowness. The language is so sonorous and vivid—despite the genre props—that I savored it thoroughly.

The first, “In The Machine,” reminds me a little of E.L. Doctorow. It’s set in late nineteenth century New York City. A strange “misshapen” boy, Lucas, loses his older brother in a terrible factory accident. Lucas must quit school and go to work at the same machine that killed his brother in order to bring in enough money to feed his aging parents. He’s not yet 13 and falls in love with his late brother’s fiancée. With his gifts—he’s given to quoting Whitman from memory—he foresees a terrible event which saves her life. It’s a very beautiful and sad and strange story.

The second novella,”The Children’s Crusade,” starts like a Richard Price police procedural. Cat talks to psychos on a police hotline. She’s a psychologist who’s recently lost Lucas, her young son. One day a boy hugs a real-estate broker on lower Broadway in New York and blows them both to smithereens. Turns out Cat spoke with him earlier and neglected to red flag it. Oops. A family of little boys it turns out is running around NYC blowing up people up at random. Leaves of Grass is the Good Book from which they sententiously quote as they slaughter. The resolution to this one will set your hair on fire.

In the third, “Like Beauty,” New York is a dystopia. (All the novellas here are dystopias but this one classically so, in an Ursula K. LeGuin sense). Here NYC is a kind of Historic Williamsburg called Old New York. As such it reminds me of the short stories of George Saunders. With this exception, that all the workers here—the theme park reenactors—are robots. Moreover, lizard-like extraterrestrials, the latest wave of interstellar immigrants, work the dead end jobs. NYC is a surveillance state with shoot to kill drones—not police—keeping an eye. The story ends with a wild chase through a Balkanized U.S. not too unlike Margaret Atwood’s Gilead. It’s set in 2150, when the earth is so ruined by human callousness and disregard that the only thing to do, some feel, is leave it.

Clearly Cunningham decided with this book to take on the genres and make them sing. He does so with enviable élan. Any of these tales would make a fine movie, since all are packed with striking detailed description.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, Cunningham can write, sure: he has stylistic skills, knows how to portray plausible characters and composes interesting stories with them, often with literary references (cf. The Hours and Virginia Woolf). He also shows this in this book, which consists of three parts. The first has a quite explicit Dickensian slant, the second is in line with the best psychological thrillers, and the third with the most fascinating material from dystopian science fiction. Cunningham up to a point connects the three stories, although they take place in three different time periods: silly links such as a bowl that suddenly appears in each of the stories (it is not clear to me why), intriguing ones such as names of characters that return (Simon, Luke, Catherine), and the like. At the beginning of the book, Cunningham included a quote from Walt Whitman, the personification of exuberant American individualism, which hints that people always struggle with the same feelings regardless of new times. Is this the unifying theme? Perhaps. By the way, Whitman constantly returns in the stories, almost always in the form of quotes, turning him into a gimmick. Did Cunningham want to illustrate with this book that time and place don't matter in human lifes, and that everyone (even a ‘humanized robot’) actually just wants the same thing: a bit of security and happiness? At the risk of sounding harsh: isn’t that a bit cheesy? I don't know, this novel didn't convince me.

[Pedro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can think about quite a few reasons why Michael Cunningham would decide to write a novel (?) like this one; Wanting to leave his comfort zone while proving that he could actually write in different genres is certainly a reason big enough for him to have done so and to go all experimental.

Because, let’s face it, at the time, stakes and expectations were extremely high. It couldn’t have been easy to come up with something as imaginative, engaging and beautiful as The Hours.

But now, after finishing this, I can see that these two books can’t even be compared. I’m not saying Specimen Days is a bad book, because it’s not, and I think the only reason why it didn’t become a major bestseller was because it was not Cunningham’s first or second novel. Its originality played against it.
Timing is everything.

Structure wise, Specimen Days is actually three novellas of totally different genres happening at different time periods but linked by an idea and a symbolic object running throughout. This time Cunningham made poetry the main character. Oh, and New York. Always New York, the city of loners.

I’ll have to be honest, not only because that’s the right thing to do, but also because I promised myself I was going to be more fair about my ratings this year, and say that I didn’t love Cunningham’s characters as I usually do, but because I loved his poetic, meaningfull and stunning writing as much as ever before this will get a (strong) four star rating (according to my new year’s rating standards).

“I feel like there’s something terrible and wonderful and amazing that’s just beyond my grasp. I have dreams about it. I do dream, by the way. It hovers over me at odd moments. And then it’s gone. I feel like I’m always on the brink of something that never arrives. I want to either have it or be free of it.”

After a beautiful passage like this one I must admit I always get a bit confused about the reasons why I can’t seem to fully understand/appreciate poetry. But then, just by the end of the third part (novella) I came across another wonderful passage and I think I finally get it. I’ll leave you with it:

“I don’t know poetry, exactly. I contain it.”

[Ｆｒａｎｋｈ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew little of Michael Cunningham’s work (I just knew that he wrote The Hours which was an Academy Award-winning film my parents loved) so I had no fixed expectations. I gave myself four days to finish this book but managed to do so in three days. That’s how captivating it was. Cunningham’s experimental fiction was masterfully told, like a musical composition that rises and falls with the right notes. In Specimen Days, he writes in three genres, dividing the book into three breathtaking novellas.

***

"A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child?… .I do not know what it is any more than he.” ~Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

(1) “In The Machine” A Historical Dickensian Tale

The first novella was written in the boy Lucas’ POV. It was set sometime during the industrialization age of America. Lucas’ brother Simon has just died and this left his fiancee Catherine uncared for and with child. Though aready shouldering the financial burden of supporting his parents, thirteen-year-old Lucas still felt it was his responsibility to watch out after Catherine. He was a peculiar boy, reciting Walt Whitman poetry as his way to express his feelings or to make conversation. Through Lucas’ narrations, Cunningham’s knack for weaving lyrical phrases is astounding. The paragraphs contain such breathless pacing and descriptive precision which magnified the strength of Lucas’ evocative insights about his surroundings as he tries to understand the concept of labor and death. He wants to de-mystify such adult concepts and it is Whitman’s poetry that guides him. At the very heart of it all, Lucas begins to explore the possibility that his brother’s soul was trapped inside the welding machinery that Lucas uses at his work in the factory. Believing that if men die and they spread out among the leaves and grass (as Whitman eloquently wrote), Lucas was convinced that ghosts dwell among the machinery across New York, including the sewing machine that Catherine tends to at her own workplace. He ventures on to save her.

For such a comical angle to the story, Cunningham was still able to approach it with great sensitivity, providing passages that brood over the simplest but unanswered questions about life which gives Lucas’ character a crushing sort of loneliness. He is a child who tries to make sense of the world by allowing poetry to fill the gaps. It’s a feat that manages to intensify the reading experience even more, and Cunningham drives it home by using Lucas’ “ghost” as an allegory of the American industrialization’s hovering presence, and the gradual withdrawal of human spirit from the organic towards the mechanical. Lucas’ belief of souls being trapped in the machines is a symbolism easy to pick up on, but Cunningham’s beautifully convoluted prose is rich with details that it was able to keep everything subtle. The climactic ending was even transitory to the next novella. Reading In the Machine was like stumbling in the dark, and trusting all the sensory directions given, but never truly seeing the big picture forming until the novel moves into the second story.

"And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

(2) “The Children’s Crusade” A Detective Psychological Thriller

The sudden shift of genre by the second novella was not at all jarring. This time it was set on a post-9/11 New York with Cat Martin, a forensic psychologist, as a focus character. She works for a hotline division who handles calls from possible terrorists. She got a message from a young boy who talked about “the family” and recites mantras like "Every atom belonging to you as well belongs to me," which she recognized to be a verse from a Walt Whitman poem. Days after, news of child terrorists have spread across the city, claiming both the rich and the poor as victims of homemade bombs. At first glance, this story doesn’t have any sort of connection to the first one until the reader realizes that Cat was short for “Catherine” and her boyfriend’s name is “Simon” and she has a son named “Luke” whom she lost to an illness. But these are differrent characters with the same names and are a century apart from each other, yet Cunningham weaves these two stories—one of the past and one from the somewhat present—as a dissonance of worlds that are created through the choices of these three central characters. Whatever the boy Lucas from the first story feared about then, those ghosts he talked about, have now taken shape into something horribly concrete in Cat Martin’s New York where a heightened sense of paranoia and grief is exploited by a terrorist cell composed of children.

It was a detective story, hard-boiled and suspenseful with every turn of the page—right until the moment of a chance meeting between Cat and one of the child terrorists. In this story, Cunningham delves into the scarlet thread so immensely significant in detective stories and The Children’s Crusadebecame a harrowing tale that overflows with the twisted reflections of humanity’s fears. It was by this installment that I started to tear up completely because Cunningham has a way to string along certain phrases that provokes such a visceral, emotional response that a reader just surrenders without even knowing it. It was juxtaposed perfectly with In The Machine, especially since he used the three characters (Catherine, Simon and Lucas) as representations of man, woman and child; three aspects poignantly enhanced by the last novella.

"Fear not O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,

And yet the same old human race, the same within, without,

Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearning the same

The same old love, beauty and use the same.”

(3) “Like Beauty” A Sci-Fi Love Story About Birth and Destination

The final novella was set 150 years in the future in New York. Humans have already made first contact with aliens and they are lizard life-forms called Nadians who are now living as refugees in planet Earth. They are domestic helpers, treated as secondary citizens and enslaved by mankind. Simon—a biomechanical cyborg—is the focus character, and he was programmed as a mugger in the New York streets, sought after by tourists who want to be victimized because of the adrenaline release it provides. He was captivated by a Nadian called Catareen whom he starts an adventure with when they decided to escape to Denver. On the road, they met a homeless boy posing as Jesus in a Halloween costume named Lucas. This story was the most challenging of the three because it was science fiction and there is always a strange pull with this genre that Cunningham was able to give justice to. Simon was a biomechanical conception; half-human and half-machine (a literal representation of Lucas’ ghost of a brother from the first story) and his ‘maker’ has included Whitman poetry in his software which he recites every time under duress. What follows after is a redemptive tale about the power of technology and a more humane understanding of how it can enrich lives instead of destroy them.

There is an enduring quality to the prose of this story that was magnified by the previous events from In The Machine and The Children’s Crusade. It seemed to me that these versions of Simon, Catherine and Lucas are products of the past and present colliding together to form a future defined by beginnings and endings that mirror each other. So many imagery and symbolism come full circle by this last story. Religious allegories were also used. I was listening to Death Cab For Cutie’s “Tiny Vessels” so I was positively imbued with emotions and sensations that can only be expressed in tears. It didn’t feel cheesy at all because it seemed like a perfectly acceptable response to cry about this book because of its overwhelming poetry in its vitalizing prose.

*

Overall, Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days is a treasure. As you read through, it feels like seeds are sprouting out from your heart and flourishes within, transforming you as a reader into a person more aware of transience and embracing its trappings.

RECOMMENDED: 10/10

[TL *Humaning the Best She Can* · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read via audiobook and hardcover
~~~

Stories:
In the Machine - 4.5 stars
Children's Crusade - 4.5 stars
Like Beauty - 4.5 stars

Alan Cumming's narration = <3 5 stars :)
~~~~

This is a series of inter-connected stories that feature the same souls but in different roles and circumstances. A man named Simon, a boy named Luke, and a woman named Catherine/Catareen.

Each story has it's own feel and vibe but at the same time you can sense this thread connecting everything.. not sure of where it leads but content to go along for the ride.

It made me smile when bits of other stories made an appearance in the following one, making that connection (for lack of a better word) more clear. A certain small thing that seemed to have a certain aura about it had a connection to everyone, drawing them to it even if they didn't understand why. No big purpose in it, just a small beauty in uncertain times.

Throughout it all, Walt Whitman and his poetry maintain a solid presence.. it's felt keenly in some cases and is strangely approiate in one.

The third story was the most out there, but in a good way. The whole world of that story was done very well and despite being semi vague it gave you enough of the world to understand what was going on.

I have no adequate words to explain how much I love this book... beautiful and gorgeous seem clichéd but I don't care:).

Would highly recommend :)
*May edit for thoughts and quotes on other stories later... pardon any errors till I can get to my laptop*

[Antonio Luis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Esta narración con Walt Whitman como musa y su celebración de cada día como memorable recrea con intensidad tres momentos en épocas distintas, a través de tres relatos independientes que no consiguen un todo narrativo, con la pretensión de captar el progreso o la evolución del ser humano, en un intento, creía, industrial primero, científico o policial después, y artificial finalmente, aunque me han resultado muy forzados y nada creíbles, introduciendo los versos del poeta en todos ellos, con algo de sentido solo en el primero.

Nada que ver con Las horas, disfruté mucho esa recreación a tres tiempos de tres mujeres distintas sobre el eje de La señora Dalloway.
Es como si quisiera jugar a lo mismo, pero ha cambiado el tablero, las fichas, las reglas, y el juego no puede ser el mismo.

[Jemppu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading updates.

[George]

"[He] had been, in essence, a dream his skeleton was having."

Specimen Days blipped on my radar some seven years ago when it was compared to Cloud Atlas. Unfortunately, the former came out about a year after the latter. I say unfortunately because while both books sweep from the distant past to the distant future, Cloud Atlas' vision is yet larger in scope, featuring six matryoshka'd stories, twice as many as Specimen Days. The latter begins sometime in the Industrial Revolution and ends in a half-collapsed future, the former similarly begins in the mid-1800s but its sixth thread is set during a post-apocalypse in which even language has changed, devolved as much as evolved. Rather than being richly peopled like its predecessor, Specimen Days mainly focuses on three souls who, in a sense, reincarnate across the three stories that are told one after the other. The prose is mostly sufficient, albeit a bit bare, but there are welcome moments of elevation, chiefly in the first novella, which tells of a mourning child who must replace his brother at the pressing machine that ate him and left behind a pregnant fiancée. The boy, whose bible is Leaves of Grass (Whitman whispers and wails throughout the novel), is at once horrified and mesmerized by the machinery that perhaps houses his brother's soul, that seems to keep alive, if not weigh down, his semi-catatonic father in the form of a breathing apparatus, that ostensibly sings to his bedridden mother in his brother's voice via a music box. The second novella, written in the style of a thriller, begins normally enough until it reveals the machinations of a family cult of unknown size in which children, brainwashed by Whitman's poetry, are used as suicide bombers in an attempt to bring down modern society and start anew in nature. I found myself unexpectedly moved by the ending. The third novella is set in the indeterminate future, an authoritarian and drone-riddled America where human beings live alongside and often subjugate an alien race, beings described as humanoid lizards. As it is with the "legal aliens," so it is with the androids: "'We break the law by continuing to possess ourselves." Much like the fifth story in Cloud Atlas, a male machine and a female alien go on the run to freedom. And while Cloud Atlas ends with definitive, even assertive, hope, Specimen Days adds a note of complacency, at least for one of its main characters, Simon, whose creator encoded the work of Whitman into Simon's digital DNA as a means of introducing in him a softer, more poetic sensibility. Simon thinks of the following as he's left behind by a group who will head to a planet that may or may not be capable of sustaining life: "'The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them."

If Cloud Atlas is indeed the atlas of clouds, then Specimen Days is merely a few cumulonimbi among the many others. Its focused scope is closer in spirit to the works of Lance Olsen and Steve Tomasula. Still, had the novel been given more room to dream at the level of the sentence and at large, then this could have been a major work of the century. As it is, it's a novel of some undeniable ambition and worth a read.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 2 out of 5]

American writer who is more known for 1988's Pulitzer awardee for Fiction The Hours, Michael Cummingham (born 1952) first published this book, The Specimen Days in 2005. If The Hours is based on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, The Specimen Days is based on the Walt Whitman's complete collection of poetry and collected prose bearing the same title.

If there is an award for the most organized and ambitious structure for a trilogy, it has to be this Cunningham work. The reason is that this book is divided into 3 parts. Each part has its own 3 characters (a man, a woman and a boy), its own setting and time and its own genre:

Part I - In The Machine: Simon, Catherine, Lucas - Past: Industrial Revolution - horror
Part II - The Children's Crusade: Simon, Cat, Luke - Present: 20th century - noir thriller
Part III - Like Beauty: Simon, Catareen, Luke - Future: 150 years from now - science fiction

What these 3 stories have in common:
1) All set in New York (but at different periods of time)
2) They all have Walt Whitman either as a character or the lines in his Leaves of Grass are read or become basis of the story
3) There are only 3 main characters: a man, a woman and a boy but they may or may not be related to each other.

Each story can stand on its own. Although I am not really fond of the three genres, I liked the first one better because of the way the scare was handled. I just cannot associate ghost with machines but it helped when if I imagined how people during the Industrial Revolution probably felt about machines taking over their jobs. Also, prior to this book, I had no idea who Walt Whitman was but I understand that he was suspected to be gay and based on Wiki, Michael Cunningham (who is openly gay to but he does not want to be called gay writer as his being gay is not all about his being a writer) worked his Laws of Creation as editor of Walt Whitman's poems and he also its introduction. So, while reading, I had to check entries in Wiki what the Whitman (as character) or Whitman's poems being read in the story probably meant. Thus, it took me awhile to finish this book and for most times, I just got tired of reading and understanding those lines from Whitman's poems.

[Zuzulivres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prva poviedka dokonalost, druha ok a tretia ma vobec nebavila. Skoda.

[Ana Carvalheira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quem me conhece, sabe que nutro alguma animosidade em relação aos romancistas americanos. Ressalvando algumas exceções, como por exemplo, Philip Roth, a literatura americana, pelo menos aquela que tenho tido acesso, enquadrado no género contemporâneo, entedia-me sobremaneira.

A minha primeira abordagem à obra de Michael Cunningham deveu-se “Ao Cair da Noite”, narrativa que abandonei, já ia eu na pág. 130 - num total de 306 -, levando a minha paciência ao limite ... bocejando em cada página, parágrafo ou linha, desisti ... e, como sabemos, ao iniciarão-nos na obra de qualquer escritor, se a primeira leitura não nos agrada, consideramos autor banido para o resto do nosso tempo.

Nas tertúlias literárias que mantenho com algumas amigas, foi-me sugerido “Dias Exemplares” ... não, obrigada, vade retro MC. Mas a minha amiga garantiu-me que iria gostar e, assim sendo, tão bem recomendado, lá me lancei na aventura ...

E, meu amigos, surpresas das surpresas .... “Dias Exemplares” encantou-me muito por força da magnífica originalidade da estruturação literária utilizada por MC. A narrativa divide-se em três partes todas passadas nos EUA:

1. Século 19, com a Revolução Industrial aflorando os modelos da taylorização que caracterizou a mecanicidade do trabalho laboral em fábricas que, por trás do enorme desenvolvimento que trouxeram ao mundo ocidental, escondia, invariavelmente, autênticos horrores no manuseamento das máquinas;

2. A segunda parte, leva-nos à atualidade ... a ação decorre no primeiro quinquénio do séc.21 ... Nova York, ainda traumatizada da tragédia do 9/11, procura a salvação da humanidade com ainda mais atentados perpetrados por locais, eles próprios fundamentalistas que incitam crianças ao ódio e à violência:

3. Q último capítulo, cuja ação decorre 300 anos depois, trata-se de uma distopia .... seres alienígenas que convivem com humanos biológicos, uma abordagem da inteligência artificial, muitas vezes seres híbridos, vivendo numa Nova York hiper vigiada por drones que tudo sabem sobre a nossa existência. Fala de seres provenientes do planeta Nardia e que desempenham funções menores na sociedade terráquea, num mundo afetado pelas catástrofes ambientais.

E qual é a linha que une esses três capítulos? Para além do nome das personagens principais, Simon em todos os três momentos e Katherine, Cat e Cateleen, a angústia, a ansiedade, o medo, o extermínio, a tragédia, a convicção de que em algum momento, a civilização terá um momento d paz e felicidade, conceitos esses completamente distorcidos neste livro.

Mas ainda assim, pese embora a carga extraordinariamente negativa que perpassa toda a narrativa, sempre temos a intervenção do poeta americano Walt Whitman, nomeadamente com varias citações do seu trabalho mais significativo “Folhas de Relva” e que, de alguma forma, suaviza a loucura inerente a todos os momentos desta estranha estória.

[Viera Némethová · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nevstúpiš dvakrát do jednej rieky. Nepoužiješ podobný model príbehu a nevyberieš si dve literárne osobnosti ktoré zakomponuješ do príbehy. Osobností, ktorých slová ovplyvnia myšlienky postáv knihy Vzorové dni a Hodiny do hĺbky duše. Osobností, ktoré rovnako obdivujeme a otvárajú nám iný pohľad na literatúru, ale ktorým aj často nerozumieme. Toto všetko nikdy neurobíš dvakrát, pokiaľ sa nevoláš Michael Cunningham, ktorý pre svet opäť objavil Virginiu Woolfovú a Walta Whitmana.

Vzorové dni sú troma príbehmi z minulosti, prítomnosti aj budúcnosti. Odohrávajú sa na rovnakom mieste v inom čase. Hlavné postavy sa v príbehu reinkarnujú do troch rôznych rolí.

Cunninghamove príbehy sú drsné, desivé ale nesmierne hlboké a ľudské. Jeho jazyk je inteligentný, krásny a každá veta má svoj zmysel.

" ..kde jsou ty hodiny? " pýtame sa s Virginiou Woolfovou. "...co je to tráva?" pýtame sa s nielen s dieťaťom v Steblách trávy, ale spolu s postavami Vzorových dn�� aj hľadáme odpoveď na záklandú otázku starú ako homo sapiens sapiens - čo je zmysel života?

Cunninghamnove prózy sú plné viery v človeka, v lásku človeka k človeku, chápania smrti, predurčenosti, osudovosti a toleranciu voči všetkým ľuďom a tvorom budúceho sveta.

[Annabel Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised and delighted by every element of Specimen Days: the precision and freshness of the language, the startling imagery and metaphors, and the utterly novel way of looking at the world. Because of the beauty of the prose I was expecting a story about nothing but the plot quickly became intensely dramatic and entirely unpredictable.

Every detail is meaningful, not just decorative, and the motifs that link the three stories are subtle and clever. The changes in register - from historical, to contemporary to speculative - were so assured, my suspension of disbelief wasn’t strained for a moment, despite the audacity of the concept.

It is wry, funny, insightful and disturbing and provokes thought on an incredible range of contemporary issues including poverty, immigration, race, media, pollution, development, loss and death, without ever feeling preachy or didactic.

Specimen Days is nothing less than astonishing.

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those "collections of short stories that plays at being a novel" things: there are three stories vaguelly connected by the "same" three main protagonists, all of them taking place in NYC and every story has a person quoting/needing to quote Walt Whitman all the time. The first one is a tragic story of poverty and loss during the Industrial Revolution, the second one is crime noir in the 21th century and the last one is set in a vagually post-apocalytical NYC with one of the main characters being an alien refugee and the other one a robot.

I thought some of the elements, especially in the Sci Fi story, were a little try hard, but the writing as wonderfully effective as always, and the stories were uncomfortable but atmospheric. Not my favourite Cunningham, and a little too "weird" for me - I had to skip all the Whitman quotes at some point - but still really good. Not the first of his novels I'd recommend, though.

[Michelle Curie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an odd read: its a fusion of three stories which are as different and separate as they are connected and ultimately belonging to each other. They all foster the idea that life doesn't always go as expected and that it's the unexpected that shapes the human experience.

Specimen Days three stories are all set in New York City in different time periods: the first one is historical fiction and is set during the American industrial revolution and centres around a deformed boy who tries to find his way in the world. The second, a noir crime thriller set roughly in our present, has a criminal psychologist at its core who tries to solve the case of a child suicide bomber. The third story is futuristic science fiction set in the future and deals with an outlawed android who has to rely on help from an alien race to survive.

This feeds on the idea that the past, present and future all belong together. There's such a fascinating mix of connection and differences between the stories. We've got three different genres and time periods, yet the underlying themes are surprisingly similar: all characters are seeking, they are all looking for where they belong and what our shared humanity is. There's also Walt Whitman as an overarching presence, may that be through quotation of his works or his ideas expressed through characters. I really enjoyed this play of common threads.

Cunningham's prose has a way of feeling easy but never simple. This was my first experience reading his work and I was very surprised with how he (seemingly) effortlessly creates atmospheres that feel engaging and beautiful. This book is surprisingly short for the wide span of ideas and themes it covers and each story holds it own, which is always something I fear in novels constructed like this one.

In an alternative world I would have read this before To Paradise and the novelty of it would have blown me away. In this universe however, I have already experienced what I personally consider a more epic execution of a similar concept. There's still the similarity of tampering with history and yet retaining the feel that this is a deeply American story saying so much about the real world we live in. Reading Specimen Days is a strange experience and a touching one at that.

[Schmacko · Rating 3 out of 5]

I generally LOVE Michael Cunningham, but I felt he was copying his "literature borrowing" idea from The Hours. He was experimenting with form, but it didn't work for me. Three stories linked to one work - the author shows up in the earliest story - that's what he borrowed from The Hours.

In Specimen Days, Cunningham offers three novels based on Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. In the first novella, set in Victorian NYC, a mentally-challenged factory worker has taken his dead brother's job even as the boy obsesses about the poet. The boy starts to hear his brother's ghost in the machines. In the second, a modern, NYC police woman investigates a gang of terrorist children motivated by Whitman's work. The third is about an android and an alien trying to escape future NYC; the android has a Whitman app built into his brain...

The first story is Grand Guignol, like Sweeney Todd - melodrama. The second is a modern urban terrorist plot with child gangs, with a little VC Andrews thrown in. The third is speculative science fiction. Weird combo.

It doesn't jibe as well as The Hours; the disparate styles create distance instead of unity. I felt like he was experimenting, like what Michael Chabon does more successfully, but Cunningham is more interested in prose than plot, so the drive wasn't as there to captivate the readers. These stories are pretty, just not gripping. There was no party to anticipate, like in The Hours. In the third story of Specimen Days, the big climactic moment happens halfway through the tale. In the second novella, the overlap of themes of terrorism and child-rearing seems odd. I liked the first tale the most (even though I generally ain't a fan of melodramatic ghost stories), and I like that each of the three tales explored forms of resistance and terrorism - though I wish, again, they'd been more unified. And I'm not sure what this sort of defiance has to do with Whitman.

MC is a gorgeous writer. And I love that he went out on a limb. It's a nice, interesting read - just not emotionally or intellectually gripping.

BTW, I met Cunningham in 2007, and he signed all my books at the time, filling them with personal notes. We both went through the Iowa Writer's Workshop, so we had that...and other stuff...in common. He's extraordinarily intelligent and witty; if you hear of a speaking engagement, go.

UPON FURTHER THOUGHT:

I should add that Whitman was very much an admirer of the common man and the disenfranchised. With the characters in all three books (minus the maternal detective of he second), Cunningham tries to cpture this.

Whitman opposed slavery, and he was the “American poet” at a time of great upheaval in our country. He worked through the Civil War, the influx of immigrants into the West for riches, that same influx into the Midwest for farmland, the changing of the Northeast by pogrom immigration, the birth of unions, and the start of American anarchy and communist sentiment.

The idea of the need for uprising and anarchy run through all three stories, but I don’t feel Whitman wrote about those political ideas specifically. Whitman was interested in true equality of all people, including the slaves. Maybe Cunningham is saying something about how respect of the common person and the disenfranchised is the start of them respecting themselves, leading to their unionizing, their uprising. Maybe Cunningham is showing how Whitman’s peaceful work can be turns to revolution and violence. Maybe Cunningham is showing that there will always be a disenfranchised, the handicapped, children and – in the future – aliens and androids, possibly.

Whitman was gay, and Cunningham is. Cunningham seems to shy from pulling in this aspect. Again, perhaps that’s on purpose.

In short, I love leaving a book asking questions. I could’ve asked questions about the common people, the disenfranchised, and how great works inspire and goad them throughout time. I don’t, though. The only question I don’t like asking at the end of a book is, “What the heck was the author intending?” With the disparate styles, the unstated disunity of theme and subject, I’m asking it here.

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

He nearly lost his balance, looking up. The stars sparked, brilliant and unsteady on a field of ebony. There were thousands of them. [...] He stood for some time, watching. He had never imagined this star-specked stillness. [...] A sensation rose in him, a high tingling of his blood. There came a wave, a wind, that recognized him, that did not love him or hate him. He felt what he knew as the rising of his self, the shifting innerness that yearned and feared, that was more familiar to him than anything could ever be. He knew that an answering substance gathered around him, emanating from the trees and the stars. [...] What he'd thought of as his emptiness, his absence of soul, was only a yearning for this.

[stephanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

i was SO looking forward to this book, it's kind of ridiculous. i mean, i own the first edition copy, because i BOUGHT it right then.

and then. it was so disappointing. part of it may be personal, but i don't think all of it.

he does (or tries to do) what he did with The Hours, but i think he fails spectacularly. there are three stories, in three separate time periods, and there are things interwoven between each of the stories that links them together. instead of virigina woolf, it's walt whitman (who makes an appearance in the first section, least you think i'm reaching too far). there's whitman's poetry, this china cup, and something else that i forget. the first story is set in whitman's new york, the second is set in early twenty-first century new york, and the third is manhattan, 150 years in the future. the first part is tolerable, the second part is eerily believable given our government, but feels extremely heavy-handed and disconcerting in a not-good way, and the third piece is just utterly, utterly bizarre.

then the whole thing ends, and you aren't left with a shred of hope. the lesson i learned from this book was - the world is spiraling into decay and has been since we started relying on machines, and there's not a single fucking thing we can do about it. we just die.

normally, i love shit like that. this? this was poorly executed, relied on gimmicks he'd already used, and was just depressing. i mean, i can't think of anything good to say about it, except that i obviously remember it and have an opinion about it, so, yay?

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend this because I think Cunningham stretched here. He took chances- not all of which really work- but I respect the risks. He follows a similar MO to The Hours- taking the works of a famous writer/poet and using an acknowldeged theme to tie together different eras, voices, styles (in the case of Speciman Days, it's Walt Whitman and the theme of welcoming death). What makes the novellas in Specimen Days work for me are the characters- Cunningham creates intense humanity in the most bizarre or unbelievable circumstances.

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

Specimen Days is divided into three sections -- each set in a different time period in New York. A man named Simon, a woman named some variation of Catherine, and a boy named Lucas/Luke appear in each section (rotating who takes the lead in each), and a couple of settings, as well as a minor character or two, also repeat. The poetry of Walt Whitman also threads through the whole book, with Whitman himself actually making a cameo at one point, in the kind of gratuitous appearance that you expect from a bad television show (or from the Simpsons), rather than from a book that has this kind of literary pedigree.

In the first section, we're in New York in the 19th century. There are lots of exciting changes afoot -- it's the Industrial Revolution after all. The star of this section is Lucas, who works in a factory, but has no idea what exactly he's making (I love that part). Lucas spouts Whitman poetry in the midst of normal conversations, something that grows old pretty quick (I can only imagine how quickly it'd grow old if you were actually talking to the kid). I'm torn between whether this section should have been longer or shorter. As it is, it reads like one of Stephen King's lesser short stories.

The second section zooms us forward to a more modern New York. This time we've gone from Stephen King to a crime show -- not a Law & Order type, but one of those ones where we get to follow the detectives home after work and realize that they're human too. There's a glimmer of something interesting in this section (I admit it, I'm a sucker for those crime shows), and I think it's overall the strongest of the three, but on the last page, Cunningham manages to suck all life and hope right out of the story in a matter of a couple of sentences. That's fine -- I was an English major, I can handle that kind of thing -- but it was a disappointing end to a fairly promising set-up.

The final section is where Cunningham tests how many readers can give up on a book after reading 2/3 of it. I, for one, can't, so I followed him from crime show to science fiction -- fearfully, because science fiction is a genre that should be attempted by precious few "serious" writers. Unfortunately, Cunningham is a weak science fiction writer, and seems to have nothing to offer here other than a pasted-together version of half a dozen other books and movies (and don't get me started on his choice to name a character Tomcruise).

What's going to save this book for me, I think, is trying to connect the three stories. The repeated themes of love, sacrifice, and discrimination are all relevant, important themes, and maybe this book will go down as capturing some sort of post-9/11 zeitgeist. I have not read The Hours, so I came to this book with some uncertainty about what to expect. I can appreciate an author's foray into genre fiction (Michael Chabon has demonstrated both the good and the bad sides of this), but there was something about this one that read a little bit like a writer's workshop exercise (I imagine the as-yet-unpublished fourth section takes us to the world of fantasy, where Simon is a gallant knight, Lucas a gnome abandoned by his parents, and Catherine a talking unicorn). All in all, it just felt a little too slight for an author of this supposed caliber.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is a beautiful novel. Because for me imagination in fiction counts for a lot, I admire this novel very much. In some ways it's a stronger work than I originally thought when I 1st read it a few years ago. This reading, however, I thought the 3d section, "Like Beauty," is weaker than I remembered, making it somewhat less novel, though still very impressive. Specimen Days is 3 novellas built around the model of Dante's Divine Comedy. Each novella uses some of the same elements: names of characters, New York City localities, the fact of a bowl passed through time from "In the Machine" to "The Children's Crusade" to "Like Beauty." And, of course, Cunningham's most distinguishing unifier is that Walt Whitman has a presence in characters who compulsively and at random, inappropriate times quote him. In fact, Whitman himself appears in the 1st novella, set in the New York City of the late 19th century. What function do Whitman's expansive and rapturous quotes from Leaves of Grass serve in the novel? I think Whitman is the Virgil guiding Dante through his metaphysical model. Dante himself in each story is a young deformed boy named Luke. Beatrice, Dante's love and model of spiritual perfection, is Catherine or Cat or Catareen. What's different for me this reading is that while I'd recognized in the previous reading that each novella represents in turn Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, I think I discovered that each of them moves completely through the Dantean model. Dante/Luke is shown Paradise 3 times. Every section is redemptive. While it's still true in a very general, loose sense that the successive stories represent the 3 sections of Dante's universe, so that "In the Machine" parallels Inferno, for instance, it's also true that Dante's journey is completed 3 times. I like this novel very much. I like this kind of novel very much, what Harold Bloom says we used to call imaginative fiction. Reading and understanding a novel like this, a novel erected around such a heavy theme, discovering its particular beauty, is to be led into Paradiso itself. I begin reading early each day before daylight, and in front of a large window facing the street. Reading, I'm aware of morning filling the street while the grandeur of a novel like Specimen Days fills my mind. At some point I can look up to see that, just as Cat/Beatrice showed Luke/Dante at the end of "The Children's Crusade," morning is everywhere. Splendor in the street, splendor in my lap.

[Marwan Hamed · Rating 5 out of 5]

الموتى يستحيلون عشبا.
صاحب رواية الساعات الشهيرة طلع مجنون كبير.
أعظم رواية عن امريكا.
تلت عصور والتغيير واختفاء الهوية ومعالم الحضارة والإنسانية. واوراق العشب تتحرك.
من عصور قديمة لأليين.
فنتازيا خارقة القوة خيال مرعب جدا.
اسلوب عذب. استخدم والت ويتمان بشكل رهيب علشان يبين أفكاره الكتير.
غيره الحداثة ما بعدها الحب اقصى درجات التقدم.
صراع الإنسان والتقدم..الحب القوى.
الرواية استحالت عشبا. اسقاطات دين.
الطاس وشعر ويتمان وصورته تلاحقنا
مبهرة فشخ.
الحب والشعر هما اللي باقيين.

[Piper B · Rating 2 out of 5]

So weird and I bitched about it the whole time cause it was a slog. It was semi thought-provoking but I felt like it was trying to do too much but not hitting the mark. It wasn’t poorly written but the story didn’t flow. A really good idea. I also think white men shouldn’t write from the perspective of black women. I may try and read one of his other books.

[Boolia Bart · Rating 4 out of 5]

absolutely gorgina, absolutely decadent