A preface: It has been a good long while since I read this book, and whether or not my glowing review is one-hundred percent genuine or I've simply romanticized my enjoyment of it based on my preconceived notions that it was going to be a work of genius and my subsequent recommendations to anyone and everyone I know who likes to read (you know, when the book comes to mind, at any rate), remains to be seen.

And that's not even true, because how could I ever recapture how I felt after reading the last word of the last line of the last chapter? There's no way. I could reread it of course, but there's something missing from the experience of reading a book a second time. The mystery, the enigma, the wide-eyed expectation of something exciting and new; none of that lives beyond the moment you experience it.

And so, what I am taking a damn long time to say is this: I can't be extraordinarily specific about the details of why I enjoyed this novel so much, I can only color it with the broad strokes of someone whose spirit overrides their intellect (at least with regards to reading...).

All that being said...

This book is actually a collection of three books bound tightly together by shared symbolism, characters, themes, props, and the reverance for Walt Whitman. A man, a woman, and a small boy find their lives intertwining in a cosmically profound way in the New York City of three different centuries. The past, the present, and the future provide the landscape in which these stories roam free.

And that's exactly what it feels like at first: a wild roaming experiment. I actually felt a bit of trepidation at picking this book up at the local Barnes (or was it Borders? [does it really matter?{NO!}]) because of the very idea that part of the book takes place during the Industrial Revolution (which I know nothing about because I wasn't there) and another part takes place in the future (which none of us know anything about because we have yet to arrive). I don't know why it is, but it takes a lot for me to connect with a story from a different era. I'm sure that's just a symptom of some much more terrible disease along the lines of century-centricism, or datism, or, you know, some vague form of voluntary illiteracy, but I can't help it. I want to love Dickens, I want to enjoy "Jane Eyre," I would kill for the ability to hold Chaucer, Proust, or Voltaire close to my heart. But... I don't.

So, it was with a heavy shrug and a deep sigh that I finally plucked this novel from the stacks. And I'll be goddamned if that wasn't one of the best literary decisions I have ever made.

Nothing I say could prepare you for just how fantastically gripping this novel is. With only a single exception, or maybe two, I have never been so affected by the decisions a character makes, the environment that forces them to change, or the opposition that allows them to stand up for who they are.

You know what, I won't even allow myself to continue along these lines, because I sound like I'm just giving hideous little sound bites trying to entice a reader to flip through the pages. I don't want to do that or sound that way.

The book is amazing. Period.

You should just read it. And when you do, you'll understand how difficult it is to put what you're feeling into words.

Hence...these jumbled ramblings.

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-...

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.”

As an admirer of the films of Michael Cunningham's novels (A Home at the End of the World & The Hours) I thought I better get round to actually reading one of his books. Specimen Days sat on my shelf since September of last year when I bought it with an Amazon voucher but for months was ignored as I'd run my finger over the spines looking for my next read. I'd notice it in passing and feel a little sheepish as it sat there, so unassuming with its stark black and white jacket design. Judging books by their covers is bad habit of mine.

Just as The Hours is a voyage round Virginia Woolf, this novel is haunted by Walt Whitman whose work is quoted throughout the book and who makes a cameo appearance at one point. Indeed the same three characters appear in each of the three sections (Cunningham structures many of this works around trios) and all have the same personal traits as if they have been reincarnated. Names, events and objects echo through the book, creating a sense of unity and transcendence. Cunningham never lets his creations have an easy time of it and their fate at the ending of each section remains ambiguous - but the thematic and visual leitmotifs woven throughout hint at a coherence behind the scenes, as if a grand scheme is afoot.

The first section concerns a boy in 19th Century New York who's convinced his brother's ghost is trapped in the machine that killed him. In the second a NYPD officer is trying to track down a squad of child suicide bombers and the last concerns a cyborg and extra-terrestrial escaping a dystopian future. Poetry, escape, transcendence, mortality and trust are the focuses.

Boldly, beautifully written, it faltered only in the final section for me. The first part I thought hugely moving (the tears could just have been my hangover), the second gripping - I had imaginings about the thriller he could have written based on the child suicide bombers. But the third really wasn't my cup of tea. Sorry, lizard romances just don't do it for me. Maybe I'm not open minded enough. Though at least in future I'll listen to that nagging voice coming from my bookshelf. Now, where did I put that copy of of Finnegan's Wake.....?

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 dní 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.

i have read previous novels from Michael Cunningham before, and both i enjoyed so much. it's a blessing reading a novel so profound and moving like The Hours. Flesh and Blood is another thing. it is a product of unadulterated honesty which is the reason why the novel would simply just get to you. if anything, these two novels chronicled the various tragedies and throes of seemingly real individuals. it is the story of our random acquaintances, our family members, our neighbors and friends, ourselves.

in Specimen Days, although it shared the same formula with The Hours, the author brought the storytelling a notch higher by bringing in a cast of wildly imagined characters, but never losing the luster and poetry of his prose. it is original, fanatical at times, but very very human.

the novel has three sections, strung together by its common denominator: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. in the novel, you will find a story of a boy who's in dire need of saving a woman at the expense of his own. there's the ancient bowl that can be bought at the sudewalks of New York that tells of a thousand history and speaks through to you even when the letterings on its rim are undecipherable. there are horses that stare at you with its beady eyes of a mannequin sensing danger. there's a woman who's in constant check of herself because the pressures of being in her own skin brings too much restlessness and self doubt. there's also a man who loves this woman and finds joy in his life by listening to her talk about how her day went when they go to bed at night before the sex. and then, there are the Nadians, who are a four foot tall lizards from another planet, and Simolos, which are basically humans that went an experementation that's gone awry, who felt this irrevocable connection with each other and ever reminding us that we are responsible forever for the lives that we save.

i was surprised Michael Cunningham was able to outdo himself again. this is a daring and out-of-the-box novel. he strayed from the domestic drama this time, and introduced to us his new characters with the same attitudes and hung-ups. i have yet to read A Home at the End of the World, and By Nightfall. and Michael Cunningham is yet to disappoint.

Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days is composed of three neat novellas, which all contain a twist at the end. In all three there is Lucas (Lucas, Luke and Luke), a small boy, with a weak body and oversized orange-shaped head; and Simon (whose character varies from a deceased brother; to a wealthy collector and seller of antiques; to an android searching for his soul); and Catherine (a street-smart impoverished girl; to Cat, a lit-loving African American detective; to Catareen, a Nadian - a species of alien that forms the persecuted class on Earth).

The three novellas are interlinked via Walter Whitman's poetry, which actually services the stories without jarring as much as I had anticipated, and a unique bowl (I will leave the later for the lit critics to analyse). The linked stories move from New York past, to the contemporary city, before culminating in the New York of the future (although this final piece is largely based outside of the Big Apple).

Cunningham's prose is lyrical and effective for the most part. Although there were a couple of questionable bits of writing that stood out where Cunningham strives to be too clever and falls short. No guessing as to which adverb stands out below:

"Perhaps he had gotten up during the night and moved them, somnambulistically. No. They were nowhere."

And although Cunningham is an astute user of repetition - he uses it to considerable effect throughout Specimen Days - the following felt like a poor man's version of Cormac McArthy's The Road:

"The horse whinnied insistently. It needed to be fed. He went and fed the horse."

Overall however, Cunningham illustrates with these novellas that he is not a one-trick pony in that he successfully delivers three stories with vastly different voices. And to Cunningham's credit, all three have their own beautiful and steady rhythm. All three, like most ambitious works, also have their flaws. The ghostly-gothic In the Machine seems to climax and resolve too quickly after a slow-simmering build up of tension. The Children's Crusade falls into noir clichés and its attempt to change the African-American stereotype is too deliberate and calculated that it may further polarise readers (Cat, an African-American bomb-squad detective, is a literature major who everyone thinks is white on the phone). And Like Beauty relies on the canons of yesteryear science fiction, with chases, exotic alien prowess and alas, info-dumps.

Yet Specimen Days is certainly worth a look at for both writers and readers. Cunningham wins the reader over with his prose in general but he also embraces our most endearing quality, that of compassion. And in this sense, Cunningham has something meaningful to say. The recurring theme is illustrated in all three pieces via sacrifice of some sort.

All three stories contain their hero, and Cunningham here is a hero too in courageously exploring three genres (historical ghost story, detective thriller and sci-fi) to deliver a fine 'novel' or three 'loosely linked-novellas'. Regardless of what the form is labelled, I am glad that I read it and I am now eager to read another of his other novels, Flesh and Blood.

PS And a big 'thank you' to Deborah Hunn for recommending Specimen Days some time ago.

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

Quel roman étrange. Que dire de plus? Le roman se divise en 3 parties; une dans le passé, une dans le présent et une dans le future… les 3 histoires ne sont pas reliées si ce n’est que par le nom des 3 personnages principaux et certaines de leur caractéristiques en plus de leur relation à la poésie. J’ai pensé abandonner le livre à quelques reprises durant la première car elle était trop descriptive à mon goût. J’ai été soulagée de constater que l’histoire s’achevait et qu’on changeait complètement de trame narrative. La 2e histoire fut ma préférée.

Let me just say this as plainly as I can.

I hated this book.

The reason it has 2 stars is all for one passage about a runaway horse fleeing down the streets of New York - a beautifully written passage that proves Cunningham is a very talented writer - but he and I have two very different perspectives on the poetry of Walt Whitman. In my opinion this novel was nothing short of blasphemy...

With a very beautiful passage about an escape stallion.

Upon learning that Michael Cunningham would publish his first novel in a decade next January, I decided it was finally time to read the only one of his that I had never read: Specimen Days. (Though apparently not for lack of trying; the bookmark I used was a paper boarding pass I found in the inside cover from April 2010, when I was deep in my Michael Cunningham fangirling).

What was so interesting about reading this book was how close to home it hits almost 20 years later. These are scary times we’re in, and it would seem Cunningham knew what was coming - or perhaps we always think the times we’re in are scary. Specimen Days is very much a post-9/11 novel - and, also, an eerily similar precursor to Hanya Yanagihara’s 2022 novel To Paradise.

Like To Paradise, Specimen Days is told in three loosely interconnected stories. The back of the book suggests the literal same characters appearing in different forms throughout time; I disagree. A beleaguered yet optimistic New York in the Industrial Revolution, a terrified modern-day city plagued by a rash of suicide bombings, and a futuristic dystopian nation attempting to face its future - these are the settings we travel through. The characters face moments of love, loss, hope, and grief, all the while trying to decide what they want out of this thing called life. It’s a captivating novel and one I’ve thought a lot about in the days since I finished it. Its themes are timeless and hit differently at 35 than they would have had I actually read at 22.

After a series of underwhelming reads, this was the refreshment I needed.

At times it felt a little underdeveloped and unpolished, and the quality steadily declined after the first of three sections, and it wasn't as thematically cohesive as one might expect from a book that takes itself this seriously.

BUT I couldn't help but still love it. I'm truly a sucker for lucid, jarring, world-building, multi-novella novels (aka David Mitchell). I was pulled uncontrollably deep into Specimen Days' world(s), and I didn't want to leave.

Also, Specimen Day plays heavily off of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", which has given me a new appreciation for poetry, and might even go so far as to convince me to read some.