Michael Cunningham
The final decades of the twentieth century saw American literary fiction expand in scope and form, drawing in writers who worked across multiple modes of storytelling. Michael Cunningham, born on November 6, 1952, in Cincinnati, Ohio, became part of that landscape as a novelist, writer, screenwriter, and film screenwriter working in the English language.
Cunningham was educated at La Cañada High School before continuing his studies at Stanford University and subsequently at the University of Iowa. Working within the romance genre, he pursued careers in both fiction and film, producing work as both a novelist and a screenwriter. His 1998 novel The Hours is the most prominent title associated with his name, and it has figured centrally in the body of work for which he has received recognition.
The honors awarded to Cunningham over the course of his career are numerous and span multiple literary communities. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, along with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Fernanda Pivano Award for American Literature, an Italian prize recognizing contributions to American letters. These distinctions together reflect acknowledgment from institutions and organizations operating across different countries and different areas of literary life.
Alongside his work as a novelist and screenwriter, Cunningham holds an academic position as Professor in the Practice of Creative Writing at Yale University, a role that places him in direct engagement with developing writers. His career thus encompasses fiction, film, and formal instruction. The Fernanda Pivano Award for American Literature, among the honors he has received, points to the international reach of the recognition his work has attracted over time.
Quotes by Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham's insights on:
A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if he's any good, is not an entirely benign entity in the world.
Her cake is a failure, but she is loved anyway. She is loved, she thinks, in more or less the way the gifts will be appreciated: because they have been given with good intentions, because they exist, because they are part of a world in which one wants what one gets.
Everything is infected with brightness, throbbing with it, and she prays for dark the way a wanderer lost in the desert prays for water. The world is every bit as barren of darkness as a desert is of water. There is no dark in the shuttered room, no dark behind her eyelids. There are only greater and lesser degrees of radiance. When she’s crossed over to this realm of relentless brilliance, the voices start.
I don’t have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to write about everything, the life we’re having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might have died.
I know a conquistador when I see one. I know all about making a splash. It isn’t hard. If you shout loud enough, for long enough, a crowd will gather to see what all the noise is about. It’s the nature of crowds. They don’t stay long, unless you give them reason.
These hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope more than anything, for more.
Yes,” she answers and does not move. She might, at this moment, be nothing but a floating intelligence; not even a brain inside a skull, just a presence that perceives, as a ghoast might. Yes, she thinks, this is probably how it must feel to be a ghost. It’s a little like reading, isn’t it-that same sensation of knowing people, settings, situations, without playing any particular part beyond that of the willing observer.
Sometimes the fabric that separates us tears just enough for love to shine through. Sometimes the tear is surprisingly small.
But you find – surprise – that you like this capitulation from her, this helpless acceding, from the most recent embodiment of all the girls over all the years who’ve given you nothing, not even a curious glance. Welcome to the darker side of love.