Photo: Richard Phibbs
The Writing Life of Michael Cunningham
by Rebecca M. Alvin
Unsayable: A Life in Writing, the latest book by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham, is a memoir. But it’s also a book about writing. It is both and neither. Cunningham does meet the expectations of a memoir in his depictions of youth, early career, success, and various side adventures, loves and losses, leading up to today. But it is also instructive, as the acclaimed writer shares his thoughts on writing with us, complete with examples of how he has taken real life experiences and turned them into fiction, as well as advice he has given his undergraduate students at Yale, where he currently teaches. And yet, he doesn’t tell you how to write in this book; there are no rules and hard-line processes to follow. What he gives us in merging these two types of writing is the truest way for a writer to write his memoir because Cunningham the person and Cunningham the writer are inextricable.
“It’s memoir-ish, but it’s not exactly a memoir,” he explains, smiling as he settles into the guest chair in this magazine’s editorial office. He says he wanted to write about writing, but not a “how to write” book. “That strikes me as just a fundamentally bad idea, because no one knows how to write. There’s nothing you can say about how to write that cannot be contradicted by a great work of literature, not even [the maxim] ‘show don’t tell.’ None of it stands up.”
What he wanted to do for aspiring writers, he says, is to be with them, in a way. “I’ve met so many people, on reading tours and everywhere, who are trying to write. And for most people, for years and maybe forever, you’re alone in a room asking yourself why you’re even doing this. What’s the point? It’s probably not going to go anywhere, but you want to do it anyway. And odds are you may not know anyone else who writes. You may not know anyone who really reads,” he says. “I feel like there’s a need for companionship in the process that’s a little different from instruction. You don’t want to feel completely alone and out of your mind. And that is one of the things I hope this book can help people with.”
His generosity in sharing intimate details of his life in Unsayable gives us a picture of a man who has been in love with language and with storytelling right from the beginning. (He began writing stories at the age of 7, he writes.) Words really matter to Michael Cunningham and he is noted for carefully choosing them in his novels. He’s been extremely successful, with his novel The Hours winning him the Pulitzer in 1999 and being adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore, with a screenplay by David Hare, in 2002.
And yet success has not always been entirely easy and comfortable. He says now, “Ever since the writing started to turn into what it became, the fun factor went down.” He says this without lamenting it, plainly noting the fact that things just change.
When he won the Pulitzer, he says after three days of celebrating, he fell into a six-month depression that surprised him. “It was something to do with, like, too much attention. And this fear that now that I’m this visible, I’ll be found out. I’m just a hoax, I’m not really– Somebody made a mistake. The next book will make that clear,” he explains. But that kind of immobilizing anxiety dissipated as he realized that no matter what he did, people were not going to like it as much as they liked The Hours. Once he realized this, it was freeing because now he could write whatever he wanted and not expect accolades. “I mean, without some access to that kind of heedlessness, you kind of can’t do this,” he says.
Unsayable is unique as a writing book (a genre of nonfiction that has turned into a cottage industry these past few years) because much of what it imparts to the aspiring writer is not about the act of writing itself, but rather the experiences that lead up to it, inspire it, or in some cases hinder it. He shares experiences with people with whom he felt connections that have never entirely disappeared even as the people are no longer in his life. He describes his adventures in San Francisco as a rent boy, the men he met, and what he did with them as well as how he felt about it. He describes the worst review he ever got. These experiences act as muses throughout Cunningham’s writing life, showing up periodically in his fiction, but also indirectly by informing who he is as a writer. It’s an important message to writers that one’s curiosities, interests, and life experiences, one’s passions and weaknesses—all of this is as important to how you write as your vocabulary, grammar, and narrative structure.
Cunningham is in town, as he is most summers, mixing business with pleasure, and he will appear for a book signing at East End Books Ptown this weekend, as well as participating in an August event at the Fine Arts Work Center, the institution that first brought him to Provincetown some 40 years ago.
“That first winter was a little rough for me. Somehow, I’d never been here, and I hadn’t anticipated just how isolated it was going to be,” he recalls. “But I stayed for the summer. I worked in almost every restaurant in town and I saw it come to life like that. And, you know, I think sometimes we fall in love with a place, almost the way we fall in love with a person. Like, there are reasons, but there’s also pheromones and who knows what?”
Michael Cunningham will participate in a talk and book signing at East End Books Ptown, 389 Commercial St., on Saturday, July 25, 6 p.m. For tickets (Free – $37) and information call 508.413.7163 or visit eastendbooksptown.com. He will also participate in a Summer Salon with artist Marian Roth at the Fine Arts Work Center, 24 Pearl St., Provincetown, Friday, August 21, 5 – 7 p.m. For tickets ($25 – $150) and information visit fawc.org.
