the virtuoso author of Hours: (Pulitzer Prize) is finally back in the heart of nearly ten years of silencean april day the fluctuations of beings, the erosion of the couple… Grace is always at work.
It’s been ten years since we’ve been waiting for Michael Cunningham’s new Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Hours: (Adapted for film by Stephen Daldry, with Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman, Oscar winner as Virginia Woolf.) She’s back with us An April daywhere she explores with grace, delicacy and precision what is happening to a Brooklyn family; Dan, a musician hoping to return to success, his wife Isabelle, an art director on the brink of depression, their children, Nathan and Violet, and Isabelle’s brother Robbie, who lives in the attic before, during, and after the pandemic – for a day at a time. , and three years. The novel takes place on the morning of April 2019, the afternoon of April 2020 and An evening in April 2021. An opportunity to talk with the author. Book of days literature about relationships maintained over time, family in the broadest sense of the term, and multiple expressions of love, which is not always enough.
Madame Figaro. – How much? An April day was it born from an epidemic?
Michael Cunningham. – When the latter broke out, I thought that I could no longer continue my current project, which was then left unfinished. There was not a country on this Earth that was not affected by the disaster, but if I integrated the epidemic into the novel that I was writing. At the time, it would seem artificial, so I put it off an april day which, in fact, was born of an epidemic, although the latter is never named in the novel. To name is to limit, and sometimes to reduce. However, the ominous sounds coming from the basement are, in my opinion, more terrifying than the monster climbing the stairs. I found it more interesting that that word did not appear anywhere. After all, the Greeks never called the god of the underworld…
Where did the idea for this three-part structure come from?
I wanted the novel to be as focused and compact as possible, depicting people going through terrible ordeals that expose them. The epidemic is really more of an excuse; novels are about people, not viruses, which are more the work of journalists. Structuring the novel in this way allowed me to make my characters grow through the epidemic without crushing the book. The detention acts as a catalyst, it deepens the tension that already exists within the house. My characters, like many of us, have been at home for a year , experience a form of catharsis that results in collapse.
I wanted a novel that focused as much as possible on people living through a terrible ordeal that reveals them
Michael Cunningham
The families you connect with don’t fit the traditional model…
Yes, I grew up in the years of AIDS. I’ve seen a lot of people get sick and die and call their parents and say, ‘I’m gay and I have AIDS.’ . We learned to do everything a birth family should do, take you to the doctor, take care of the funeral, etc. The family could consist of drag queens, lesbians, and gays. I wanted to pay tribute to these families in my own way. In addition, “non-Orthodox” families are more and more common, without the mandatory participation of the LGBT population. I think of blended families, of a single person adopting…
In life, and especially in books, I’m interested in relationships that don’t have labels
Michael Cunningham
How would you describe a love triangle other than one made up of Isabelle, Dan and Robbie?
Isabelle, Dan and Robbie are all variations of romantic love. Isabelle and Robbie love each other, too, without the clichés (Dan’s not secretly gay, Robbie’s not secretly in love with his sister’s husband). about a company, a company that would not be “masculine” in the usual sense of the word, with beer, leather jackets and motorcycles… In life, and especially in books, I’m interested in relationships that don’t have a label. And the “couple” of Garth, Danny’s brother, is inspired by people I know , chose to have a child with a man with whom she had an agreement. And as always, what should have been a simple transaction could not be limited to that, and ended up with another non-Orthodox family…
SP:
An April Day: Dusk, Hours, What role does time play in your work?
Time is inextricably linked to the story. Not that the latter is necessarily chronological, but every novel deals with the passage of time. It’s just that I’m more interested than others. The writer tries to preserve the time, and the novelists play a key role in the human memory. Learn things about 19th century Russiae in the century, one can read essays and biographies, but it is equally necessary to delve into Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky. They are the only ones who can make you feel things from a human perspective.Take Napoleon’s invasion of Moscow. historians and biographers will tell you all about Napoleon, while a writer will focus on a soldier who froze to death, who would otherwise remain in obscurity. I think all lives have something special and that you just have to find a writer who knows how to tell them. This is what I love about Virginia Woolf, who was the first author I read who wrote whole works about micro-stories, small destinies. Some use a telescope, others a microscope…
What excites you about the writing process?
The idea that the novel will become a different novel than the one I had in mind. If I know where I’m going, the characters are reduced to employees who are responsible for bringing the plot to a successful conclusion. if you can say that. I originally wanted to be an artist, but I wasn’t passionate enough. I started writing, and I didn’t know if I was good, but the process attracted me and continues to fascinate me. Taking words and putting them together, building them into a book, using stages like bricks to build a structure and drive a story… I have my days of doubt, of course, but it remains fabulous to me, and drawing is reserved now. is: relaxation.
Source: Le Figaro
