Home » News » Michael Cunningham in the shadow of Virginia Woolf

Michael Cunningham in the shadow of Virginia Woolf

In 1998, the American writer published Hours, brilliant tribute to Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and its film adaptation is a triumph which gives a second life to the novel of the great Englishwoman.

Michael Cunningham in 2016. “It was in 1967, the year of my fifteenth birthday, that I discovered Mrs Dalloway.  (...) I had never read anything like it, and I have never forgotten it again, ”says the writer.
Michael Cunningham en 2016. “It was in 1967, the year of my fifteenth birthday, that I discovered Mrs Dalloway. (…) I had never read anything like it, and I never forgot it again ”, says the writer. © Leonard Cendamo / Leemage

It is a moment of grace. One of those that every writer dreams of knowing during his career. Michael Cunningham, already spotted in the 1990s with The House at the end of the world and Of flesh and blood, knows him in 1998. That year, this big boy born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1952, publishes Hours. This title is the one that Virginia Woolf had a time envisaged for this novel which she would finally call Mrs Dalloway, when it was released in 1925. A coincidence? “It was in 1967, the year of my fifteenth birthday, that I discovered Mrs Dalloway, confided the writer to us, during a stay in Paris. At the time, I did not understand all the subtleties, but I retained the beauty of the language, its bewitching appearance. I had never read anything like it, and I never forgot it again

The novel of the brilliant Englishwoman will be the common thread in the history of Cunningham. A tribute in the form of a trap. To stand too close to Woolf’s novel would certainly have been seen as a form of shameful plagiarism. Rather than

This article is for subscribers only. You have 79% left to discover.

Subscribe: 1 € for 2 months

Cancellable at any time

—–

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.