Books
Cunningham’s ‘Day’ is one of the best books of the year
Characters are resilient, even hopeful, in the midst of disease, death
‘Day’
By Michael Cunningham
c. 2023, Random House
$28/273 pages
“She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day,” Virginia Woolf, the groundbreaking, queer, gender-bending, feminist, novelist and essayist, writes in “Mrs. Dalloway” of Clarissa, a society woman, wife of a Parliament member and mother, who’s giving a party on a June day in 1920s London.
Since the pandemic, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, during the Lavender Scare, going back to the dawn of time, who, especially if they’re queer, hasn’t often felt like Clarissa? Even on lovely June days.
“Day,” a new novel by Michael Cunningham, his first novel since “The Snow Queen” in 2014, beautifully and eerily reflects this feeling. Its characters are fearful and fragile, yet, resilient, even hopeful, in the midst of disease and death.
Like “Mrs. Dalloway,” “Day,” takes place during one day – April 5. Only, the day is spread over three years.
The morning of the day is in April 2019 – before the pandemic. When no one’s talking about, let alone heard of, COVID.
The afternoon of the day is in April 2020 – at the height of the pandemic. Before the COVID vaccines have been developed. When everyone (except low-income, essential workers) is locked down by themselves or with their loved ones.
The evening of the day is in April 2021 when people, wondering what to make of the “new normal,” are beginning to emerge from the pandemic.
As it is in several of Cunningham’s novels, the main characters of “Day,” are a family (along, with a few friends and relations, who are supporting characters).
As with “Mrs. Dalloway,” and with Cunningham’s luminous “The Hours,” in “Day,” the city, New York, and the passing of time, itself, are characters.
“A man pulls up the metal shutter of his shoe repair shop,” Cunningham writes in “Day,” “A young woman, ponytailed, jogs past a middle-aged man who, wearing a little black dress and combat boots, is finally returning home.”
Dan, his wife Isabel, and their two children — five-year-old Violet and 10-year-old Nathan — live in a brownstone in Brooklyn. Dan is a musician. He’s had his struggles with cocaine and has performed in a rock band. Now, he does a lot of house husband/child care tasks as Isabel, a photo editor, works hard to keep her magazine from dying.
Isabel’s charming younger gay brother lives in their attic loft. It’s a New York City real estate/break up thing. Robbie, a sixth grade school teacher, has just broken up with his boyfriend. He can’t afford to live on his own. He questions why, 15 years ago, he decided against going to medical school.
Dan and Isabel decide that Robbie has to move out and find a place of his own because their kids are too old to share a bedroom.
Though, “Day” references George Eliot, it’s a 21st-century narrative. When Robbie, after the virus (never explicitly called COVID) enters the world, gets stuck in Iceland, he develops Wolfe, an idealized version of himself on Instagram.
You never see the word “COVID” or “pandemic” in “Day.” Yet it’s clear that a virus (likely COVID) has entered the characters’ world. Their world, as with real life at the time, has reminders of AIDS. Rob develops a cough that’s reminiscent of a symptom at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
Dan and Isabel’s marriage is becoming strained. They are both in love with Robbie. Thankfully, it’s not what you think! It’s not a lust thing. Robbie represents something ideal to them.
Few have more evocatively channeled the sensibility and style of Woolf than Cunningham.
Woolf – her awareness that a novel about a day featuring nothing more than a woman giving a party; a man, at a street corner, taking off his hat to greet a woman he knows; or a wife trying to calm her husband, a “shell-shocked” World War I vet; can be as interesting as murder-and-battle-filled fiction – is as tightly etched in Cunningham’s DNA as a pair of skinny jeans.
As a teenager in Pasadena, Calif., he devoured Virginia Woolf’s novels as avidly as his friends turned on to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, Cunningham told me when I interviewed him for the Blade before the release of “The Hours,” the 2002 movie of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name.
(“The Hours” was adapted into an opera with the same name in 2022.)
But Cunningham, who is married to psychotherapist Ken Corbett and Professor of the Practice in Creative Writing at Yale University, is no mere imitator of Woolf.
The alchemy of Cunningham’s talent is his own. “Day” was well worth waiting almost a decade for. It’s one of the best books of this or any year.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
A rabid fan’s look at the best and worst of queer TV
‘Rainbow Age of Television’ a must-read for viewers
‘The Rainbow Age of Television: An Opinionated History of Queer TV’
By Shayna Maci Warner
c.2024, Abrams Press
$28/304 pages
Wanna hand over the clicker?
You don’t want to miss the season premiere of that show you binge-watched over the summer. You’re invested, a fan who can’t wait to see what happens next. You heard that this may be the last season and you’ll be sad, if that’s so. Is it time to start looking for another, newer obsession or will you want to read “The Rainbow Age of Television” by Shayna Maci Warner, and find something old?
Like most kids of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, Shayna Maci Warner spent lots of time glued to a television screen, devouring programming before school, after school, and all summer long. For Warner, that programming eventually led to a revelation. They saw people that looked like them, for which they formed “a personal attachment.”
It was “life-changing.”
It didn’t happen all at once, and some of TV’s “milestones” are forever lost, since broadcasts were live until the 1950s. Shortly after shows were taped and preserved, homosexuality became a “source of worry and blunt fascination” but certain performers carefully presented gently risqué characters and dialogue that nudged and winked at viewers.
Some queer representation appeared in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the 1970s when dramas began to feature more gay and lesbian characters, however subtly. It took a while for “the ‘rest’ of the alphabet” to be represented in a meaningful way and – despite that “Star Trek” and its many versions included gender-diverse characters – it wasn’t until 1996 that an intersex infant was featured on a regular television drama.
Since Ellen DeGeneres came out practically on her namesake TV show and “Will & Grace” became a wild hit, queer representation on TV has ceased to be an unusual thing. And yet, programmers and writers know that caution is still warranted: sometimes, “there can still be hesitation around pushing the envelope and fear that a queer character who burns too brightly just won’t last.”
Quick: name three after-school TV shows that aired when you were in fourth grade. If you can’t do it, one thing’s for certain: you need “The Rainbow Age of Television.”
But get ready for some argument. Author Shayna Maci Warner offers a rabid fan’s look at the best and the worst queer representation had to offer, and you may beg to differ with what they say about various programs. That makes this book a critique, of sorts, but Warner offers plenty of wiggle-room for argument.
Tussling over the finer points of queer programming, though, is only half the fun of reading this book. Microwave a box of pizza snacks or mac-and-cheese, demand “your” sofa seat, and dive into the nostalgia of old TV shows, most of them from the later last century. Yep, your faves are here. It’s like having an oldies channel on paper, and in your hand.
This is a must-have for former kids and current TV addicts who are happy to see themselves represented on TV. If that’s you, who brought the chips? “The Rainbow Age of Television” will just click.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
Author rails against racism and desire, politics, loss
‘Rage’ explores being ‘Queer, Black, Brilliant’
“Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant… and Completely Over It”
By Lester Fabian Brathwaite
c.2024, Tiny Reparations Books
$28/288 pages
Somewhere up in the clouds.
That’s where your blood pressure is, right there as high as it’s ever been. Hoo, boy, are you angry. Your teeth are clenched, your eyes are slits, and you can’t trust yourself to speak in more than a growl. You’re plenty steamed and, as in the new book “Rage” by Lester Fabian Brathwaite, it shouldn’t have to be this way.
When he came with his family to America from Guyana at just four years old, Brathwaite couldn’t believe what his new home country offered. Malls, new kinds of food, cable television? Shirtless white men on TV and in magazines? Yes, please!
He’s always had crushes on white men, but he loves being a gay Black man – even though racism, overt and subtle, can be an aggravation. When Brathwaite is on a dating app, white men sometimes dismiss him with a racial comment. He’s heard and seen the “n-word” more than once and he doesn’t tolerate it. Wouldn’t a greeting and a no thanks be less rude?
He is bothered by unnecessary meanness.
He is bothered in a different way by bodybuilding. Hot, muscular bodies, to be exact and he’s sure that whoever created the sport was a genius. Brathwaite participates in bodybuilding himself sometimes – it’s expensive and he does it for himself, not for other men – though he believes that gay men are bodybuilding’s biggest subset. For sure, he’s payed homage to his share of bodybuilders, superheroes in movies, and hot shirtless boys on TV.
There were many times, years ago, that Brathwaite ended up drunk and in a stranger’s bed or looking for an old hook-up, and he was arrested once. Nearing 30, though, he realized that that life wasn’t what he wanted anymore. His knees couldn’t take it. Besides, he liked who he was and he liked his blackness. He realized that he didn’t need anyone else to be a hero of his tale. He could do it better himself.
One thing’s for certain: “Rage” lives up to its title.
At times, author Lester Fabian Brathwaite rails against so many things: racism and desire, club society, being a writer and editor, the generational differences between gay men, politics, and loss. At other times, he’s outRAGEous and hilarious, writing to readers as though he’s holding court in a cafe somewhere and you’d better listen up.
You should know that that means honesty – poking in the corners, calling things out for what they are, chastising people who need schooling on how to behave in a way that doesn’t leave room for nonsense. This arrives unabashed and raw, accompanied by plenty of profanity.
You’ve been warned.
And yet, Brathwaite’s candor and his blunt talk is fresh and different. This gay man doesn’t pussy-foot around, and getting his opinions without fluff feels good and right. Readers will appreciate that, and they might come away educated.
Generally speaking, this ain’t your Grandma’s book, unless Grandma likes real talk laced with profanity. If that’s so, then get “Rage.” You’ll both be mad for it.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
Fall books offer something for every taste
Hollinghurst’s latest plus a look at Queer Harlem Renaissance
Welcome to the fall book season, where you’ll find gifts for your friends, family and (most importantly?) the best reads for yourself. This is when you’ll find the blockbuster novels you’ve been waiting for, the surprise memoirs and nonfiction that you’ve wanted, and gorgeous gift books your coffee table. This fall, keep your eyes open for all kinds of literary goodness.
NOVELS
Lovers of a good novel will want to curl up with a huge TBR pile.
Romance novels will fill the shelves this fall, and if love is what you want for the holidays, you’re in luck. Look for “The Rules of Royalty” by Cale Dietrich (Wednesday Books, December), a modern tale of a prince and a “commoner”; or “Feast While You Can” by Mikealla Clements and Onjuli Datta (Grand Central Publishing), a scary-romance-erotica novel of small-town life and monsters.
Reach for “Our Evenings: A Novel” by Alan Hollinghurst (Random House, October), a novel of a young man who happily accepts a scholarship to a boarding school filled with classmates who are much, much wealthier than he is. “The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts” by Louis Bayard (Algonquin Books, September) is a historical novel about Oscar Wilde’s family.
For lovers of Gothic tales, look for “The Resurrectionist” by A. Rae Dunlap (Kensington, December), a tale of bodysnatching. Classics lovers will want to read “Private Rites: A Novel” by Julia Armfield (Flatiron Books, December), a queer reimagining of King Lear. Or find “Women’s Hotel” by Daniel M. Lavery (HarperVia, October), a book about a second-rate women-only hotel in New York City.
If your taste runs more to rom-coms, there are dozens of those available this fall, too, as well as Christmas novels with gay, lesbian, and trans characters inside.
NONFICTION
Even nonfiction readers will have reason to read this fall and winter.
Look for “Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known” by George M. Johnson and Charly Palmer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September), a book about 1920s Harlem and the influential queer folks who left their marks on entertainment.
“Something, Not Nothing” by Sarah Leavitt (Arsenal Pulp Press, September) chronicles, in comic form, the death of Leavitt’s partner and the paths grief takes to healing. Learn more about LGBTQ history with “The Book of Awesome Queer Heroes: How the LGBTQ+ Community Changed the World for the Better” by Eric Rosswood and Kathleen Archambeau (Mango, December); check out Mary L. Trump’s heartbreaking memoir, “Who Could Ever Love You?” (St. Martin’s Press, September); or check out a collection of essays in “Songs On Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes” by Anthony Veasna So (Ecco, December). Look for “Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous,” an anthology of secret confessions from women around the country, by Gillian Anderson (Abrams Press, September), or find “Queer Disability through History: The Queer and Disabled Movements Through Their Personalities” by Daisy Holder (Pen and Sword History, November). Also: Cher has a new biography out this fall, “The Memoir, Part One” (Dey Street Books, November).
Not quite what you’re looking for? Check with your favorite bookseller or librarian for more ideas because, this fall, they’ll have lots of them. Or give a gift certificate and hold on for spring. Season’s readings!
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