DAY (2023)
By Michael Cunningham
Random House, 288 pages.
★★
Michael Cunningham is such a great stylist that he could imbue insurance forms with elegance. But would you want to read them? I devoured past works such as The Hours and The Home at the End of the World, but Day reads like a treatment in search of something. What, exactly? Perhaps a likable character?
The novel’s central device/contrivance, is to unpeel the travails of a handful of Brooklynites by visiting the same day, April 5, in three consecutive years: 2019, 2020, and 2021. You might associate 2020 with the darkest days of Covid, including a nationwide lockdown, but why April 5? Good question. Covid is woven into the novel, but its major theme (intended or not) is the sunset of Generation X. That could be rich fodder for a book, but Cunningham squanders lovely prose via dialogue and interactions reminiscent of a Woody Allen movie in which cloying New Yorkers wallow in their neuroses.
Robbie Walker is the novel’s pivot, even when he’s not present. He’s a gay 6th grade teacher who has been unlucky in love, work, and apartments. He is so bonded with his sister Isabel that since childhood they have fashioned tales of Wolfe and Lyla, imaginary alter egos. Robbie lives in the leaky attic of the small brownstone of Isabel, her husband Dan Byrne, and their two children, 10-year-old Nathan and five-year-old Violet. Though everyone loves Robbie, the kids need separate bedrooms. Robbie is burnt out, can’t find an affordable place to live, and can’t imagine being gay outside of the Metro area. (Really? Has he never heard of Northampton, Ogunquit, Provincetown, Key West, or even Manhattan, Kansas?)
Robbie’s not the only character facing 40 with a bagful of blues. Isabel works for an upscale magazine and fears either she or it will fold; Dan is an ex-rocker who came close to making it, but fell short. Addiction didn’t help. He’s trying to shift into sensitive mode, but his dyed locks, wardrobe, and unfulfilled dreams leave him stuck in gear, which doesn’t help pay the mortgage. Dan’s brother Garth was a sperm donor for English professor Chess’s infant son Odin and had the misfortune of falling in love with both of them, though his attraction to misanthropic Chess is hard to fathom. Garth also makes sculptures that bear the names of Shakespeare plays, most of which are abstract and vaguely disturbing. The art world yawns.
This, mind, is just the 2019 setup, but given the respective levels of self-absorption and discontent, you already have a good idea of where things are headed. In essence, there are five characters who have adult responsibilities without adult mindsets. Such matters are more commonplace these days, but an overabundance of delayed development is neither compelling nor interesting.
Day often toddles, because the characters aren’t written with enough bandwidth to race past their own narcissism. Cunningham is at his sharpest in showing the disintegration of Wolfe and Lyla, who go from Robbie and Isabel’s private support system to a social media phenomenon whose followers can’t discern them as fictive or spot logical inconsistencies. I believe Cunningham wanted us to see how they paralleled “real” life among his principals–Dan’s off/on/off musical career, Garth’s artistic moment, Isabel’s depression, Chess’ emotional numbness– but their respective stases too often stagnates the narrative. Only Robbie steps outside of himself by moving to Iceland. Huh? It sets up something important, but how a guy who thinks living an hour from Greater New York is intolerable decides upon Iceland is baffling.
By the time we get to 2021, everyone is a mess. This includes Nathan, now a surly tween brat, and Violet who is on her way to becoming a prima donna. If we believe Jean Piaget and British director Michael Apted that a child’s basic personality is formed by age 7, the sins of the parents will live on. (I guess we can always root for Odin!) Nonetheless, the shorter third part of the novel is where Cunningham is most affecting. By shifting decisively to tragedy, he hones a sharp edge that induces pathos rather than annoyance. I wonder, though, how many readers will have closed the curtains upon Day before they get there. Cunningham writes too well to call it a failed novel, but I doubt few will call it a notable one.
Rob Weir
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