Specimen Days
by Michael Cunningham
For a while, the movies really loved Michael Cunningham. Nicole Kidman won an Oscar starring in The Hours, based on Cunningham's meditation of Virginia Woolf. Colin Farrell made an indy film of A Home at the End of the World. So at a certain point, I decided he must really be worth reading. So I chose this one, mostly because it's based on Walt Whitman, one of the patron saints of American poetry. The title of the book is one Cunningham and Whitman share, by the way. It would certainly be more obvious if, say, that title were Leaves of Grass. But Whitman worked on that one for many, many years. Best to look elsewhere. Hopefully not the case with this book.
Funny how allot of successful movies loosely based on classic novels turn out to be complete remakes.
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