By Nightfall
Michael Cunningham, 2010
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374299088
Summary
Peter and Rebecca Harris: mid-forties denizens of Manhattan’s SoHo, nearing the apogee of committed careers in the arts—he a dealer, she an editor. With a spacious loft, a college-age daughter in Boston, and lively friends, they are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy.
Then Rebecca’s much younger look-alike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, “the mistake”), shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling twenty-three-year-old with a history of drug problems, Mizzy is wayward, at loose ends, looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning his artists, their work, his career—the entire world he has so carefully constructed.
Like his legendary, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s masterly new novel is a heartbreaking look at the way we live now. Full of shocks and aftershocks, it makes us think and feel deeply about the uses and meaning of beauty and the place of love in our lives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 06, 1952
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford; M.F.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award; Whiting
Writers Award
• Currently—New York City
Michael Cunningham's novel A Home at the End of the World was published to acclaim in 1990; an excerpt, entitled "White Angel " and published in The New Yorker, was chosen for Best American Short Stories 1989. His novel Flesh and Blood was published in 1995, and that year he won a Whiting Writer's Award. The Hours, Cunningham's third novel, received the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award.
More
By the time he finished Virginia Woolf's classic Mrs. Dalloway at the age of fifteen to impress a crush who tauntingly suggested he "try and be less stupid" and do so, Michael Cunningham knew that he was destined to become a writer. While his debut novel wouldn't come until decades later, he would win the Pulitzer for Fiction with his third—fittingly, an homage to the very book that launched both his love of literature and his life's work.
After growing up Cincinnati, Ohio, Cunningham fled to the west coast to study literature at Stanford University, but later returned to the heartland, where he received his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1980. A writer recognized early on for his promising talent, Cunningham was awarded several grants toward his work, including a Michener Fellowship from the University of Iowa in 1982, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1988.
In 1984, Cunningham's debut novel, Golden States, was published. While generally well-received by the critics, the book—a narrative chronicling a few weeks in the life of a 12-year-old-boy—is often dismissed by Cunningham. In an interview with Other Voices, he explains: "I'm so much more interested in some kind of grand ambitious failure than I am in someone's modest little success that achieves its modest little aims. I felt that I had written a book like that, and I wasn't happy about it. My publisher very generously allowed me to turn down a paperback offer and it has really gone away."
With a new decade came Cunningham's stirring novel, A Home at the End of the World, in 1990. The story of a heartbreakingly lopsided love triangle between two gay men and their mutual female friend, the novel was a groundbreaking take on the ‘90s phenomenon of the nontraditional family. While not exactly released with fanfare, the work drew impressive reviews that instantly recognized Cunningham's gift for using language to define his characters' voices and outline their motives. David Kaufman of The Nation noted Cunningham's "exquisite way with words and...his uncanny felicity in conveying both his characters and their story," and remarked that "this is quite simply one of those rare novel imbued with graceful insights on every page."
The critical acclaim of A Home at the End of the World no doubt helped Cunningham win the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993—and two years later, his domestic epic Flesh and Blood was released. Chronicling the dysfunctional Stassos family from their suburban present back through to the parents' roots and looking toward the children's uncertain futures, the sprawling saga was praised for its complexity and heart. The New York Times Book Review noted that "Mr. Cunningham gets all the little things right.... Mr. Cunningham gets the big stuff right, too. For the heart of the story lies not in the nostalgic references but in the complex relationships between parents and children, between siblings, friends and lovers."
While the new decade ushered in his impressive debut, the close of the decade brought with it Cunningham's inarguable opus, The Hours (1998). A tribute to that seminal work that was the author's first inspiration—Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway—the book reworks the events and ideas of the classic and sets them alternately in 1980s Greenwich Village, 1940s Los Angeles, and Woolf's London. Of Cunningham's ambitious project, USA Today raved, "The Hours is that rare combination: a smashing literary tour-de-force and an utterly invigorating reading experience. If this book does not make you jump up from the sofa, looking at life and literature in new ways, check to see if you have a pulse." The Hours won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was adapted into a major motion picture starring the powerhouse trio of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman in December 2002.
To come down from the frenetic success of The Hours, Cunningham took on a quieter project, 2002's tribute/travelogue Land's End: A Walk Through Provincetown. The first installment in Crown's new "Crown Journeys" series, the book is a loving tour through the eccentric little town at the tip of Cape Cod beloved by so many artists and authors, Cunningham included. A haven for literary legends from Eugene O'Neill to Norman Mailer, Cunningham is—rightfully— at home there.
Extras
Cunningham's short story "White Angel" was chosen for Best American Short Stories 1989—the year before his acclaimed novel A Home at the End of the World was published.
When asked about any other names he goes by, Cunningham's list included the monikers Bree Daniels, Mickey Fingers, Jethro, Old Yeller, Gaucho, Cowboy Ed, Tim-Bob, Mister Lies, Erin The Red, Miss Kitty, and Squeegee. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Cunningham has taken on the classic plot of the uninvited or unexpected stranger or guest whose arrival brings chaos, self-knowledge, tragedy, the ruin of one kind of life that may or may not lead to something better.... Cunningham is drawn to simple, potent plots...saving his energy for the hearts and minds, the groins and guts, of his characters. Yet he makes you turn the pages. He tells a story here, but not too much of a story. You aren't deadened by detail; you're eager to know what happens next. Cunningham writes so well, and with such an economy of language, that he can call up the poet's exact match. His dialogue is deft and fast. The pace of the writing is skilled—stretched or contracted at just the right time.
Jeannette Winterson - New York Times
There are flashier, more pyrotechnic stylists, but for pure, elegant, efficient beauty, Cunningham is astounding. He's developed this captivating narrative voice that mingles his own sharp commentary with Peter's mock-heroic despair. Half Henry James, half James Joyce, but all Cunningham, it's an irresistible performance, cerebral and campy, marked by stabbing moments of self-doubt immediately undercut by theatrical asides and humorous quips.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
So many of Cunningham's physical descriptions read like confident prose poems, where you imagine what's left between the lines.... As a testament to the richness of the literary imagination, By Nightfall' is a success. You can't read this novel without the sense of how worlds can be found in a drop of water, or in an offhand comment, or in the curve of a vase.... By Nightfall is a meditation on beauty, and it has its own indelible qualities of beauty.
Matthew Gilbert - Boston Globe
Contemplating an affair that never was, SoHo art dealer Peter Harris laments that he "could see it all too clearly." The same holds true for Cunningham's emotionally static and drearily conventional latest (after Specimen Days). Peter and his wife, Rebecca—who edits a mid-level art magazine—have settled into a comfortable life in Manhattan's art world, but their staid existence is disrupted by the arrival of Rebecca's much younger brother, Ethan—known as Mizzy, short for "The Mistake." Family golden child Mizzy is a recovering drug addict whose current whim has landed him in New York where he wants to pursue a career in "the arts." Watching Mizzy—whose resemblance to a younger Rebecca unnerves Peter—coast through life without responsibilities makes Peter question his own choices and wonder if it's more than Mizzy's freedom that he covets. Cunningham's sentences are, individually, something to behold, but they're unfortunately pressed into the service of a dud story about a well-off New Yorker's existential crisis.
Publishers Weekly
"What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?" That jolt, that upending realization that your life is just a stream of small dreams and small mistakes, is a defining theme in Cunningham's coruscatingly excellent fiction (remember The Hours?), expressed here in a way that makes you ache. Peter has had some success as a gallery owner in New York; his wife, Rebecca, is accomplished and seemingly confident if not the sparkler she once was. She's also from a not quite pleasantly nutty family, with one much younger brother, Mizzy (short for the Mistake; he wasn't planned), who's a brilliant, beautiful screwup now heading toward Peter and Rebecca. Rebecca's committed to saving Mizzy, so in he sweeps—"heartless, cynical, despairing youth"—and shows Peter how ordinary his life is: he's an indifferent parent, he sells art but hasn't achieved beauty or grandeur, he's been "banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity"—one of a hundred breath-catching, thought-shaking lines gilding the perfect narrative. Verdict: Mizzy nearly drives Peter and Rebecca to rash acts of their own, but in the end he's no answer, and they find that small might be enough. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [H]is most concentrated novel, a bittersweet paean to human creativity and its particularly showy flourishing in hothouse Manhattan.... The result is an exquisite, slyly witty, warmly philosophical, and urbanely eviscerating tale of the mysteries of beauty and desire, art and delusion, age and love. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. What were your first impressions of Peter and Rebecca? What aspects of their marriage were presented in the opening scenes as they observed a traffic accident, attended a party, and went to bed?
2. Ethan's nickname originated as a reference to his parents unplanned parenthood so late in life. Did the label shape his impressions of himself, or were his problems inevitable? Did his parents and his sisters (from eldest to youngest: Rosemary, Julianne, Rebecca) expect too little of him?
3. How did Peter and Rebecca's families influence them well into adulthood? What did Peter and Rebecca offer each other when they were first dating? How did the basis for their attraction change over the years?
4. What is Peter's role in the lives of the artists he represents, beyond securing a high price for their work? What intangible benefits does he sell to his buyers? What makes him good at his job?
5. How does the concept of leverage play out in By Nightfall? Who are the novel's most vulnerable and most powerful characters?
6. How does Uta's philosophy of life different from Peter's? How does she balance the reality of her role as a businesswoman with the intuitive and emotional aspects of her profession? For her, is there any distinction between her profession and her passions?
7. What does By Nightfall say about making art, and marketing it? How does Peter's work compare to Rebecca's in shaping the futures of creative individuals? What new freedoms and challenges does twenty-first-century American culture bring to creative fields, and to our personal lives?
8. Ultimately, what is Bea blaming her father for? Is she right to blame him? What does he teach her to expect from men? When Rebecca worries about her daughter, what fears is she also expressing about her own future?
9. What purposes does sex serve for the novel s primary characters? How did sexuality shape Rebecca's self-esteem before and after she was married? What longings is Peter responding to at the moment of the kiss? For Mizzy, does sex present anything more than an opportunity to be manipulative?
10. How does the purpose of marriage evolve throughout Peter and Rebecca's life together? What reasons do they have for remaining married after Bea has left for college? What identity did marriage create for them in their careers?
11. Michael Cunningham provides us with Peter's thoughts throughout By Nightfall. How would the novel have unfolded if it had been told from Rebecca's point of view instead?
12. Is Mizzy a victim or a victimizer, or both? If he were your little brother, would you respond to him the way Rebecca does?
13. The novel concludes with the beginning of an honest dialogue. How much of Peter and Rebecca's previous talks had been truthful? Had they been honest with themselves? What predictions do you have for the closing line s conversation and its aftermath?
14. Discuss the novel's title: What symbolic nightfall exists in the characters lives? How does it apply to the concept of aging and other transitions that may seem difficult to navigate in the dark?
15. Through his fiction, what has Cunningham shown us about the nature of love and longing? What new facets are revealed in By Nightfall? What role do artists (literary, visual, and otherwise) play in his storylines?
(Questions issued by publisher.)