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Cargando... Specimen Days: A Novel (2005 original; edición 2006)por Michael Cunningham (Autor)
Información de la obraDías memorables por Michael Cunningham (2005)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. 2021 reread. Still my favorite. ( ) Okay, Cunningham can write, certainly: he has stylistic skills, knows how to portray believable characters and can compose interesting stories with them, often with literary references (cf. The Hours and Virginia Woolf). He also shows this in this book, which consists of three parts. The first has a quite explicit Dickensian slant, the second is in line with the best psychological thrillers, and the third with the most fascinating material from the dystopian science fiction world. Cunningham also makes some connections between the three stories, although they take place in three time periods: silly links such as a bowl that suddenly appears in each of the stories (it is not clear to me why), intriguing ones such as names of characters that return (Simon, Luke, Catherine), and the like. At the beginning of the book, Cunningham included a quote from Walt Whitman, the personification of exuberant American individualism, which hints that people always struggle with the same feelings regardless of new times. Is this the unifying theme? By the way, Whitman constantly returns in the stories, almost always in the form of quotes, turning him into a gimmick. Did Cunningham want to illustrate with this book that time and place don't matter in human lifes, and that everyone (even a ‘humanised robot’) actually just wants the same thing: a little security and happiness? At the risk of sounding harsh: isn’t that a bit cheesy? I don't know, this novel didn't convince me. I think reading this book in spurts was a disservice. All three "stories" within the novel are interconnected, but it is hard to evaluate the novel as a whole because the three sections seem almost more like individual novellas. All three stories have three main characters (who share names, but shift their roles as protagonists/antagonists and their characterizations: Simon, Catherine/Cat/Catareen, Lucas/Luke) and Walt Whitman's poetry (and occasionally the poet himself) features in all three stories. Of the three, "In the Machine" resonated the most, but I suspect that was because it was the first and I had no concept of the book as a whole. Cunningham vividly evokes the New York sidewalks and factories of yesteryear, with meaningful experiences of the underserved and outcast woven into a pseudo-ghost story. The middle section, "The Children's Crusade," shifts to a more recent present, with a gritty protagonist whose choices, however, are less convincing than those of "In the Machine". The final offering, "Like Beauty," is an indulgent shift into sci-fi dystopia land, which ends up being a good read with an edge, but left me wanting the backstory that might have been included if it had been an entire novel. Some have criticized the work as being too similar to Cunningham's The Hours in its use of Virginia Woolf. I can't comment on that, but I will say that the use of Whitman didn't always pack the same level of punch across the three stories. I found the Whitman quotes most compelling and interesting in the "The Children's Crusade" where as they seemed more of an annoyance in the other two. It probably deserves a more concentrated re-read from me, because I'm sure I missed interconnections and allegories. On the other hand, I enjoyed reading each section as a self-contained story, even if Cunningham's genre experimentation was not consistently convincing Three stories or mini novels that are connected by New York City, names of three main characters, a bowl, and poems by Walt Whitman. It was sometimes hard to see where this is going but writing was good and the ideas intriguing. To me this was about humanity and life. Life that can take various forms. Most of the time (two first stories) the book was quite serious but the third story made laugh. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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De modo similar a como hizo en Las Horas con Virginia Woolf, Michael Cunningham se inspira en Walt Whitman para crear una novela cautivadora y emotiva. Días cruciales esta compuesta por un elegante tríptico de relatos en épocas y situaciones diferentes, pero que nos hablan sobre las dificultades del progreso humano y el declive social. El primer relato es de un niño que observa con asombro el surgimiento del mundo industrial en el siglo XIX, al que relaciona de una manera poética y extravagante con el mundo de los muertos. El segundo está impregnado por el ambiente paranoico posterior al 11 de septiembre. Una psicóloga forense tiene que enfrentarse con un extraño caso de un niño bomba que poco a poco se revela como el principio de una compleja estrategia terrorista. El tercero es un relato futurista en el que un androide responde a un extraño designio y escapa de Nueva York, convertida en un delirante parque temático, para encontrarse con seres aún más extraños. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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