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Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham

a book review by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com



I particularly enjoy novels that do more than just tell a story -- they build and populate entire worlds and invite the reader in.  In Specimen Days, Michael Cunningham builds not just one world, but three very different ones, and then stacks them one on top of the other.

He begins with an historical novella set in New York City in the 19th century, in the time of Walt Whitman, with a well-meaning but deranged young boy who randomly and uncontrollably quotes Whitman at odd moments.

Then comes a chilling tale of contemporary suicidal child terrorists in New York City, inspired by an old woman they call "Walt Whitman." Abandoned by their families, the old woman collected them and raised them sequestered in an apartment with Whitman's poems pasted to all the walls. The children all randomly quote Whitman.

Last comes a sci-fi story set in a post-apocalyptic America, dealing with the love-like relationship between a lizard-like being from another plantet and a human-like robot who has been programmed to randomly quote Whitman.

Now I have to finally read Whitman's Leaves of Grass cover-to-cover...
 


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Other book reviews by Richard Seltzer

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