They are doubleedged in the head and the hand of men

Seven years ago, Michael Cunningham won the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen Award in the United States for "The hours", a breathtaking nest novel referring to the fate of three hungry women of absolute, including that of Virginia Woolf. Of this consecration, completed by a successful on-screen in 2002 adaptation American writer could have resting on its laurels. With "The book of days", it sets the bar even higher, launching in a disillusioned fresco of the world, feverish and withdrawing.

Cunningham takes the same basic recipe: three parties-three times, with such as thread, here too, a "God" of literature. But this time, it stretches the time, in addition to the past and present, the future. As his "literary hero", it's Walt Whitman (1819-1892), American poet flamboyant, yet most enigmatic as Virginia Woolf, and whose presence in the novel is diffuse, encoded, unequivocal.

Terrorist child

In the late 19th century, a child replaces his brother killed by a machine at the factory ("in the Machine"); Today, a "policewoman" survey on attacks perpetuated by children ("the crusade for children"); in 2120, a tie almost human, who works in the New-york old transformed into recreational park, a rendez-vous in Denver with his creator ("such a beauty"). Between the characters of these three parties, matches: wonderful worms of Whitman, the same first names, a bowl from hand to hand as a relic and a place to "start": Manhattan, Center of the world metaphor of a land in implosion.

Michael Cunningham takes front three fractures in our modern society: the founding industrial revolution, the current terrorist threat and the fear of ecological and humanitarian disaster to come. He ferre drive by adopting a classical, pulsating and poetic narration, and diverting three Archetypes of popular fiction with virtuosity: the history, the political thriller and science fiction. Captivated, the reader is more confused when drains flow absurdities and violence of the world on the characters.

Mass infantilisées

Rarely a writer was also dark vision of the pre-industrial society: "in the machine" is reminiscent of Dickens and the Zola and more gore. Cunningham was one of the first writers to address the tragedy of AIDS front in "The House at the end of the world". It deals with the same acuity of the trauma of the September 11, inventing, in "The crusade for children" of the terrorist children who detonate in the arms of their victims. As its projection in the future, behind its decor of BD, it's cold in the back: racism against the aliens and the humanoid esclavagisés, lands burned by toxic waste, treated masses controlled by knows what firms and fundamentalist parties...

Ambiguous role

Whitman is the detonating guide of this ballad in hell. He the Epicurean, the lovers of all beings and all things, ecstatic humanist, who does not believe in death! Precisely, is the enthusiasm of the poet for the sound and the fury of the new emerging world, at a time or the "American dream" was still possible, which has fascinated Cunningham and has led to this ambiguous role. The sacred words of the poet, are like those of the Bible or the Koran. They are double-edged in the head and the hand of men.

Cunningham no message strikes us. It is like the poet to whom the child asks: "what is that grass", and cannot respond. He knows only that "the dead become grass", and the planet, even dirty, turn again and again, as long as the madness of a few men remains fresh. Whitman eventually has the last word: "Earth, it need me, I do not want to see more about the constellations, it are very well where it are, I know what enough to those who live.".