Our next (and final) book of 2022 series is “Specimen Days” (2005) by Michael Cunningham. Told in three parts, it begins with the story of Lucas, a 12-year-old boy who tends to memorize Walt Whitman and who, after taking a job at the very machine that killed his brother, comes to believe his brother I lost my dead. The soul lives inside its spinning gears. More than a century later, in post-9/11 New York, a forensic psychologist with a tragic past must find a group of child terrorists, among them a boy named Luke, behind the wave. suicide bombing. The third story is set in a dystopian future in which a cyborg and a lizard-like alien team up with another Luke. Despite the leaps of time and genre, all seasons relate, in true Whitman style, with love and longing, America, transcendence, and life itself.
Start reading today and then RSVP for our discussion on December 8 with Cunningham, novelist Neel Mukherjee and Kate Guadagninoa collaborator T.
