Specimen Days Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of Specimen Days.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About This Guide

The following author biography and list of questions about Specimen Days are intended as re-sources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this novel. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach Specimen Days.


About This Book

Specimen Days, the much anticipated follow-up to Michael Cunningham's award-winning inter-national bestseller The Hours, reconfirms the author's daring imagination and storytelling gifts. Comprised of three thematically linked novellas, Specimen Days is both inspired by, and an homage to, American visionary poet Walt Whitman. The first, "In the Machine," is a ghost story at the height of the industrial revolution; the second, "The Children's Crusade," is a con-temporary crime thriller about a kids' terrorist ring; and the third, "Like Beauty," is an inter-species romance circa 2150. Provocative, entertaining, and unexpectedly moving, Specimen Days is, as The New York Observer states, "an extraordinary book, as ambitious as it is generous."

Discussion Questions

1. Why do you think Michael Cunningham chooses the particular epigraph from Walt Whitman to introduce his book? In what ways does it prepare you for the three stories that follow?
    
2. In the author's note, Cunningham, addressing the issue of novelists using actual events or people in their work, writes: "the strict sequence of historical events, however, tends to run counter to the needs of the storyteller." What do you think he means, particularly in regards to Specimen Days? Do you agree with him? Why?
    
3. Why do you think Cunningham chose Walt Whitman as the representative poet for the story he tells? Could you imagine other poets serving that role? Were you able to identify when Cunningham was quoting Whitman in the text? Do the quotes function differently in each story? How do the quotes serve Cunningham's work as a whole? Which quotes from Whitman did you particularly like? Why? Does there seem to be a particular sensibility or spirit to Whitman's poetry that mirrors Cunningham's own vision for Specimen Days? Explain.
    

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Picador. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.