Writer of "The Hours" mentions Leonard Cohen
Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2003 6:58 pm
Writer Michael Cunningham gave an interview to Giannis Zoumpoulakis for the Greek newspaper TO VIMA about his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Hours" and the film based on it in with Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore
("The Hours" was the original working title of Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway"), the story follows three women living in three different eras whose lives are connected through time by Woolf's novel, "Mrs. Dalloway.”)
The interview opens with the following question:
-J: It is known that you wrote this novel because of your admiration for Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway”. Why this great admiration?
-M.C: I was 15 years old and not a clever or I was dedicated to my skateboards, to rock-and-roll and to smoking. One day I was standing outside of my high school's gym trying to "pose" like a macho and dangerous guy, as much as dangerous could a teenagers look who smoked "Newport" which used to steal from his mother's bag. Suddenly a saw standing beside me a very beautiful girl. She was older than me and tough and dressed in strange leather clothes.
And in a desperate attempt to impress her I started talking about Leonard Cohen analysing my theory why he was a more important artist that Bob Dylan.
She stared at me at she said: "Have you ever thought of becoming less stupid? Why don't you open any books? Why don't you read Eliot or Woolf?
I decided that I should become less stupid and I went to the schools library. They didn't have Eliot but they did have a book by Virginia Woolf, it was "Mrs. Dalloway".
Nobody before me had borrowed that book. I tried to read it but I didn't understand anything! But that's how my relationship with that book begun.
I said to myself: “Look at that! VW is doing with the language what JH was doing with the guitar!”
Later in the interview he says about writing that book:
It was like improvising on something else. I see it in music terms. Like a new jazzman that improvises on a great classic piece. Why is he doing it? To honor it. And to understand it better. But also in order to “play” with it. To create something new based on the classic.
As I told you, as a teenager I wasn’t a ‘bookworm” but rather a rock and roll crazy fan!
Peace
Demetris
("The Hours" was the original working title of Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway"), the story follows three women living in three different eras whose lives are connected through time by Woolf's novel, "Mrs. Dalloway.”)
The interview opens with the following question:
-J: It is known that you wrote this novel because of your admiration for Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway”. Why this great admiration?
-M.C: I was 15 years old and not a clever or I was dedicated to my skateboards, to rock-and-roll and to smoking. One day I was standing outside of my high school's gym trying to "pose" like a macho and dangerous guy, as much as dangerous could a teenagers look who smoked "Newport" which used to steal from his mother's bag. Suddenly a saw standing beside me a very beautiful girl. She was older than me and tough and dressed in strange leather clothes.
And in a desperate attempt to impress her I started talking about Leonard Cohen analysing my theory why he was a more important artist that Bob Dylan.
She stared at me at she said: "Have you ever thought of becoming less stupid? Why don't you open any books? Why don't you read Eliot or Woolf?
I decided that I should become less stupid and I went to the schools library. They didn't have Eliot but they did have a book by Virginia Woolf, it was "Mrs. Dalloway".
Nobody before me had borrowed that book. I tried to read it but I didn't understand anything! But that's how my relationship with that book begun.
I said to myself: “Look at that! VW is doing with the language what JH was doing with the guitar!”
Later in the interview he says about writing that book:
It was like improvising on something else. I see it in music terms. Like a new jazzman that improvises on a great classic piece. Why is he doing it? To honor it. And to understand it better. But also in order to “play” with it. To create something new based on the classic.
As I told you, as a teenager I wasn’t a ‘bookworm” but rather a rock and roll crazy fan!
Peace
Demetris
How is nice to discover that someone whom you liked has something similar to you, actually the same... I always connected my favourite writers and poets in my mind, as being a part of the same inner landscape 
tom