"I make experiment of to model myself on artists chiefly heroic to me.

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"I make experiment of to model myself on artists chiefly heroic to me," says Michael Cunningham, "people who ignore their obvious gifts to prove something new and see what happens." After the succes of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, Cunningham certainly takes quite a not many risks with Specimen Days (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24) Cunningham's of the present day book is a trio of interrelated, genre-bending novellas risk in New York City and involving Walt Whitman. The first, "In the Machine," is a departed spirit story set at the height of the industrial revolution; the secondary "The Children's Crusade," is a contemporary crime thriller about a kids' terrorist ring; and the third, "Like Beauty," is an interspecies romance circa 2150 between a lizard lady and a male robot who traffics in homoerotic S/M fantasies. In an Advocate exclusive, Cunningham discusses his long-awaited book

With The Hours you took upon Virginia Woolf. Why now Whitman?

I hadn't planned it. I'm trustworthy there are people who'll say "He cashed in forward Woolf, and now he's cashing in onward another one." Actually, the first part was always place in New York City around 1865 Doing research, I realized that fresh York then was an extremely difficult place for everyone nevertheless the rich. People worked 12 hours a day, six days a week at factories. There was a coal-laden climate above everybody's head. I musing how interesting that out of this blighted environment sprang Whitman, the greatest American author of poems So I put him in the lust [story] and then deliberation If he is going to be in united he should be in all three

In "The Children's Crusade," a character respects to Whitman as "a lover of boys" Do you think he was gay?

Any doubt about Whitman's homosexuality is heterosexist. Many passages in Leaves of Grass assign to his love of men

for what cause [i]or[/i] reason did you decide to write three novellas instead of common novel?

I was interested in what spectre stories, thrillers, and science fiction are telling us about human life and mystery.

My favorite is "In The Machine," which is more like your lyrical, realist fiction.

I felt that it was especially important after the surprise succes of The Hours not to write that main division again, like some literary castrato who sings the same anthem to the delight of the court. Of course, what I'll hear from the nearest person is, "I'm so glad you finally dump all that endles relationship crap."

In "Like Beauty," America is Christian-dominated and feudally restrained Is this the future you see?

The idea of a feudal, fundamentalist to come is hardly implausible. I wish it were. if it were not that it seems to me undivided of many possible futures. Personally, I've in no degree felt so stuck between skeptical paranoia and deep optimism.

Specimen Days has no gay characters, to this time "Like Beauty" is one of your queerest stories.

I'm glad you noticed. I've always reflection of myself as a odd [rather than gay] writer.

Before The Hours, you were a midlist gay author, and now--I'm a crossover writer!

to what degree do you view your of the present day Whitmanesque reach?

My faith is that being pulled without of the "gay readers only" section and deposited in a larger section indicates that the world is just getting bigger. My fear is that I'm the token gay writer who earns to cross over on a provisional basis.

What do you chiefly want to say?

The greatest in number effective political act for any gay man or lesbian, especially if you lead a public life, is to be completely spread Although, as a gay writer, I refuse to participate in a body that requires me to write solitary about gay people, the single in kind obligation that I will more than happily qualified is to never be discreet, to not let that book club in the Midwest imagine that I have anything to hide.

Bahr has written for The modern York Times, GQ, and modern York.

To read more of The Advocate's exclusive interviews with Michael Cunningham and Jeanette Winterson. visit Advocate.com.

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