The end of summer will be marked by the arrival of “By Nightfall,” a wonderful new novel by Michael Cunningham, who won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Hours.” The book isn’t set to be published until the last week of September, but I raced through an Advance Reader’s Copy.
Cunningham’s powers of empathy seem to have no bounds — he writes about women as acutely as he writes about men, and he presents young people and old people with equal precision.
The novelist is gay, but that hasn’t prevented him from writing from the point of view of heterosexual women and men.
The new book is a beautifully concise and poetic examination of a contemporary New Yorker about to settle into middle age (or, at least what we Americans like of think of as middle age) — gallery owner Peter Harris is in his mid-40s when “By Nightfall” opens.
Harris seems to be OK when we first meet him.
Peter’s Chelsea gallery is holding its own in the midst of a very uncertain time for art and its collectors. His marriage to Rebecca seems to be “happy.” The couple’s college-age daughter is living in Boston — her early 20s state of alienation from her parents appears to be fairly typical. (Peter and Rebecca do wonder if their daughter is involved in a sexual relationship with her older, female roommate).
What changes the fairly well-ordered life of Peter Harris is the arrival of Rebecca’s pampered, much-younger brother Ethan, who is known as The Mistake because of the late and unplanned nature of his arrival in Rebecca’s family.
Ethan has bounced around from job to job and enthusiasm to enthusiasm — and has had problems staying away from drugs — when he arrives at the Harris loft in downtown Manhattan.
Ethan says he is ready to focus on doing something artistic.
Here’s how Peter describes the young man in Chapter One: “He’s one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won’t, possibly can’t, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.”
The contrast between Ethan’s youthful strivings and Peter’s middle-aged concern about lost opportunities powers “By Nightfall,” which takes us deep into the New York City art world. We examine art gallery life both from the perspective of those who make money by selling art and those who hope to spend their lives creating art.
The novel’s pitch perfect presentation of contemporary New York City — and the role that the culture industry plays within it — is reminiscent of John Guare’s 1990 time capsule play “Six Degrees of Separation” but without Guare’s inability to view college-age New York kids with the same compassion he brought to his memorable middle-aged protagonist, Ouisa Kitteridge. Michael Cunningham gives each of his major characters a chance to state their case.
