BOOK OPINION
At Home at the End of the World
by Michael Cunningham
Picador, 1990
Everyone knows that the book is always better than the film, with the prominent exception being Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptations of Mario Puzo's novel, The Godfather. (Nevermind the ill-conceived finale, Part III.) Authors have ample pages for, and readers necessary patience about, exploring their characters in depth. Two readers can read the same book and come away with distinct impressions of the characters' looks, personalities, strengths and short-comings. When confronted with these characters on film, the result of choices made by a writer, actor, director and editor, they never match our own (superior) ideas. As expected, reading Michael Cunningham's first novel, At Home at the End of the World, before seeing the film adaptation made for a much more satisfying encounter.
In the book, the focus of the story is on Jonathan and Bobby, with what I interpreted as a little more emphasis on Jonathan. Clare and Alice remain critical characters in the story, but even they realize that they are but supporting characters in the lives of the two men. Theirs is a love story, albeit one that defies easy definition. The story of their lives is related by first-person narratives from Jonathan, Bobby, Clare and Jonathan's mother Alice. A key fifth player in the book is Erich, the major lover (and de factor boyfriend) in Jonathan's life. Though he does not get his own first-person narrative, he is the catalyst for much of Jonathan's development. His absence from the film is a major flaw, as I will explain later.
The central conflict in the book is the ability of Bobby and disability of Jonathan to completely embrace their own lives. Bobby, deprived of his blood family at such a young age, and lacking much of a motivational force throughout most of his life, evolves as a chameleon, able to adapt and thrive in his own way in suburban Cleveland, bohemian Greenwich Village, and rural upstate New York. Like a hermit crab, Bobby follows Jonathan and occupies spaces he leaves behind. He is most content smoking up and listening to records, and it really doesn't matter when and where he does it. Jonathan, on the other hand, is constantly dissatisfied. His intact family stifles him, his lovers disinterest him, his work does not reward him, and he views his love for Clare as maddeningly incomplete. When Bobby moves to New York, he and Jonathan and Clare ease into a practical three-way relationship that ends up driving as many wedges between them as bonds. In the end, Jonathan finally experiences the feeling of contentment, of living for today, for the moment, that has eluded him for so long, and he earns that by finally thinking of someone else before himself. It is a lesson that Bobby, in his benign and child-like way, had learned years ago and continued to embrace.
Cunningham skillfully develops his characters over thirty years of life, and he seems to savor their faults more than their strengths. Jonathan and Clare have a deep cynicism that gets a bit tiresome, as does their inexplicable desire to change their circumstances. By contrast, Bobby seems to lack any negative energy whatsoever. Perhaps these characterizations are meant to underscore their inter-dependence and incompleteness as individuals, but it makes it difficult to empathize with persons that are emotionally shallow.
The resolution works in the sense that the people that are meant to be together end up together. At the same time, its ending seems to undermine the alternative, three-way love story that dominates the book. There is an implied understanding, even celebration, of those that abandon their loved ones and responsibilities without any more explanation than a gut feeling. Cunningham addresses this notion, with different choices and impacts, more succinctly in his 2002 Pulitzer Prizer winner, The Hours. In both books, however, characters choose to abandon lives that are not truly their own, to reject societal roles that are basically forced upon them. Missing in these stories is the recognition that an individual's life is the result of his or her own choices, and the calculus for deciding must change when others' lives become intricately involved.
GRADE: B
