Conversation: Michael Cunningham and Ben Shattuck
Friday, August 23, 2024
6 PM
About Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham is a novelist, screenwriter, and educator. His novel The Hours received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999. He has taught at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. He is currently a professor in the practice at Yale University. He is a current Fine Arts Work Center Trustee and past Fiction Fellow.
About Ben Shattuck
Ben Shattuck, a former Teaching-Writing Fellow and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is a recipient of the PEN America Short Story Prize and a 2019 Pushcart Prize. Shattuck’s first book, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau (Tin House, 2022) was a New Yorker magazine Best Book of 2022, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of Spring, a New York Times Best Book of Summer, and a New England Indie Bestseller. His book of short stories, The History of Sound, was published by Viking in July of 2024. He lives with his wife and daughter on the coast of Massachusetts, where he owns and runs the oldest general store in America, built in 1793. He is also the founder and director of the Cuttyhunk Island Writers’ Residency.
About Day
National Bestseller
An “exquisite” (The Boston Globe) exploration of love and loss, the struggles and limitations of family life—and how we all must learn to live together and apart—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours
“The only problem with Michael Cunningham’s prose is that it ruins you for mere mortals’ work. He is the most elegant writer in America.”—The Washington Post
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, Chicago Public Library, Lit Hub, Paste, Kirkus Reviews
April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart—and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, is living vicariously through a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. And then there is Nathan, age ten, taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while his sister, Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.
April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the cozy brownstone is starting to feel more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled sleights and frustrated sighs. And dear Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts—and his secret Instagram life—for company.
April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality—and with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.
“[Cunningham] is one of love’s greatest witnesses.”—Los Angeles Times
“An absolutely stunning portrait of humanity . . . a masterpiece.”—Literary Hub
About The History of Sound
“Polyphonic fiction. . . . A reminder of the short story’s power. . . . The History of Sound marks Shattuck as one of the form’s brightest lights. . . . A terrific writer. . . . Deeply resonant.” —The Boston Globe
“Exquisitely crafted, deeply imagined, exhilaratingly diverse, The History of Sound places Ben Shattuck firmly among the very finest of our storytellers.” —Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of Horse
“Magnificent. . . . Poignant. . . . Exquisite.” —Publishers Weekly
A stunning collection of interconnected stories set in New England, exploring how the past is often misunderstood and how history, family, heartache, and desire can echo over centuries
In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck’s ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.
The haunting title story recalls the journey of two men who meet around a piano in a smoky, dim bar, only to spend a summer walking the Maine woods collecting folk songs in the shadow of the First World War, forever marked by the odyssey. Decades later, in another story, a woman discovers the wax cylinders recorded that fateful summer while cleaning out her new house in Maine. Shattuck’s inventive, exquisite stories transport readers from 1700s Nantucket to the contemporary woods of New Hampshire and beyond—into landscapes both enduring and unmistakably modern. Memories, artifacts, paintings, and journals resurface in surprising and poignant ways among evocative beaches, forests, and orchards, revealing the secrets, misunderstandings, and love that linger across centuries.
Written with breathtaking humanity and humor, The History of Sound is a love letter to New England, a radiant conversation between past and present, and a moving meditation on the abiding search for home.
All readings and artist talks are held in the Stanley Kunitz Common Room, unless otherwise noted. Our annual summer exhibition, Edge Condition, is on view June 6 through August 22, 2024 in our Hudson D. Walker Gallery. Both venues are located at 24 Pearl Street in Provincetown.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 PM-5 PM
The gallery is also open by appointment and during all public events
The Stanley Kunitz Common Room and the Hudson D. Walker Gallery are accessible facilities in compliance with ADA guidelines.
If you require assistance to access these venues, please call the Fine Arts Work Center at 508-487-9960 ext.101 in advance of your visit.
Sponsored in part by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, Cape Cod 5 Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, and Massachusetts Cultural Council
