26
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE November 28, 2003
PROGRESSIVE
REAL
P
EST
ESTATE,
URBAN
INC
Jim Anderson
(216) 619-9696 x25
janderson@progressiveurban.com
WEEKEND DRIVE-BYS
NEW! 3831 West 40th Archwood-Denison cottage bungalow ready for your input. Totally live-able, good bones. $48,500
1450 West 48th Affordable & move-in ready 2BR ranch in Ohio City. Modern kitchen, bath & systems, including air. Take
a look! $73,900
6110 Fir Ave Converted double. Works well as such or restore. Nice wood-work & floors, newer drive, 2-car garage.
Eco area. $78,900
7316 W. Clinton Spacious 4BR, 2 bath century
gambrel on great street. Mechanical, kitchen & bath upgrades, vintage elements. $109,900
NEW! 2626 Scranton Tremont storefront. Big 1st floor, full basement, one large apt up. Separate, modern systems. Parking off rear. $149,900
1333 West 105th Clifton-Baltic 3BR Craftsman with full systems retrofit, siding, windows & roof, plus oak woodwork, hearth, more. $159,900
1303 West 103rd 4BR, 1.5bath bungalow off Clifton. Gleaming floors, newer kitchen, roof, basement rebuild, more. Location plus. $168,000
WINDSOR
1882 West 47th
Ohio City double. Large 3BR unit has all-new kitchen, baths & finishes. New exterior includes siding & windows. $169,900
2810 Jay Ave
Ohio City triplex in prime locale. All 2BRs, with separate syst ems, appliances, FPs & parking. Full exterior redo. $229,000
10305 Clifton Blvd 4BR, 2bath brick Mission colonial. Nicely scaled, elegant original features, every update. Backyard fence & deck. $233,900
2200 West 40th PI
Orchard Park 3BR, 2.5bath built in '01. 12'ceiling on 1st, extradeep finished lower level, vaulted 2nd. Tax abated. $249,900
614 Literary
Luxurious 3BR, 3.5bath Tremont Ridge built '99. English basement apt/ office, rooftop great rm, deck. Tax abated. $379,900
2599 Scranton
1880s firehouse reborn as ultimate city residence. Defies description. 4750sf, very well done. Walk-able Tremont. $438,000
1405 West 10th
Dramatic downtown Warehouse Dist 4-level townhome. 2850sf, enormous kitchen, roof deck, views. Tax abated. $459,000
ONTARIO
Out the
town
CANADA
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REPLY CODE: GAY03
WE ARE
CANADA
An everyday plague
Michael Cunningham brings reality to Middle America
"The world is gaudy with possibilities." -Michael Cunningham
A Home at the End of the World
by Earl Pike
Michael Cunningham is one of the most extraordinary American writers alive. Reviews of his books gush "luminous," "brilliant," "poetic," "beautiful," and he is regularly added to book club reading lists throughout the United States, in part because of his narrative elegance, in part because of the emotional resonance he creates for so many readers.
That is odd because Cunningham is, on some level, a gay writer--his books are infused throughout with gay sensibility and consciousness, not to mention central characters--and because he never dodges the omnipresent viral reality as a constant part of gay life after Stonewall.
Without diluting post-millennial gay experience (including explicit sexuality) he has managed to become a darling of Middle America, or at least the Middle America that engages with literature. It's an accomplishment; in terms of changing hearts and minds, it's a satisfying one.
Most people are familiar with The Hours— it won the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago before being made into an Oscar-winning movie. It's an exquisite book, with writing so economical it borders on verse. Constructed around a series of intimate friendships and loves, and jumping around in time, it moves in concentric circles around the life and death of Richard, a gay writer about to receive an award. Consider this passage—Clarissa, Richard's best friend, musing shortly after his death by suicide:
"We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows, drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more."
The beauty is in the message of selfacceptance and hope for life itself--two continuing, intertwined aspirations as LGBT communities face, and survive, these viral times.
Those interconnections didn't begin with The Hours; they are richly conveyed and explored in his first two books as well: Flesh and Blood (1995), and A Home at the End of the World (1990). Like The Hours, both redefine notions of family to embrace gay identity, and normalize both viral dread and caregiving for the sick as a part of those families.
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SIMON AND SCHUSTER
Michael Cunningham
In Home at the End of the World, we are left with a family that includes a straight woman, a gay man, and a bisexual man who loves them both, as they together raise a daughter and care for a sick friend with
Cunningham has a history of involvement with AIDS activism, specifically with ACT UP.
AIDS. It's complicated, sometimes messy, wild with both joys and sorrows and the mundane details of daily existence; in other words, just like every other family. In Flesh and Blood, which spans three generations of an American family, kids come out as gay, women come out as repressed, a remarkable young woman dies of AIDS, and the wisest character is a drag queen-and that is, beyond the ways in which America fictionalizes itself, a more honest reflection of who we really are than most other mainstream fiction.
Cunningham himself has a history of involvement in AIDS activism--specifically, with ACT UP. The ferocity of his commitment to facing the epidemic head-on comes through consistently in his writing. So, too, does a kind of forgiving humanity: we are, on the one hand, flawed, always groping toward the best realizations of our selves; on the other hand, astonishingly diverse, yet capable of transcending difference to make connections based on kindness and lovethose are the identities, and stories, Cunningham celebrates.
Earl Pike is the executive director of the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland.
194
DOBAMA
THEATRE
#1846 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights presents a WORLD PREMIERE!
V-E DAY!
by Faye Sholiton
directed by Jacqi Loewy
November 28 December 21
Featuring:
Jennifer Clifford, Mitchell Fields,* Holly Humes. Juliette Regnier,* Rhoda Rosen, and Michael John Bestili *member Actors' Equity Association Reservations / Information:
216-932-3396 www.dobama.org
With generous support from
Jewish News
+21261 cases