Let’s just say,” Michael Cunningham tells me, “sitting at the kitchen table with a laptop in my underwear at two in the afternoon just makes me feel ridiculous.” He has a distinctive voice – deep and soft – and he is explaining to me over Zoom why he leaves his home in Brooklyn every day to come to his studio in Greenwich Village. With a “Bye honey!” – honey is his husband, psychotherapist Ken Corbett, with whom he has been in a relationship for 35 years – he crosses town and gets down to it, which puts me in mind, I say, of the writer John Cheever, though Cunningham’s commute is significantly longer.
“I love that story! He got in the elevator in a suit with a briefcase and went down to the basement and worked and then went back up in the elevator at night to torture his wife and children.” Cunningham is dressed more casually – does he have a briefcase? “Oh, no, no, no. John Cheever required more trappings than I require. I just need to leave the premises, is all.” Well, Cheever probably had more issues. “John Cheever’s issues! Whoa!”
