In his Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Hours" author Michael Cunningham weaves the story of three women -- Clarissa Vaughan, planning a party for a beloved friend in contemporary New York; Laura Brown in a 1950’s Los Angeles suburb, feeling the constraints of a picture-perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb, and beginning to write her first great novel "Mrs. Dalloway."

A transcript follows.

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Alexandria, Va.: "The Hours" would seem particularly difficult material to adapt for a film -- multiple stories in different eras and a lot of interior monologue. How successful do you feel David Hare was in adapting the novel for film? How did he and Stephen Baldry manage to convey the interior struggles of the characters in the medium of film?

Michael Cunningham: When I was first contacted about the possibility of making "The Hours" into the film, my reaction was exactly the same. I don't see how it would work. Though I have very low morals and will do almost anything for money, my initial reaction was "no." But then I talked to David Hare and was enormously impressed by him and I decided, well, alright then, see what you can do.

I don't have that devotion to the "sacred text" that a lot of other writers do. Any novel of mine simply represents the most I could do with those people in those situations at that time in my life. A year later I would write the book completely differently.

So if someone I respect, like David an Stephen, want to make a movie out of it. My initial reaction is not "how will you manage to be faithful to the book" so much as it is "what will you do with the book that I didn't do? Where can you take it?"

So the movie has actually turned out to be more faithful to the book than I expected. They have very much preserved the structure. Haven't dumbed it down. How and why it works is ultimately mysterious. They did not have to resort to voiceover. The story is cogent and not difficult to follow. Its enormously helped by the brilliance of the actors. One of the things I realized watching the movie is Meryl Streep can do something with her face or can crack an egg in a way that compensates for five pages worth of interior monologue.

Framingham, Mass.: What, specifically, attracted you to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway?

Michael Cunningham: Mrs. Dalloway is the first great book I ever read. I read it in high school. I went to school in southern California at a not very rigorous public school where I was a not very dedicated student. I was sort of a skateboard kid and really more interested in smoking than I was reading. And a girl I liked kind of threw a copy of Mrs. Dalloway at me and said why don't you read this and try to be less stupid. I kind of liked the stupid that I was, but I read it for her sake and -- on one hand -- didn't understand it all all. But on the other hand, could see the density and beauty and complexity of those sentences. I have never seen written language like that before. I didn't know you could do that. I remember thinking, oh, she was doing with language something like what Hendrix does with a guitar. It was the book that made me a reader. I suspect that most of us had a first book, kind of like having a first kiss -- possibly not a great book, but one that cracks it open for you. Made you understand how much books can mean to you. So, by happenstance it was Mrs. Dalloway.

Phoenix, Ariz.: Hi Michael,

What was it like writing about relationships from a female perspective?

Thanks!

Michael Cunningham: It was on one hand both difficult and presumptious on my part. The farther any writer moves from his own experience the more risky it becomes. But I believe that with sufficient patience and skill and love any writer can write about anybody. If there are limits of any kind as to who can write about who, I don't want to do it at all.

I have found and I don't really understand this, that gender is not a huge barrier to me when I write. I don't mean in any way to underestimate the differences between men and women, but there are questions of character that run deeper than gender. I have found I'm unable to write convincingly about characters of other races. I would love to do that someday, but I haven't been able to cross that line and come up with a black or hispanic character who feels like anything more than a white guy's idea of what it must be like to be black or hispanic.

Chevy Chase, Md.: Has your collaboration with David Hare (if that is an accurate description) on the screenplay for "The Hours" motivate you to work on screenplays or theatre directly?

Michael Cunningham: My collaboration with David Hare was very much a sort of 90/10 proposition. I don't think anything should be written by more than one person. David did talk to me along the way and before he started and after he finished and listened to my ideas and I did feel very much included in the process and would not have wanted to be any more included than that.

But, yes, I have actually since then written an adaptation of my own first novel, "A HOme at the End of the World," and after I'm finished with the novel I'm working on now, I want to try an original screenplay. Because I promised Julianne Moore that I would write her a part in which she has no children and the terms "neurotic" and "long suffering" could not in any way be applied.

Harrisburg, Pa.: Are there any particular messages, points, or themes you sought to bring out in your writing? Also, how familiar with Virginia Woolf do you expect a reader to be to fully grasp your analogies and your points?

Michael Cunningham: First part -- I don't feel like I have any wisdom to impart to the reader that the reader doesn't have on his or her own. I don't see my fiction as an instrument of moral instruction. I feel like I am more or less standing next to the reader, telling us both a story we already know. Because we already know all the stories, we just delight in hearing them in different forms.

And the second part -- it was always important to me that "The Hours" work for people who have no knowledge whatsoever of Virginia Woolf. There are, of course, symmetries and illusions and jokes that you can only get if you know Woolf and her work, but they're not central or essential. One of my clear desires was that this book be many things, but not in any way a mere annex to an existing book, accessible to the three dozen crackpots who share my particular body of interests.

One of the things that has been most satisfying about the success of "The Hours" is the people who have told me they began to read Woolf after reading "The Hours."

Cleveland Heights, Ohio: Did you have any influence in the casting of the characters or did you ever consider having, for example, Ms. Streep play Laura Brown and Ms. Moore play Clarissa Vaughan?

Michael Cunningham: The short answer is no, I didn't. I think if I had deeply objected to any of the casting they would have listened to me. But look at the cast -- who could object. I did have one conversation before any actors were cast about the part of Richard. Stephen very much wanted it to be a man who had clearly once been a big, handsome specimen. He didn't want the wispy little poet. We kept throwing out names of big hollywood specimens who didn't seem remotely right. And it was confounding that we couldn't think of a studly Hollywood star who seemed remotely believable as a poet. And then Stephen came up with Ed Harris, who was perfect.

New York, N.Y.: Hello Mr. C,

Do you have a cameo in the movie?

Michael Cunningham: You know, yes I do. I actually had two lines with Meryl. I bump into her on Bleeker Street. We do a very graceful turn in each other's arms. She says, "Are you coming to my party." I say, "I am, I wouldn't miss it." I was, however, cut and if you look very closely when she's approaching the flower shop you can see me walking towards her, dreaming of the possibility that the academy will introduce the category Best Actor in a Teeny Tiny Part, little knowing that my dreams would end up on the cutting room floor.

Phoenix, Ariz.: Has winning a Pulizter put more pressure on you for future works?

Michael Cunningham: Yes. Without question. I think the only question is do I need to succumb to the pressure and is the pressure necessarily a bad thing. The answer to that is yes and no. On one hand, I think if you start to write to please anyone except yourself you begin to die as a writer. On the other hand, the idea that "The Hours" which was a risky book was read and embraced by so many people and won a big mainstream prize like this says something hugely encouraging about the world's willingness to absorb unorthodox books which may or may not contain sex scenes and car chases. So, keeping firmly in mind that this recognition indicates a body of readers who are willing to take risks with me, I'm about halfway through an even more peculiar book. Which people very well may hate.

I am working as hard as I can on it now and would love to be finished by this summer.

Casper, Wyo.: Will you continue writing short stories? Your story, "White Angel," is such a powerful story it stays in memory; I used it with my creative writing classes I taught at the local college and it's one I return to often, as a reader.

Michael Cunningham: Thank you, I'm thrilled to think of that story being taught to younger people -- or anybody for that matter! I don't write short stories. I love short stories. I read them all the time, but I rarely write them. My mind doesn't seem to work in those very concentrated short arcs. I tend to need a lot of room to maneuver, to let things accumulate meaning and follow some tangents -- which is a laxity you only have in a novel. "White Angel" is a chapter in my novel "A HOme at the End of the World" and only exists as a piece of something larger. I've written, oh, two short stories in the last 10 years, which means at that rate, if I live to 150 I'll be able to publish my first collection.

Washington, D.C.: Just a question about process. When you started "The Hours," was the chronological structure of the story already evident to you, or did you start with the three different stories and then put them together?

Michael Cunningham: I actually started with just one story. I always enter a novel believing its going to be one thing and by the end of the process have come to understand that its something else. What I set out to do was write a modern day version of Mrs. Dalloway about gay men. That fell apart and very slowly, over time, I found my way to the tryptic that it became. I first added something about Virginia Woolf, I wasn't sure what. I had an idea that she should haunt the modern day Clarissa Dalloway story, like a ghost. I played around with dreams, with the idea of making this modern day Mrs. Dalloway a series of prophetic dreams she was having in the 1920s. I struggled with this nascient formless thing for months before I thought of adding Laura Brown, the third character. I realized I had a writer and a fictional character. What was missing was a reader. When I brought in Laura, then and only then, did the shape and structure present itself and I began to write.

Falls Church, Va.: Have you considered revisiting the works of any other authors? I have to admit, before I read "The Hours" I was suspicious of your motives and pessimistic about your chances of success. Boy was I wrong. I'd be interested in hearing who else's writing lends itself to a similar treatment.

Michael Cunningham: I feel that I cannot possibly in this lifetime write another novel about a great author. I think you get one per lifetime. It would be grotesque after the success of this book to set up some sort of cottage industry and turn out the Jane Austen version. I have found in the new book that Walt Whitman figures prominently, though in a way very different from how Woolf figures in "The Hours."

Washington, D..C: I enjoyed your reading at the FAWC in Ptown this summer. Any chance you'll be doing one here in Washington? Also, I don't remember seeing a review in the New York Times, although there was a good one in the Post.

Michael Cunningham: There is nothing scheduled, but sooner or later, yes. The Times did not review -- we didn't expect them to. It's part of a series of quasi travel books that will be published over the next few years and thus is the kind of book they tend not to review.

Washington, D.C.: Michael:
I'm on the fence about attending a MFA program, and I really admire your writing so I am hoping you might share your thoughts on MFA programs in general. Do you think they are useful? Or do you think it is more useful to study a particular subject area such as English literature, while continuing to write on your own? What do you think of peer critiques in writing workshops?

Michael Cunningham: That's a good question. And its impossible to answer without knowing you. I think MFA programs are enormously helpful to some people. In my experience they work best for writers who've been writing for a while who have developed on their own a certain sense of what they want to write about and how. Who have developed reasonably thick skins and a certain sense of negotiable stubborness and feel that they want or need to spend two years in a sort of miniature world devoted entirely to the creation of beautiful sentences and meaningful fictions. As we know, there's not much enthusiasm -- certainly not in the U.S. -- for people who say they're trying to write but haven't yet been significantly recognized rather than treat them as the heroes they are for attempting to do work that is so important and pays so little. We tend to approach them as hacks and poseurs and to snub them at parties.

Two years in a place where your ambitions are taken with complete serious can be significant. But an MFA is in no way necessary and if you feel that you can get just as much or more out of reading and writing on your own, that is by all means what you should do.

New York, N.Y.: Hi Michael,

I'm sure you've done a million interviews by now. As you've probably answered some of the same redundant questions several times, what's one that you don't mind answering/talking about again and again? Or one that you wish you'd be asked?

Michael Cunningham: In a way that's harder... hmmm. Here's one. This is a question that does come up, but its one that I look forward to and hope will come up whenever I'm doing an interview, which is what other writers alive and writing today do I think highly of.

I think literature is alive and well, never as fully alive or as well as we want it to be, but there are remarkable writers at work today.

Some of my personal favorites are Joanna Scott, Jim Crace, Dennis Johnson, Jonathan Saffron Fore, Manil Suri, Stacy D'erasmo -- that's probably enough for now.

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