I first read Vinson Cunningham’s writing in the early fall of 2014, when I was serving as a judge for a writing contest sponsored by McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. We were looking for new columnists for the website, and contest entries required a short description of the column, three ideas for possible installments, and then one full example column.
Cunningham’s column was titled “Field Notes from Gentrified Places.” The contest would receive around 1,000 entries from which five would be chosen as winners. My co-judge and I, Chris Monks (the site’s editor), had a system where we would both read each entry and then flag them as “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe” in terms of meriting additional consideration. When we compared notes, both of us had given “Field Notes” a resounding “yes.”
I’m now prepared to give a resounding “yes” to Cunningham’s recently published first novel, “Great Expectations.”
As I recall, once Cunningham’s writing started to appear on McSweeney’s and the unique contours of his writing struck others the way it had us, he was quickly snapped up by larger publications that could afford to pay more, and we released him from his commitment with our blessing. Since then, he’s established himself as a staff writer and theater critic at The New Yorker, and I’ve been following his career from afar the way you might root on a ballplayer you first saw play in high school who now features in the majors.
“Great Expectations” is a combination coming-of-age novel and roman à clef about 23-year-old David who finds himself working as a tutor to the children of the African American gentry of New York City, and through these connections winds up with a job as a fundraising staffer on the presidential campaign for a figure referred to as “the candidate,” who is also obviously Barack Obama.
Once a young man of promise, David has been derailed by an unplanned child with a college girlfriend with whom he shares custody. But once swept into the orbit of the wealthy and power-seeking who use money to try to secure access and influence to “the candidate” he’s on a new journey.
I’m making it sound like a thriller, but the novel is up to other stuff as David weaves through the present and past seeking to make sense of his life and the world around him, a largely absent and then deceased father, a powerful faith and ties to the church that he cannot help but question, his simultaneous attraction to and distrust of the rich and powerful he now moves among.
The pleasure of “Great Expectations” is in Cunningham’s close and careful rendering of David’s experience through the sharing of observations and memory. It’s done in such a way that the reader is given intimate access to another mind at work. This intimacy grows in power the longer we spend with David. As the days of the campaign count down and David reaches for the memories that need the most sorting — the death of his father, the birth of his daughter — we understand that our time with him is coming to a close and we, or at least I, felt a small sense of loss.
The novel reminds me in a way of Walker Percy’s classic “The Moviegoer,” another novel about a young man confused about God and life. Percy’s Binx Bolling and Cunningham’s David both go searching while having no real idea what they’re looking for, examining everything they can in the quest for meaning.
By the end, it’s not clear what, if anything they’ve found, but we come to understand that it has always been the journey that’s the point, and the journey never ends.
This cover image released by Hogarth shows “Great Expectations” by Vinson Cunningham. (Hogarth via AP)
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post” by Allison Pataki
2. “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism” by Tim Alberta
3. “The Women of Chateau Lafayette” by Stephanie Dray
4. “The Last Night in London” by Karen White
5. “The French Gift” by Kirsty Manning
— Nancy B., Naperville
Nancy has a clear pull toward historical dramatic fiction, so I’m recommending a book by a leading figure of the genre who I feel like we don’t consider enough anymore, E.L. Doctorow. The specific pick is “The World’s Fair.”
1. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus
2. “Educated” by Tara Westover
3. “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt
4. “A Girl Called Samson” by Amy Harmon
5. “The Echo of Old Books” by Barbara Davis
— Cathy P., Iola, Wisconsin
I guess I’m in a classic mood this week because I’m recommending “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” by Carson McCullers.
1. Old Testament prophets from the Bible
2. “The Killing Zone: How and Why Pilots Die” by Paul A. Craig
3. “Not Dead and Not for Sale” by Scott Weiland
4. “Between Two Strangers” by Kate White
5. “The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food” by Andrew Friedman
— Charlaine R., Chicago
This is a very difficult list in its sheer variety. I’m going to lean into those prophets and recommend a prophetic novel, James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
