At the age of three, Michael Cunningham began obsessively collecting the names of things: oak, Chevrolet, finch, tulip, Tupperware. Each word rendered the world ever so slightly more understandable, more describable, kicking off a lifelong love affair with language --- one that would, eventually, maybe inevitably, lead him to become a writer. In UNSAYABLE, Cunningham’s memories spill forth, and with them reflections on the craft of writing. He is 15, in a swimming pool at night, gazing at the first boy he ever fell in love with. He is a new college graduate, setting off for nowhere in a Dodge Dart, hoping to pull meaning (and a novel) from the expanse of America. He is in an art gallery, unwittingly having the first in a lifetime of conversations with the man he would marry.