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| Photo By Karen Yamauchi |
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Acclaimed novelist Jeffrey Eugenides speaks at the Merantile Library April 13.
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Jeffrey Eugenides' first novel,
The Virgin Suicides, is a masterpiece of curiosity and lust. Set in 1970s suburban Michigan, the narrative focuses on the Lisbon family, specifically its five mysterious teenage daughters. True to its ominous title, things go deeply awry as Eugenides creates a darkly humorous, pitch-perfect evocation of adolescent desire. We learn of the girls' demise via the collective voice of the neighborhood's boys, who are completely enraptured by the beautiful and strange Lisbon girls.
The Virgin Suicides is a penetrating debut highlighted by Eugenides' elegant, deadpan prose and vivid, detail-rich imagination. Grandiose proclamations of Eugendies' talent flowed freely after its 1993 publication and Sophia Coppola's fine film version brought more attention.
His follow-up, Middlesex, took nine years to complete and centers on a hermaphrodite, not exactly the best way to capitalize on early success. Yet don't go looking for a sophomore slump: Middlesex is another deeply evocative effort that expands Eugenides' ample imaginative powers further. Middlesex tells the globetrotting, time-shifting saga of the Greek-American Stephanides family as narrated by Calliope/Cal, a hermaphrodite in, yes, '70s Michigan. Part coming-of-age tale, part historical investigation, the reception to Middlesex was just as rapturous: It won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
For a Midwestern guy who grew up amid your typical suburban milieu -- albeit one who graduated from Brown University before earning his master's degree in creative writing from Stanford University -- Eugenides has an uncanny ability to channel the female experience and, in his words, "weird sexual deviances." His portrayal of Middlesex's Calliope, who believes she is female until an incident at the age of 14, is deeply convincing.
"It's an experience I myself don't know about, so I have to proceed like an actor and try to become somebody else in order to write the book," he says by phone from his Chicago home. "I just try to put myself in the position of my characters and imagine what they went through. It's a kind of method acting approach, immersing yourself as deeply as you can in the emotional terrain of what you're trying to portray."
When the subject of his lengthy gestation period between novels comes up, Eugenides has a question for the questioner. "Should I have written more?" There's a long pause as he awaits a response. "I write a book when I think I have something worth people's time. I don't think I need to be on a timetable or to write a book every two years ... when I have something ready, then I decide to publish it."
What he's published has garnered lofty press, a fact he takes in stride. "It's probably easier to discount praise than to discount criticism. I'm usually critical of my own abilities, so if I read someone saying something's wrong with my book I usually will readily agree with that. I'm gratified by good reviews, but I don't believe all my press."
Born in 1960 to a Greek-American father and a Kentucky-bred mother, Eugenides had his future mapped out at an early age. "Once I knew I wanted to be a writer, I did spend an enormous amount of time reading novels and finding writers I like, taking apart their books and teaching myself," he says. "I took creative writing in graduate school and I did a lot of things to become a writer. I approached it pretty much as a profession that I wanted to go into and I had to learn a body of knowledge like a doctor or a lawyer would."
Which brings us to the topic of his next novel. "Oh, it's a secret. It might be set in Chicago, actually. But it's around 1982, and most of the characters are college age. I assume this will be shorter, but you never know what will happen."
Jeffrey Eugenides appears for a reading and signing April 13 at the Mercanatile Library. To reserve a seat, call 513-621-0717.
