Twelve Twelve Ten: February 2010

Editor's note: This review is the opener of my Twelve Twelve Ten project. (Props to Nick Lantz for the idea.) The basics: I will do my best to read (and compose short review/responses to) one book per month for the next ten years. My reviews are not meant to be overly critical. Instead, I hope to help generate a discussion around books that I find interesting, baffling, enjoyable, maddening, uplifting. In short, books that beg for a response. I am willing to take suggestions, though ideally, I want to work through books I own before taking on more, as my secondary goal is to clear off my bookshelf by getting through novels I've neglected for far too long. If you have a different "take" on Middlesex, please share it below. I'm curious to see how other's responded to this book. And while I began this project with Angela's Ashes, I decided against reviewing it. In truth, the depression brought on by that book made it hard to consider anything beyond its utter despair--not a good ingredient for a review. So, without further ado...

Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Soft cover
Publisher: Picador
2002, 529 pp., $15

My philosophy on resolutions is that there’s no better way to start than by taking one of the biggest bites right off the bat. This is how I find myself turning the last page of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex in the middle of March, about two weeks overdue. (I promise to right myself this month). Despite overlapping a bit into March, I’ve gotten through the book. But that’s probably the wrong way to put it; I sound like reading the book wasn’t a pleasurable experience. In reality, Middlesex is simply incredible: an epic, historic (even Homeric) literary novel that is somehow still a page-turner (similar, in my reading experience, to E. Anne Proulx’s The Shipping News). It’s so stunningly poetic, I’m finding it hard to resist devolving into a muttering pile of superlatives. Wonderful! Brilliant! At times, orgasmic!

Instead, I should let the book show you what I mean. To describe the burning Greek city of Smyrnos, Eugenides’ narrator Cal describes the flames reflecting on the water, the water brightening as “though a school of phosphorescent fish had entered the harbor” (56). Later on, there’s this passage, an illustration of the book's mix of imagination and conflict over language and culture, of the inability to express emotion in a meaningful way:

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy." … I’d like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for the "excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever. (217)

The book is full-up with these kinds of imaginative flourishes—a man woos a woman by playing a clarinet against her thighs, another man drives his car through the ice only to reemerge chapters later in a Mosque, an awkward teenager is turned into a mythological god in a dunk tank—and most of these images, the “life” of the book, is supplied by the first-person narrator, whom The New York Times described as a cross between Tristram Shandy, Ismael, and Holden Caulfield. The voice of the narrator is unquestionably vibrant and unique, but sometimes, such a classification—“strong voice”—can be an underhanded slight against technique. (Think performance poetry). I’m here to clarify that there’s no loss in technique, that as a poet, there were many moments that I wanted to tattoo the text into my brain because it’s just that well-written. This, for you writers out there, is a book to learn from.

While completing my Bachelor’s, I stumbled upon Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides in the dusty stacks of UW-Green Bay’s Cofrin Library, and because I remember this book lodged in the backpacks of all the “cool” and “enlightened” girls in high school, I decided to read it. While the three-person narration was interesting and the book on a whole is competent, The Virgin Suicides is nowhere near the level of Middlesex, which isn’t to disparage Eugenides’ first book. Instead, it’s incredible to witness the growth from one book to the next. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and it’s not surprising to see why. This is a book that’s whittled a permanent place on my bookshelf.

My goal of getting rid of books is starting to fail miserably (though on second thought, Middlesex is too good to hold onto. I must, instead, send it on to someone else who’d appreciate it). Of course, it has its faults, particularly, the imbalance between the story of the Stephanides family and the more immediate story line of Cal's present struggle with sexuality. The craft, however, masks these (minor, in my opinion) issues with plot. Then again, as a poet, I probably read fiction for different reasons than the general populous. Lovers of words, take up the book. Those looking for Dan Brown thrillers, look elsewhere.

Two months down. Up next, John Smolens’ new novel The Anarchist. Check back at the end of March (or maybe, the first week of April).