Middlesex
Sounds like something you might want to read?
Well, believe it or not, I didn't at first.
The reason is simple: I don't read novels. Okay, I do read novels, but I don't read them for the story. I read them for the style, the personal voice that is unique to every author (and therefore 'personal') and also the humour that each exhibits.
So even though I could care less what happens to Oliver Twist, I still read Dickens. But truth be told, I have never managed to finish a single novel of Dickens'. Honestly, Dickens can be just a little too ambitious in his plots sometimes. Take Nicholas Nickleby for instance, he wasted chapters and chapters on Nicholas' 'adventures' with some theatre group which, in my opinion, was irrelevant to the main plot and therefore redundant. Alright, I did not get as far as the theatre group (I watched the movie before I read the book, or less than 1/4 of the book) but anyone could have guessed it.
I read Catch-22 for the humour and the circular logic which made it funny. The story itself made little sense to me. In fact, I thought the whole story was truly weird. Sometimes, the book was funny but hollow like it was being funny for the sake of being funny. The sequel, Closing Time, was plain bad and was left unfinished.
I read Orwell for his style mainly and sometimes also his views on politics and current affairs (most of which are no longer current now). Actually, I don't really care for his takes on communism among farm animals or the totalitarian society in 1984. The books I really enjoyed were his more autobiographical ones. I found his Down and Out in Paris and London a particularly satisfying read, as well as his essay piece titled 'Why I write' in which he detailed his childhood and time spent in a boarding school. As we all know (either from Dickens or from movies made about them), boarding schools were horrible places to be. The administrators didn't feed the kids enough and stole their weekly allowances sent by their parents. The school masters and their wives were formidable creatures to be feared and obeyed and they asserted their authority with canes so thick that you thought they would never break.
I read Hemingway because of his Farewell to Arms but it wasn't even remotely raunchy and I was majorly disappointed. The movie was way better and it had Sandra Bullock in it. I continued to read his books for a while before admitting to myself that I didn't really like them.
I read Frank McCourt because I truly liked reading his books (I still do). His are actually autobiographies detailing his miserable Irish Catholic childhood and in later sequels, his life in America and his job as a high school teacher. I like the detached manner in which he told his sad stories and the way he could be funny without intentionally trying to be so. It is like the way some people can tell jokes with a straight face. So even though he is not nearly as famous as the dead guys whose books I have also been reading (and often not understanding), I have always ranked him as my favourite author of all times.
And that is about to be challenged.
Because of Jeffrey Eugenides.
Most of you might not even heard of him (shame on you if you haven't). He has written only 2 books so far. Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides.
I like his style, his humour and also his story. I don't usually come across books like that. McCourt's books don't count because of their autobiographical nature. Like I said, I don't usually read books for their stories. The only book that I have read purely for its story (it's the Da Vinci Code by the way), I found the style of writing infantile at best. The others which I picked because of the authors, I often found myself only distantly involved in the plot. Most of the time, I just wanted to get them over and done with. That is also why I have taken to borrowing books instead of buying them - less guilt if I don't finish reading.
It was different for Eugenides' books. I actually wanted to know where the story was going. In fact, I was anxious to know what was happening next.
And he doesn't just tell stories. He weaves in mythology, philosophy, genetics, history, sexuality and a whole bunch of other things. I usually hate descriptive stuff like how the sun stains the horizon with (insert colour) and how the mad passions of animals stir within someone blar blar but the way Eugenides does them, somehow those descriptive stuff don't seem as irritating anymore. In fact, I found them rather poetic and often with a touch of humour.
Here are the examples:
"Mr da Silva had been born in Brazil. This was hard to notice. He wasn't exactly the Carnival type. The Latin details ofhis childhood had been erased by a North American education and a love of the European novel."
"Father Mike was popular with church widows. They liked to crowd around him, offering him cookies and bathing in his beatific essence. Part of this essence came from Father Mike's perfect contentment at being only five foot four. His shortness had a charitable aspect to it, as though he had given away his height."
"He liked to quote that witty lady's opinion on the German language, which held that German wasn't good for conversation because you had to wait to the end of the sentence for the verb, and so couldn't interrupt."
"Dr Luce even analyzed my prose style to see if I wrote in a linear, masculine way, or in a circular, feminine one. All I know is this: despite my androgenized brain, there's an innate feminine circularity in the story I have to tell."
"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 feelings."
"Our religion's adherence to the Julian calendar has once again left us out of sync with the neighbourhood. Two Sundays ago, my brother watched as the other kids on the block hunted multicolored eggs in nearby bushes. He saw his friends eating the heads off chocolate bunnies and tossing handfuls of jelly beans into cavity-rich mouths. (Standing at the window, my brother wanted more than anything to believe in an American God who got resurrected on that day)."
"A scene like this, a ransom scene, calls for a noirish mood: shadows, sinister silhouettes. But the sky wasn't cooperating. We were having one of our pink nights."
I like the way he plays with words. A bit of Catch-22, which is evident in the 'Father Mike' quote. A bit of Frank McCourt - the unpremeditated humour which is present everywhere. But mostly himself. The observant, philosophical, well-read and incredibly funny Jeffrey Eugenides.
Ah, onto Seven Types of Ambiguity now.
Wait, I haven't actually told you what Middlesex is all about right?
Our protagonist is a hermaphrodite with cryptorchidism or, in simple English, "a developmental defect marked by the failure of the testes to descend into the scrotum". He is genetically male because of his XY karyotype. He has a penis so small that it was thought to be a clitoris.
The mistake was only discovered when an accident brought him to the emergency room at age fourteen. Before that, he had lived his life as a girl named Caliope, of Greek descent. After finding out his true biological identity, he changed his name to Cal.
His parents were cousins. But to truly comprehend the complexity of their family tree, we will have to start with Callie/Cal's grandparents. His grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty, were siblings. Supposedly, consanguinity was rather common in their small village back in Asia Minor (A peninsula of western Asia between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea) and so was hermaphrodism. Their son, Milton (also Cal's father), married Tessie who was the daughter of Desdemona and Lefty's cousin, Sourmelina. A lot of intermarrying there.
Callie was very pretty as a baby girl but as she went into puberty, her features started to masculinize. She never developed any breasts, nor did she start menstruating like most of the other girls of her age. At the boarding school that she went to, she started forming a curious relationship with a girl whom he named the Obscure Object. The Object, for short, belonged to the Charm Bracelets who were the pretty, wealthy and haughty members of the school and in essence, the people who would never mix with girls like Callie.
However, one day, an opportunity presented itself in the form of a school play. Callie volunteered to go through the script with the Object and from there, they became really good friends. The Object invited Callie to her vacation home during the summer break. Sharing the same room, their friendship developed into something more. They had sex which, in my opinion, involved no more than a bit of fingering and dry humping. But it was sex nonetheless. So Callie was a lesbian before she became a 'he'. And that begs the question: was she a lesbian because of 'him' who resided clandestinely in her or was 'she' really into girls? There was no way of telling.
As luck would have it, their affair was discovered by the Object's evil and lecherous brother (who also had sex with Callie). He called his sister a 'carpet muncher' (read: lesbian who likes to lick the you-know-what) and she ran off crying. Callie punched him and he ran after her. She ran into a tractor and was sent to the emergency room.
After the discovery of her hermaphrodism, her parents brought her to a clinic in New York (they lived near Detroit) which was famous for treating people with sexual disorders. There an evaluation was done on Callie. It was decided that Callie would undergo a operation to remove the unwanted penis and be given female hormones to aid the development of breasts so that she could, at least on the surface, live as a normal girl. The recommendation was based on numerous factors, such as how the subject was brought up (Callie was brought up as a girl), the subject's mannerism and character (were they predominantly effeminate or masculine?), the subject's sexual orientation (which Callie lied about being exclusively attracted to boys) and the subject's family (were they the conservative kind or the more open kind?).
It was not revealed to Callie or her parents that she, or rather he, was of a XY karyotype and that made him genetically male. When Callie found out the truth, she ran away to become a he. He travelled across the country, hitchhiking. And after he had spent every single cent of his money, he ended up in a freak show. It was only after the show was busted by the police that he finally got into touch with his family. His father had died by then.
As a middle age adult, he worked for the Foreign Services. He never got into any serious relationship with women because of his condition until one day, he met a woman who could connect with him and more importantly, accepted him for who he was.
So yeah it was all a happy ending except that the story was told in retrospect (actually not entirely true also because the story wasn't told in the chronological order at all). Anyway, if you consider the fact that the story ended with Milton's death, then it wasn't exactly a 'happy' ending. And really, there wasn't an 'ending' at all. It is like the way the fairytales 'end' with the princes and Cinderellas living happily ever after. They don't. Nobody knows what happens after the wedding. Would they bicker over their parenting styles? Would the new princess get along with her mother-in-law, the Queen? Would they get tired of each other? Would the desperate princess engage in an illicit affair with the gardener? (Oh sorry that's another show)
Stories end when the real, often boring, lives begin. (I don't apologize for pretending to be deep.)
P.S. Spanish class was ultra fun!!!
Well, believe it or not, I didn't at first.
The reason is simple: I don't read novels. Okay, I do read novels, but I don't read them for the story. I read them for the style, the personal voice that is unique to every author (and therefore 'personal') and also the humour that each exhibits.
So even though I could care less what happens to Oliver Twist, I still read Dickens. But truth be told, I have never managed to finish a single novel of Dickens'. Honestly, Dickens can be just a little too ambitious in his plots sometimes. Take Nicholas Nickleby for instance, he wasted chapters and chapters on Nicholas' 'adventures' with some theatre group which, in my opinion, was irrelevant to the main plot and therefore redundant. Alright, I did not get as far as the theatre group (I watched the movie before I read the book, or less than 1/4 of the book) but anyone could have guessed it.
I read Catch-22 for the humour and the circular logic which made it funny. The story itself made little sense to me. In fact, I thought the whole story was truly weird. Sometimes, the book was funny but hollow like it was being funny for the sake of being funny. The sequel, Closing Time, was plain bad and was left unfinished.
I read Orwell for his style mainly and sometimes also his views on politics and current affairs (most of which are no longer current now). Actually, I don't really care for his takes on communism among farm animals or the totalitarian society in 1984. The books I really enjoyed were his more autobiographical ones. I found his Down and Out in Paris and London a particularly satisfying read, as well as his essay piece titled 'Why I write' in which he detailed his childhood and time spent in a boarding school. As we all know (either from Dickens or from movies made about them), boarding schools were horrible places to be. The administrators didn't feed the kids enough and stole their weekly allowances sent by their parents. The school masters and their wives were formidable creatures to be feared and obeyed and they asserted their authority with canes so thick that you thought they would never break.
I read Hemingway because of his Farewell to Arms but it wasn't even remotely raunchy and I was majorly disappointed. The movie was way better and it had Sandra Bullock in it. I continued to read his books for a while before admitting to myself that I didn't really like them.
I read Frank McCourt because I truly liked reading his books (I still do). His are actually autobiographies detailing his miserable Irish Catholic childhood and in later sequels, his life in America and his job as a high school teacher. I like the detached manner in which he told his sad stories and the way he could be funny without intentionally trying to be so. It is like the way some people can tell jokes with a straight face. So even though he is not nearly as famous as the dead guys whose books I have also been reading (and often not understanding), I have always ranked him as my favourite author of all times.
And that is about to be challenged.
Because of Jeffrey Eugenides.
Most of you might not even heard of him (shame on you if you haven't). He has written only 2 books so far. Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides.
I like his style, his humour and also his story. I don't usually come across books like that. McCourt's books don't count because of their autobiographical nature. Like I said, I don't usually read books for their stories. The only book that I have read purely for its story (it's the Da Vinci Code by the way), I found the style of writing infantile at best. The others which I picked because of the authors, I often found myself only distantly involved in the plot. Most of the time, I just wanted to get them over and done with. That is also why I have taken to borrowing books instead of buying them - less guilt if I don't finish reading.
It was different for Eugenides' books. I actually wanted to know where the story was going. In fact, I was anxious to know what was happening next.
And he doesn't just tell stories. He weaves in mythology, philosophy, genetics, history, sexuality and a whole bunch of other things. I usually hate descriptive stuff like how the sun stains the horizon with (insert colour) and how the mad passions of animals stir within someone blar blar but the way Eugenides does them, somehow those descriptive stuff don't seem as irritating anymore. In fact, I found them rather poetic and often with a touch of humour.
Here are the examples:
"Mr da Silva had been born in Brazil. This was hard to notice. He wasn't exactly the Carnival type. The Latin details ofhis childhood had been erased by a North American education and a love of the European novel."
"Father Mike was popular with church widows. They liked to crowd around him, offering him cookies and bathing in his beatific essence. Part of this essence came from Father Mike's perfect contentment at being only five foot four. His shortness had a charitable aspect to it, as though he had given away his height."
"He liked to quote that witty lady's opinion on the German language, which held that German wasn't good for conversation because you had to wait to the end of the sentence for the verb, and so couldn't interrupt."
"Dr Luce even analyzed my prose style to see if I wrote in a linear, masculine way, or in a circular, feminine one. All I know is this: despite my androgenized brain, there's an innate feminine circularity in the story I have to tell."
"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 feelings."
"Our religion's adherence to the Julian calendar has once again left us out of sync with the neighbourhood. Two Sundays ago, my brother watched as the other kids on the block hunted multicolored eggs in nearby bushes. He saw his friends eating the heads off chocolate bunnies and tossing handfuls of jelly beans into cavity-rich mouths. (Standing at the window, my brother wanted more than anything to believe in an American God who got resurrected on that day)."
"A scene like this, a ransom scene, calls for a noirish mood: shadows, sinister silhouettes. But the sky wasn't cooperating. We were having one of our pink nights."
I like the way he plays with words. A bit of Catch-22, which is evident in the 'Father Mike' quote. A bit of Frank McCourt - the unpremeditated humour which is present everywhere. But mostly himself. The observant, philosophical, well-read and incredibly funny Jeffrey Eugenides.
Ah, onto Seven Types of Ambiguity now.
Wait, I haven't actually told you what Middlesex is all about right?
Our protagonist is a hermaphrodite with cryptorchidism or, in simple English, "a developmental defect marked by the failure of the testes to descend into the scrotum". He is genetically male because of his XY karyotype. He has a penis so small that it was thought to be a clitoris.
The mistake was only discovered when an accident brought him to the emergency room at age fourteen. Before that, he had lived his life as a girl named Caliope, of Greek descent. After finding out his true biological identity, he changed his name to Cal.
His parents were cousins. But to truly comprehend the complexity of their family tree, we will have to start with Callie/Cal's grandparents. His grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty, were siblings. Supposedly, consanguinity was rather common in their small village back in Asia Minor (A peninsula of western Asia between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea) and so was hermaphrodism. Their son, Milton (also Cal's father), married Tessie who was the daughter of Desdemona and Lefty's cousin, Sourmelina. A lot of intermarrying there.
Callie was very pretty as a baby girl but as she went into puberty, her features started to masculinize. She never developed any breasts, nor did she start menstruating like most of the other girls of her age. At the boarding school that she went to, she started forming a curious relationship with a girl whom he named the Obscure Object. The Object, for short, belonged to the Charm Bracelets who were the pretty, wealthy and haughty members of the school and in essence, the people who would never mix with girls like Callie.
However, one day, an opportunity presented itself in the form of a school play. Callie volunteered to go through the script with the Object and from there, they became really good friends. The Object invited Callie to her vacation home during the summer break. Sharing the same room, their friendship developed into something more. They had sex which, in my opinion, involved no more than a bit of fingering and dry humping. But it was sex nonetheless. So Callie was a lesbian before she became a 'he'. And that begs the question: was she a lesbian because of 'him' who resided clandestinely in her or was 'she' really into girls? There was no way of telling.
As luck would have it, their affair was discovered by the Object's evil and lecherous brother (who also had sex with Callie). He called his sister a 'carpet muncher' (read: lesbian who likes to lick the you-know-what) and she ran off crying. Callie punched him and he ran after her. She ran into a tractor and was sent to the emergency room.
After the discovery of her hermaphrodism, her parents brought her to a clinic in New York (they lived near Detroit) which was famous for treating people with sexual disorders. There an evaluation was done on Callie. It was decided that Callie would undergo a operation to remove the unwanted penis and be given female hormones to aid the development of breasts so that she could, at least on the surface, live as a normal girl. The recommendation was based on numerous factors, such as how the subject was brought up (Callie was brought up as a girl), the subject's mannerism and character (were they predominantly effeminate or masculine?), the subject's sexual orientation (which Callie lied about being exclusively attracted to boys) and the subject's family (were they the conservative kind or the more open kind?).
It was not revealed to Callie or her parents that she, or rather he, was of a XY karyotype and that made him genetically male. When Callie found out the truth, she ran away to become a he. He travelled across the country, hitchhiking. And after he had spent every single cent of his money, he ended up in a freak show. It was only after the show was busted by the police that he finally got into touch with his family. His father had died by then.
As a middle age adult, he worked for the Foreign Services. He never got into any serious relationship with women because of his condition until one day, he met a woman who could connect with him and more importantly, accepted him for who he was.
So yeah it was all a happy ending except that the story was told in retrospect (actually not entirely true also because the story wasn't told in the chronological order at all). Anyway, if you consider the fact that the story ended with Milton's death, then it wasn't exactly a 'happy' ending. And really, there wasn't an 'ending' at all. It is like the way the fairytales 'end' with the princes and Cinderellas living happily ever after. They don't. Nobody knows what happens after the wedding. Would they bicker over their parenting styles? Would the new princess get along with her mother-in-law, the Queen? Would they get tired of each other? Would the desperate princess engage in an illicit affair with the gardener? (Oh sorry that's another show)
Stories end when the real, often boring, lives begin. (I don't apologize for pretending to be deep.)
P.S. Spanish class was ultra fun!!!
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