Jeffrey Eugenides Talking Books

Darren and the landowner. BBC News now says it's time for Talking

is the American writer Jeffrey Eugenides. He's only written three

novels, but so startling was his debut of The Virgin Suicides in

1993 that everything he has written since has been eagerly anticipated.

In 2003 he ran the Pulitzer Prize for Middlesex, and his third novel

The Marriage Plot is difficult to cat gorise. We met in a London

hotel and he told me why his writing takes him in so many

different directions. Jeffrey Eugenides, welcome to Talking Books.

Thank you. I want to start with your latest novel, The Marriage

Plot, which seems on the surface to be the most conventional of your

novels. The Virgin Suicides, about five girls committing suicide, from

the same family, middlesex about a family. Do you feel that you have,

over the three novels mellowed as a writer? I think if you look at my

first two novels, it will be easy to have the new one seem

conventional by comparison. What I was concerned with with the book

was goinging a deeply as I could into the characters. Each book

teaches you certain things. You gain anability to write in a

certain way. Middlesex I created full-blooded characters. When I

finished that book I knew I wanted to proceed in that direction. That

was the directive I gave myself, to write a dramaticised book about two

or three figures, and to map out their consciousness, but stay close

to the mental processes and emotions and have a character

driven novel. Middlesex was plot driven. Narratives were looping

around, interconnecting. This has a gentle art. There's lots of

surprises and violations. I tried to have a light hand through the

process. Essentially it's a story, a love triangle. The central

character is a woman set in the 1980s, in the east coast college,

they are Liberal arts graduates and it's a year after they have

graduated. You go back to their time at college. Because of the

academic backdrop I wondered whether - it seems the clash

between post modernism and traditionalism is a subject in the

novel. Whether you wrote the novel thinking, "I want this to be a

corrective to all the experimentational novels", that's

what I'm interested in, the socialist realist novel. I am

interested in the socialist realist novel. I'm interested in trying to

do something new. I found the way to do that is combine traditional

elements of the novel with post- modern elements. You can read the

story as a traditional red-blooded love story about young people. You

can read it as a deconstruction of the traditional marriage plot from

Austin, if you are academically inclined. You don't have to think

of it that way. I played with both ideas. In general I wanted to seize

the reader's attention and give them an experience akin to those

that I encountered in reading Toll store and great writers, where you

em-- Toll star, where you empathise with the characters. That's what I

was thinking about. Does it matter which way the reader reacts to it?

There's a sense in this modle and in Middlesex, you have to know a

lot. Whether it's about hermaphroditSm, Or in the marriage

plot about post-modernism, or whether you need to know about a

lot. Do you expect readers to know or do you want to educate them?

don't think you need to know the references in my books. You

understand that I quote a theoretical writer, the thorny bits.

It's always explained in the context. You could read it having

not taken any symiotics. You may enjoy the book if you are an

English major, but you don't need to. The names are the furniture of

the novel. I never want a book to be research-heavy or a formal

exercise. It's fine if people pick up things along the way. How hard

is that. Clearly you have to do the research and try to wear it lightly.

You need to do more research than you use. And that you can feel when

I write the scenes, when it's too heavy. If you put in information

because it's a great bit of information, but it's not

functioning narratively, I cut it out. With Middlesex there's rams of

notes that did not make its -- reams of notes that did not make

its way into the title. Marriage in the 19th century novel mattered and

social equality and divorce killed the novel since that time, is that

something that concerns you, that you as a novelist, that you want to

make the novel important in social culture? Well, I was The argument

that the novel is dead, because marriage no longer means what it's

used tox There's a reason I put the -- used to. There's a reason I put

the argument in the mouth of a professor. These are thought I had,

toyed with. I don't believe them. I began with modernism. I never felt

the novel depended on older structures from Austin or James.

That was one of the tastiest plots that the novel came across, the

marriage plot. And I did lament the fact that a contemporary novelist

was no longer able to treat the plot. I wanted to she was there a

way for a contemporary novelist to grab energies of the marriage plot

but write a contemporary novel where none of the same principles,

outcomes would occur. That's what I thought about. I wasn't worried

whether the novel mattered, I feel like it does. Let's talk about

whether this issue of the novel being relevant or not is important.

Are seen as a generation of writers -- writers are seen as a generation

of wrirs where this is an issue, whereas you say it doesn't seem as

much. I think you are right, I and others, are of a generation where

we want the novel to matter. We think it can convey meaning and

represent the world. How will we do that? We don't want to write novels

that are academic exercises and of interest to other creative writing

professors. We want to reflect our experience and are moving away from

the ironic posture of high-post modernism, where everything was a

slight comment on the inability to convey meaning or the falsity of

social conditions, social interaction. We want to go back and

tell stories again. In doing so, we don't think we are necessarily

being retroyaid. I would agree with that, -- retrograde. I would agree

with that, but many writers have done that all along. There was a

tradition, maybe not an undercurrent, of people that have

told stories about America in a way where readers can find their own

lives depicted and reflected. I think we are coming at the end of

that. But I'm not sure that it's so different than many things going on

in the '40s, '50s, and '60s in the United States. Why choose the 1980s

to set the novel? It's clearly a pre-9/11. The world has changed so

much in the last decade. Why did you choose the 1980s. I guess I'm

pre9/11 in my heart. I chose the '80s... In terms of what, you are

an innocent. I'm an in the. I live in my memory. My books had a

nostalgic quality. I chose the '80s for a simple reason. I went to

college in the '80s. This book connected with semiotics, it's in

the '80s. I wanted to be accurate about the times at college that my

characters were living in, that's when I went to college. I remember

the music, what it was like, the intellectual debates that were

going on. I wanted to set it there. I feel that this book is completely

contemporary. It's contemporary in the main. When I read from this

book, at a college campus, the students respond as though it's

happening - their lives are the same now, emotionally, in terms of

their romantic lives. Even the whole backdrop of intellectualising

all kinds of things? They read the writers. I get e-mails from people

graduating. Boyfriends are as bad now as in the 1980s, so it hasn't

changed. Cell phones, Internet and different ways of communicating,

but in the main the stuff I'm writing about in this book are

eternal questions. I didn't think setting in the '80s unnecessarily

made it historical or passe. heard you quoted that autobiography

is art and when you use it, you a have a pare and find the fiction

outside of the autobiography. There are big autobiographical elements

in your work, or do you reject that idea. No, there certainly are.

Autoio biographical writing is dangerous -- autobiographical

writing is dangerous, because you represent totality of your life.

The section of The Marriage Plot which dovetails to my life is when

Mitchell goes to India and volunteers with with Mother Theresa,

which I did. I wrote that section. It's 40 pages in the novel. I

described everything I saw. Every person I met was described,

everything I ate, everything that I could remember. It was an

overwhelming experience for me. When I read it back, there was no

shape to it. It needed to function in a novel dramatically, that

section. It didn't need to be representative of my life. It

needed to be representative of Mitchell's transit through the book.

I had to cut out almost everything in order to get it to work. It was

the most difficult part of the novel. Whereas the section about

Leonard and his mental illness, something I have not experienced, I

wrote quickly, because I could see what needed to be there. I didn't

have to compete against my memories Part of the portrait of Leonard has

been interpreted by many critics as being a partial portrait of David

Foster Wallace. Is that accurate? It is not correct at all. I could

list a number of differences between Bernard and David Foster

Wallace. I began this novel in the late 90s before I had even met

David Foster Wallace. When I write a character, I think, what kind of

person is this? Then I think of all the people who might resemble that

person and take details from a host of real-life characters and then I

poured a huge amount of myself into the character. My own actions,

memories, thoughts about things. You play around with all these

different elements until finally you have a character that diverges

from everyone you know and becomes his own person. I think when it

does. All of that speculation began on a blog from New York magazine

that was based on the fact that both of these characters wore

bandanas. I pointed out that my bandana comes from Axel Rose Room

Guns N' Roses. Learned is very interested in heavy metal. -- or

Leonard. They ran wild with the bandana idea. Not that people are

reading the book and seen him as a character, I hope that is dying

down. Is it to do with the fact that there is a group of writers,

including yourself and David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen, who

were writing a roundabout the same time and there is a sense that what

you had similar concerns and there was a kind of rivalry, sharing

their ambitions? Is that partly what makes people say... When it is

based on Jonathan Franzen. I will tell you for the first time here. I

just disguise to be the bandana so no-one would realise. There is a

review that said that Madeleine is Jonathan Franzen! All of my

characters are Jonathan Franzen! I can't get enough of him! I think it

is true, because they are lumping us to get banned writing an article,

the author of the article is a very good writer. I enjoy talking to him,

but the truth is that we did not know each other. We were really

young and starting out. I had other writer friends there were very

helpful to me early on. The article in New York magazine was called

Just Kids. I think that is because we met each other when we were in

our 20s. The truth is I met Jonathan Franzen when I was 34. We

had many discussions about the novel. He was writing The

Corrections then and I was writing Middlesex. I do not think it was

true to say we were all competing in some kind of small hot house

together. We may have competed with each other and netted each other by

reading each other before we ever met. Boasters what an hour about

David Foster Wallace I learnt from reading his novels. Not from any

discussions. But writers are put together and are together in some

way. So finally they wrote an article and acted as if we were

always hanging out and discussing things. But David Foster Wallace

beaches in Jonathan Franzen's writing. Could you talk about his

influence? Can you say a bit about his influence on your generation of

writers? When you read David Foster Wallace the first time, what you

are whereof is someone who captured the sound of his time, the sound of

our generation better than anyone. Every now and then that happens.

You read a writer and that is exactly how people think and sound.

Mrs Our World represented. It seems so fresh and excited many come

across that. That is what I think was his great power and why

everyone admired his work so much. They were very close, Wallace and

friends in. -- Jonathan Franzen. One of the things that are clearly

interested Wallace was being a seeker of truth. I would like to

ask you about the centrality of religion and the pursuit of the

fate. Mitchell is clearly somebody who, he is a divinity student, he

is engaged with that, but is it a fundamental data. What made you

want to place that as a central theme? The The Marriage Plot

references many traditional novelistic themes. One thing I find

curiously absent from contemporary novels his religion. The search for

truth. People have not stopped asking themselves this question.

How should I move? What does it mean to be a good person? Is a

meaning to existence or is it meaningless? I wanted to bring that

back to my novel. Wallace was interested in that also. That gives

our generation, the novels about generation, it marks the difference

between them and the writers who came before because I think we are

trying to find out what trick is and saying that maybe there is a

truth or Dare is the possibility of describing a partial truth in the

novels. That goes against the reader and others -- director and

others. -- Derrida. There is an absence in contemporary novels

given how large religion looms in contemporary society. If you are in

the US, you can't be -- help but be aware of religion. Usually in a

form that is slightly scary. With Mitchell, the difficulty was

writing about a character who is sincere in his religious

inclinations but also full of doubt and scepticism. I did not want to

make him a figure of fun. Just a college kid who goes to India to

find himself. I wanted to be gracious to him and tender about

these feelings he has and yet, I also knew he is intelligent and

does not accept many of the doctrines he is being asked to

believe. It is a fine wine to walk and it gave me a lot of difficulty

to write. There is a sense that you could argue that all three of your

novels are coming-of-age novels. In the Virgin Suicides, although the

list -- was then sisters all kill themselves, there is a -- an

undercurrent of reluctance to enter into the adult world. Middlesex is

about being on the cost of being a teenager. With the The Marriage

Plot, the three characters are trying to navigate their way

through the world as adults. All three novels are about being on the

cusp of being an adult. It seems to be what I have done. You could

describe The Marriage Plot as a coming-of-age novel if you agree

that they do all, they each. These figures are fully adult when

describing the things they are thinking and examining their lives.

I thought I could be intelligent as possible in their approach to

recreate their thoughts. I was not writing about people who did not

have a deep self understanding. They do. Yet, they are young and

confused and passionate. I have always enjoyed writing about

characters like that. Young people are trying to pick him out today

are and are often putting on different cells to see if they fit.

You are writing about a character who is writing himself or herself,

trying to create themselves. That is very rich material for a

novelist. You never know what they're going to do. Mitchell goes

off on his religious search. Leonard becomes very different then

he might be otherwise.Writing about characters who are changing and

perhaps growing. Mutating. These characters are not static. I have

found in my three novels writing about young people to be conducive

to dramatic treatment. So insular debut with the Virgin Suicides, you

have written two other and novels. Do you feel you have come of age as

a novelist? Do you feel at ease as a writer? I think I'm getting the

hang of it. I am getting a sense that I can do it again. Don DeLillo

once told me, your first book comes to is a gift. You don't know how to

rotate. The second book is the book that teaches you you can actually

do it. I agree with that but after the third, I feel more so. I am not

the kind of novelist he will always repeat the same novel. I do feel a

kind of anxiety on the level of the sentence for the first 20 years of

my writing career. I did not know how I wanted my books to sound. I

did not know if I could actually get my point across. That started