Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Kent Eugenidesis an American novelist and short story writer. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex, and The Marriage Plot. The Virgin Suicides has been filmed, while Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and France's Prix Médicis...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth8 March 1960
CityDetroit, MI
CountryUnited States of America
On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide- it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese- the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.
The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us.
That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.
no reason to mention my peculiarities, my wandering in the maze these many years, shut away from sight. and from love, too.
In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.
We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the version of the world they really believed in...
But maybe the Charm Bracelets understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn't waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing, I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.
The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind.
Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.
The humming of my parents' voices from behind my bedroom wall, which throughout my childhood had filled me with a sense of security, had now become a source of anxiety and panic.
Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.
There have been hermaphrodites around forever, Cal. Forever. Plato said that the original human being was a hermaphrodite. Did you know that? The original person was two halves, one male, one female. Then these got separated. That's why everybody's always searching for their other half. Except for us. We've got both halves already.
The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It's a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison.
Where else would she feel more comfortable than in this subterranean realm where people wrote down what they couldn't say, where they gave voice to their most shameful longings and knowledge?