Most of us are familiar with the work of Jeffrey Eugenides in one way or another. His debut novel, The Virgin Suicides, was adapted into a film by Sofia Coppola and has been translated into 34 languages. The 2002 novel Middlesex earned the Pulitzer Prize, and he joined Princeton’s prestigious creative writing faculty in 2007. Earlier this month, Eugenides released The Marriage Plot, a novel about three recent Brown graduates wading into the milieu of the 1980s. Recess’ Jake Stanley spoke to Eugenides about what went into the novel’s creation.
Recess: There are a number of similarities between the 1980s setting of the novel and our present day economic and political situation. What does this say about how the world and America both change and stay the same?
Jeffrey Eugenides: When I was writing the book I didn’t realize that there was a recession coming...so it’s kind of a coincidence. It certainly does serve to remind us of the cyclical nature of capitalism and how these things keep happening and will continue to happen.
R: In a recent New York magazine article about yourself, [David] Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen, the writer asks whether contemporary fiction should seek to master the sweep of culture in an innovative way or tell a more intimate story to deliver reading pleasure. Which of these ideas is more important to you?
JE: I’m not sure you have to choose. I certainly want to tell intimate stories and entertain and beguile the reader. But depending on what that story is, I might choose to write a sweeping story about a large swath of culture, or maybe a story about just a few people. In Middlesex, I certainly had a broad canvas--large things are being said about biology, the creation of identity, the history of Detroit and Asia Minor. But in The Marriage Plot, I’ve written a more intimate story. I think that intimate stories, if done correctly, can say a lot about the totality of life.
R: As a student at Brown, you were going through college when semiotics was important in linguistics and cultural theory. How have your feelings changed toward this way of looking at literature?
JE: When I got to Brown, semiotics was just coming to America and rising in popularity and sway. In the English department you encountered two different factions: one was professors who were New Critical...and had a certain way of looking at literature...Then there was another cohort who were influenced by structuralism and French theory. These two factions argued about what was the best way to analyze literature. That experience left me in the state that I’ve been in which is somewhere between the two positions. I was influenced by semiotics and there’s a kind of quiet postmodernism in my work that I think is a response to some of the thinkers that I read in semiotics courses...In my own work, I…usually have narrative drive…and I create characters that seem realistic, especially in The Marriage Plot. Some of these operations would be seen as outmoded by semioticians. I resisted the idea that it was difficult to convey meaning through a text. I think that novels can often convey meaning and I haven’t given up on doing that.
R: One of the famous ideas of semiotics is that books are about other books. In The Marriage Plot there are many literary references and many characters are erudite. But they are also interacting with these books and generating personal tales.
JE: I sort of wanted it both ways. This is a book that is generated by other books, but it’s not merely about books.
R: How did the personalities of different regions of the U.S. influence your thinking, since the three protagonists are from different parts of the country?
JE: I wasn’t trying to make a large point about the regions of the United States. But there is implicit in The Marriage Plot a question about the class system of the U.S., at least in the 1980s. Both Mitchell and Leonard come from a different class than Madeleine and they’re quite aware of it. They’re both attracted to her class and her money. That is something in the old-fashioned marriage plots that is a big factor. Certain things don’t apply anymore in love stories today, but money still does. I wanted to retain those vestiges of the marriage plot that do pertain to our time.
R: A lot of contemporary literature is engaged with topics of mental illness, including The Marriage Plot. What do you think about our culture leads to such lucid expressions of mental illness in literature?
JE: People are suffering psychologically in our country for a host of reasons. If you look at how many medicines people are taking, mood enhancers and tranquilizers and anti-anxiety medications, it’s quite astounding. Even though I’m suspicious of many of those drugs and the amount people take, it is in response to real mental suffering. There’s something about our society that must be encouraging these types of depressive illnesses in addition to the regular physiological causes. That’s probably why you’re seeing it crop up in so much recent fiction...it’s not about shooting a buffalo because you’re going to starve, it’s about how you can’t find a sense of self and a way of being happy that seems authentic in the midst of so many distracting entertainments and trivialities. There’s a kind of spiritual anguish wound up with our moment in history. That’s why people like Franzen and Wallace write about it in their books, and Wallace wrote about it because he was an actual depressive.
R: I noticed the Talking Heads popped up a few times in the novel. Are you a big fan?
JE: Yes, big fan. They were very central in my college experience. [Lead singer] David Byrne also went to RISD, which is right next to Brown. They were a big presence on College Hill. They would probably be the favorite band of the kind of people I was writing about.
Jeffrey Eugenides will read from The Marriage Plot at the Regulator Bookshop on Ninth Street this Saturday, October 29 at 7pm. A complete, unedited version of this interview is available online at DukeChronicle.com/Recess
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