Reading Middlesex got me thinking about Auster’s 4 3 2 1 which I read shortly before. Both books are similar in their conception. They are immigrant tales. Greek orthodox for Eugenides, Jewish for Auster. Both have a focus in the 60’s and early 70’s with looks back to the beginning of the 20th century when the respective ancestors came to the US. While both books have one central character, Eugenides gives Cal’s parents and grandparents more room to develop. Thus Middlesex has more of a family saga quality starting in former Greek Smyrna in Asia Minor and moving on to Detroit spanning three generations of Stephanides. The similarities don’t stop with the conception. They even stretch to similar scenes such as a teenage mate dying next to the protagonist due to a brain aneurism and using this instance as a catalyst to propel the plot. Credit needs to be given to Eugenides having written 15 years earlier.
Middlesex cranks up the diversity register a lot more though. A recessive gene present mostly in three isolated geographies worldwide, one of them being the Turkish area around Smyrna, causes hermaphroditism which happens with Cal(liope) after incidents of incest running in her family. Eugenides doesn’t refrain from adding more diversity by injecting the mysterious founder of the Nation of Islam and the race riots of the late 60’s into the proceedings. The diversity card certainly played a big role in its overwhelmingly positive reception going as far as winning the Pulitzer price.
I was entertained by Middlesex in a mainstream way that you could bet on something interesting to happen next. Not as entertained as Pulitzer price level of greatness. Rather entertained in a way people are entertained by a good thriller, a romance or epic sagas. To highlight two chapters, I particularly remember when Cal’s grandmother Calliope joined the Nation of Islam in the 30’s as a silk worker and as a contrast Cal working in a freak peep show in San Francisco of the 70’s.
The problem I had with this novel is its constructed nature. Each chapter starts with a short introduction in which current day’s (Berlin 2002) Cal addresses the reader directly and narrates his present life before returning to the main story, i.e. how his gene came to bloom and finally revealed itself. To me, each chapter rather felt like a trick Eugenides performed to astonish than a logical progression. The above mentioned brain aneurism is just one of the examples, only used to further Calliope’s love interest in women. Another trick is Cal’s brother, only known as Chapter Eleven in this book. Not only, because he will lead the family business into bankruptcy with Chapter Eleven being the respective restructuring code under US law but also his first appearance takes place in the eleventh chapter of Middlesex.
My main issue and why I call these creative means tricks is the lack of consequences. Neither did Desdemona change a bit by getting involved in the Nation of Islam, nor did Cal suffer any noticeable late effect from being exploited when running away to San Francisco. There’s a finished character who narrates the story. And there’s a lot of events that don’t relate to what Cal is today. It’s only the predetermination of the gene that defines him and causes him troubles. In an inadequate manner, the book ends with salvation coming to today’s Cal from writing this book. And there we are back with Auster’s 4 3 2 1. What is it about writers that after all their books are all about the importance of writing instead of taking care of the concerns of us readers?