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Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
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SisterRay73
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
I've read Virgin Suicides a few times and every time it lets me down - I keep going back to it because I keep thinking "maybe I missed something", since it's a book that deals with things I relate to, but every time it leaves me kind of cold. But then I read Middlesex and it absolutely blew me away. Now THAT was an amazingly fantastic novel, definitely one of the best of recent memory.

Of course, now that I'm thinking about it again, I'm thinking "hmm, maybe I SHOULD read VS again". It will probably let me down again, but oh well.
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Lolita Hazed
07/22/09

@SisterRay73: I tried to read Middlesex and couldn't get through it the first time. I'll definitely try again. Which came first? Most likely, The Virgin Suicides, considering that's the one with the anniversary. Am I right?
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Edited by Lolita Hazed at 07/22/09 2:09 PM Lolita Hazed was starred Lolita Hazed was unstarred

eri401
07/22/09

@SisterRay73: But I think that is part of the point of The Virgin Suicides. The entire story centers around absence - the impenetrable (heh) mystery of fetishized girlhood that everyone inadvertently reifies with each sigh. The narrating boys are themselves blind and the reader has to understand the story through that veil. There should not be satisfaction at the end of the novel - just a vague sense of loss.
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Vivi21
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
I've never read "The Virgin Suicides" (although I saw the movie), but "Middlesex" was unbelievable. It's one of the few books I've read lately that has really stuck with me. He is an extremely talented writer, and it is inspiring to me that a fellow Greek could write something so interesting about a period of Greek history that is not talked about much. He inspires me to write...
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labelsdown
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
This is such a beautifully written book, but it always struck me as being more about boys than girls. I thought Eugenides did in incredible job capturing that sweet and wistful part of adolescent boys that often gets overlooked. Anyway, I thought that, that was the ultimate failure of the movie.
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girl.of.your.dreams
07/22/09

@labelsdown: I always thought the real genius of the book was that it was written in first person plural, from the p.o.v. of the boys in the town. I think the movie could have really benefited from letting that remain the focus.
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cait98
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
I count him among my favorite writers even though to my knowledge he has only written two novels.

What I love about Middlesex especially is that it's such a... whole book. Like full characters, all loose ends tied up, so good.
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la.donna.pietra
07/22/09

@cait98: He wrote a wonderful short story for the New Yorker recently, too: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/03/31/080331fi_fiction_eugenides
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chicaferoza
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
He is truly a master of his craft, but beyond that, I always wondered how he was able to get into the minds of adolescent girls so well. This book- along with Middlesex- is just so right on about the complicated feminine psyche and dealing with what it means to grow up as a woman.
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Lolita Hazed
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
It really is such a beautiful book, I need to re-read it. So mature and sexy and unbelievably poetic. I always adored Cecelia, she's my favorite Lisbon girl! Such a shame she's gone so quick.
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EkaterinaBallerina
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
This is still to this day, my favorite book. I wrote my sophomore research paper in high school about teen suicide because of it.

He lives in my hometown, Princeton, now and his daughter goes to my old school, where my mom currently works. She's seen him a couple times, but like that time we saw Joyce Carol Oates in the market, we can't seem to work up the nerve to say anything.
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nessalicious
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
The last lines of this book are some of the most beautiful I have ever read, every time I feel uninspired as a writer I return to them and they make me realise how much I need to create.
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maybeimamazed02
07/22/09

@nessalicious: I was just thinking the other day about the scene where the girls have a party and invite the neighborhood boys. I haven't read the book in nine years, and that scene is still burned in my mind--it's that beautifully written.

Middlesex is also very inspiring to wannabe writers such as myself.
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thereisn0try
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend another book of his, Middlesex
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PilgrimSoul
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
This was the first piece of contemporary literary fiction I ever read, and it has a special place in my heart because of that. But I tried to reread it recently, and had a lot harder time with it; the idealization of the girls, their total blankness, I found hard to understand. I know that this is the classic expression of the male gaze in contemporary lit now, but nonetheless, I feel like I see something there that is troubling now. The girls are ciphers for the boys, they don't exist as anything but symbols of innocence and purity and sexuality. And I guess I want more for young women from young men.

But the movie was terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing.
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Khrushchev
07/22/09

@PilgrimSoul: I agree (shocker!). I read this even before I had any degree of feminist awareness at all, and I remember feeling uneasy about the characters of the girls. I didn't hate the movie (it had such a great soundtrack!), but I think it exacerbated the blankness of those characters while at the same time making that blankness almost enviable, or fashionable.
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HistoricUpstart
07/22/09

@PilgrimSoul: Yeah, I'm embarrassed to say I never got around to reading the book because I was so turned off by the movie. The "blankness" of the girls is the perfect way to describe it. And that was the beginning of the world discovering the "edginess" of Sophia Coppola too. Ugghhh.
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Elizabth_Bennet
07/22/09

@PilgrimSoul: Wow. I love love love the movie and the book...and I think it's much more about the boys being limited in understanding the girls than them being blank. It's about being able to be so close and not being able to know someone or what's really going on no matter how much you observe it from the outside. Also the relationship between the parents and the girls is most interesting to me, the limitations they place on them (because they're girls!) and the result.
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PilgrimSoul
07/22/09

@Elizabth_Bennet: I'm not saying I dislike the book. But there was something more fundamental than point of view going on in that book with respect to the girls, at least the way I read it now. I am under no illusions that Eugenides is deliberately focusing on the way young men perceive/relate to young women. And I guess all I'm saying is that reading the book now, I am disturbed by what I see.
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J.D.Regent
07/22/09

@PilgrimSoul: Yeah I agree, but don't you think that was made explicit in the book? The girls are only understood through the male gaze, and that's why they are so mysterious. It's really a book about boys, not girls. If you take it in that way it's less offensive. Kind of. Or at least in a different way.
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J.D.Regent
07/22/09

@PilgrimSoul: wait, are you saying you think he WAS deliberately focusing on the way young men relate to young women, or he wasn't? I think it is disturbing, and it is directly related to their suicides, and that the book is for me a lot about the violence of boys' distance from girls, and parents distance from children. I mean I think it is supposed to be disturbing in that way, that the idealization of the girls is directly linked to their suicides.
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tea_for_two
07/22/09

@PilgrimSoul: I think it's meant to be disturbing--I see this book as a record of how the boys (who don't even have names and narrate collectively) objectify the girls and view them as saints and symbols to be worshipped rather than to be loved. The boys essentially stand by and allow the girls to destroy themselves because they don't know how to really respond to their cries for help. It's essentially about the dangers of, as you put it, the male gaze.
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J.D.Regent
07/22/09

@tea_for_two: right, that's what i meant to say but better.
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eri401
07/22/09

@J.D.Regent: Exactly! The girls are tragic because they are idealized, even in their deaths. And the boys are so busy projecting their fantasies onto the girls, how they will become their protectors and saviors etc, that they end up idling by as the girls kills themselves.

It isn't just the boys that gaze in wonder at the lipstick and blond hair and mysterious giggling -- it is the parents that suffocate their daughters in an effort to "protect" them. It is also the neighbors who simply cluck in a hands-off sympathy for the sisters.

The film did a good job in mocking a larger society as well -- the blond newscaster out to exploit an idealized image of the grieving sisters. etc.

There is that odd conclusion of the girls sealing themselves into un-knowable-ness by killing themselves. In a final protest to be acknowledged as agents and not dissected objects, they kill themselves in pretty unromantic and gruesome ways. Yet with this, they oddly seal themselves away into the very mystery that they wanted to conceal.

I love the book. It is brilliant.
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PilgrimSoul promoted this comment Edited by eri401 at 07/22/09 2:23 PM eri401 was starred eri401 was unstarred

dreamweave
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
Sometimes I wonder if the Jezebels post things to make me feel 100 years old with malicious intent.

uh-oh. Questioning the motives - bad DreamWeave! :)
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FashionShowAtLunch
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
I wish I got paid that much for my private exercises of self-pleasure.
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BiteMeMitchell!
07/22/09

@FashionShowAtLunch: You could try performing them online.
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Madlenka
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
Sadly, none of my private exercises to please myself have been this thought-provoking or successful.
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stacyinbean
07/22/09

In reply to Virgin Suicides Writer Contemplates Book's Sixteenth Anniversary
When is he going to write a new novel though?!!?!! Such an amazing writer.
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bananastand
07/22/09

@stacyinbean: He's a slow writer. I think Middlesex took him, what, ten years?
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BellaTricks
07/22/09

@stacyinbean: I agree! I read Middlesex shortly after I finished The Virgin Suicides. I believe he's done short stories, but I'd love to read another full-length novel of his.
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BiteMeMitchell!
07/22/09

@BellaTricks: I picked up Middlesex in my building's free book swap and it's patiently waiting on my shelf for me to pick it up. Should I get to it in a hurry? Is it amazing? I have about another 5 books waiting to be read and I'm never sure which to go for next!
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GeorgeFayne
07/22/09

@stacyinbean: In the article, he says in another 2 or 3 years. You're killing me, Eugenides!
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BellaTricks
07/22/09

@BiteMeMitchell!: It's amazing. It's certainly not a quick read, but the language and treatment of subject matter are just incredible. I highly recommend it, if you have the time and inclination.
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GeorgeFayne
07/22/09

@BiteMeMitchell!: It's fantastic. It's epic. It also took me 3 tries to get through, but it was so worth it.
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LolaQuinn is full of beans
07/22/09

@BiteMeMitchell!: It is SUCH a good book. It deals with so many different themes that it will blow your mind. It wasn't just an enjoyable story...I felt like I really learned things (life in the Ford motor plants, the burning of Smyrna, etc).
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stacyinbean
07/22/09

@BiteMeMitchell!: Absolutely, I've had a friend or two who have had to start it a few times to really get into it, but oh my goodness it is just an exquisite piece of writing. I will fully admit the beginning IS slow but the care with which this man handles details is truly amazing.
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stacyinbean
07/22/09

@GeorgeFayne: GAH, YEARS? I guess I know why the books are so good now!
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LadySoprano is a Fat-Fighting Superwoman
12/29/08

In reply to No Sh-t: New Study Finds 'Virginity Pledges' Ineffective, Promoting Unsafe Sex
My parents gave me the most effective sex talk ever, when I was about 14. They told me that they believed sex should be reserved for two people who are in a loving, committed relationship, and that they hoped I would wait until I was old enough to know what I was getting into.

They knew long before I did that I am quick to get emotionally involved with people, so casual sex is almost impossible for me--I'll always find some way to get in over my head.

Instead of saying, "DON'T HAVE SEX!!!" they told me, "If you make the decision to have sex, for heaven's sake, come to us--we won't judge, but we will get you on the Pill, and get you some condoms."

This conversation was effective in keeping me a virgin for a long time.

P.S. Religion was never a factor in our house.
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