Middlesex

Jake's recent prodigious review production belies any notion that his inspiration for reading and writing had ceased prematurely - a notion that we at TKR were beginning to fear was the case, after a preternaturally long dry spell. Well, it hasn't, and we were wrong, which is a very good thing, considering the current paucity of gifted writers contributing to this space (yes, consider that a challenge). Herewith, a review of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex. - RD

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a story, nay an epic, that escapes the feeble words of this humble reviewer. Its title, at first glance, suggests the well-known storyline of a young hermaphrodite who started life a female, yet finished as a male. But this is not so. Instead, as even the most casual reader will notice, it refers to the family estate just outside Detroit. But why name the house or the book Middlesex?

This vexing question, unfortunately, is not made altogether clear throughout the novel. Instead, it floats throughout the text, sometimes dramatically, beckoning its reader to empyrean musings. My mundane thought, however, is that Middlesex is an icon that exists at the liminal recesses of society. Consider the following. The house is a cross between Suburban utopianism and an F. Lloyd Wright nightmare. Middlesex’s Greek residents were consigned to this monstrosity because they were neither WASPs nor inner city thugs, but were merely trying to escape to a casern from the war-tattered remains of Detroit. Grandma bedrid herself - a linctus waiting to be swallowed by the netherworld as she wallowed through to the end of her life. Most importantly, it is in Middlesex that the protagonist becomes attracted to the female sex, first as a child and later as a teenager, before running away to a brief stint at a freak show burlesque in the Tenderloin district. Middlesex is thus an icon of existence between two worlds and the realization that such cannot be done.

This type of liminal survival, often cast in historical anecdotes concerning the research of Dr. Such-and-Such is interesting when compared to T. Wolfe’s recent satire, I Am Charlotte Simmons. There, Wolfe shows that even the most unconventional students, Adam and Charlotte, eventually succumb to peer pressure by divining the ideals of Dupont. In contrast to this pattern of learned “more mimicking,” sexual identity is deeper – and no matter how long one lives as a sex, there is no mistaking the fact that nurture does not always beat nature. Thus, sexual identity cannot be changed, even within the courtyard at Dupont.

Ensconced within this key theme is an epic vision. The story begins with the protagonist’s grandparents and their amorous introduction as brother and sister before continuing onto the next generation—cousin and cousin—on through the once chalybeate—but now decrepit—streets of Detroit. Throughout the pages, however, the story wafts along at the mercy of random events that in the end suggest kismet: the Turks savagely burn the Greek insurgents alive, impervious to the screams of children and their smoldering flesh; grandpa loses his job at the Ford factory and becomes a bootlegger; the great uncle fakes his death, but resurrects himself as a huckster selling Nation of Islam tripe to despondent and uneducated inner-city black folk; and brother (older) drops out of the University of Michigan, Ann Harbor, at the behest of his obnoxious Marxist girlfriend. These stories and others occur with nimiety, a quality serving to backdrop a larger-than-life epic that encapsulates not only a character, but a family and a nation, all with which we can identify.

- Jake McCarty