In the midst of the horror of war, Dr. Philobosian did a good deed for Lefty and the favor was returned. I think this shows that good can never be entirely defeated. Dr. Philobosian trusted in his letter of safety from Mustafa Kemal (aka Ataturk) to protect him and his family and instead his family is horribly murdered. This is what happened to so many Greeks and Armenians.

Nellie, other nice lines (and there are so many) -- from Book 1 page 68, the marriage ceremony

More later....

Statistics from the hawaii.edu website = between 1900-1923 from 3,500,000 to 4,300,000 Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians and other Christians were killed by the Turkish government. Such statistics on genocide are almost impossible to verify but this site seemed relatively conservative in their estimate and they checked their facts.

I lived in Turkey and Greece in the 60's and 70's and remember one instance when the grandfather of an American military officer came to visit him. The grandfather was Armenian, born in Turkey, who was forced to emigrate to the U.S in the early part of the 20th century. Turkish officials interrogated him many times regarding his purpose in returning to Turkey. I think they were afraid of revenge.

The Turkish government doesn't admit the killings. Turkey is an interesting place and I enjoyed getting to know the people. Many countries -- including the U.S. -- have committed acts they'd like to forget or deny.

Before the 20th century diaspora about 3/4 of the silk manufacturers and 4/5 of the textile factories in Turkey were operated by Greeks and Jews.

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Some neat links on silk production:

(Click on the sublinks at the bottom pages of the Silk Production link for more photos and information.)

From this link, at the bottom of the page, we find out that local silkworm farmers still bring cocoons into the city of Bursa to sell to silk producers. You can search for other parts of Turkey by the clickable guide at the top right side of the link.

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The process of silk production is intricate. Silkworms have been domesticated for so long that they cannot survive in the wild. The wings of adult moths are too weak for flying and a moth can crawl only about a foot or so. A female moth lays about 500 eggs which the silk farmers incubate and then they put the worms on specially constructed frames where each worm spins a cocoon with a mile-long single string. The farmers keep a few cocoons for breeding stock and use or sell the rest for silk production.

Silk producers first heat the cocoons to kill the larvae inside and then they boil them for about 5 minutes to get rid of the outside sticky substance. They then use a delicate knife or scapel to pick out a string from each cocoon. (I'm amazed at the photo in the second link which shows a man without magnifier doing this procedure. How is that possible? My eyesight was never that good.) About 10 or more of these strings are wound together as a finished thread for strength.

There's a wonderful spot at SN on how to post links suitable for a particular discussion as well as other handy hints. You also can practice techniques there which I still do from time to time. Click on Home - Discussions - How to Use Discussions & Chat.

Or else click on Posting Tips

Probably most posters know about links but, just in case, there you are.

Thanks Marjorie for mentioning Women of Silk. I hope its at my local library because I'd love to read it. I've been caught up in silk fascination. I've enjoyed how Eugenides has entwined cocoons with the lives of Lefty and Desdemona, showing how their frame of reference is closely linked to the life and metamorphoses of the silkworm.

Are you all like me? Seeing cocoon references all over the pages of this book? (And I've only finished Book 1 so far.) At this point I think the cocoon is a symbol of Calliope's own metamorphoses.

I'm behind everyone else in the reading I think as I'm only a third of the way through Book 2. Will try to finish that section and then post later today.

I generally prefer not to read reviews of books or interviews of an author until after I've read the book. Otherwise I'd lose the enjoyment of unexplored territory and may unavoidably pick up another's ideas. There have been exceptional cases when I've felt the need to read about a book -- review, interview, criticism -- before actually reading the book itself. This rarely happens. This is my preference and personal way of reading. When someone posts a review, interview, or professional criticism, I thank the poster and save the link in my file to read afterwords. I do appreciate their contribution.

I'm glad we have reviews/interviews in posts and I look forward to reading them after the discussion with our final thoughts. Will love to see any indepth responses at that time.

I also assume people would do the same with any links I provide. Either one reads them now or in the future or else one doesn't read them at all. Some people feel such information gets in the way of the story and prefer not to read links. I can understand that choice. I research in order to learn and finding links to post is pure gravy for me.

NELLIE, you mentioned this passage and perhaps intend to talk about it? Hajienestis had such a wonderful imagination.

Nellie, you're writing a novel as well as leading this discussion?! That's true dedication. Can't wait to hear how Book 2 riled you.

General Hajienestis was a real person. (I googled under Hajienestis and Hajianestis looking for information.) He actually played dead and claimed his legs were made of glass and sometimes he said of sugar. He spent the war on his yacht. He appears to have been truly crazy rather than a malingerer. Not really a surprise there.

The following timeline and a few facts provided by kultur.gov.tr while the remaining narrative was gathered from worldandi.com which has excerpts of the book "Great Military Disasters" by Geoffrey Regan and published in 1987:

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Desdemona had to be strong as she couldn't go back but to have her long hair bobbed and to be forced to throw away her cocoons were terrible. And the good Dr. Philobosian gets an X when examined at Ellis Island?

"One doctor, noticing inflammation under Dr. Philobosian's eyelids, had stopped the examination and chalked an X on his coat. He was led out of line. My grandparents hadn't seen him again. . . . Meanwhile, chalk continued to do its work all around them. It marked a Pg on the belly of a pregnant woman. It scrawled on H over an old man's failing heart. It diagnosed the C of conjunctivitis, the F of favus, and the T of trachoma." (Book 2 page 81)

This isn't right -- being treated like cattle and these instant decisions that could mean life or death to an immigrant -- yet it has happened over and over again.

Does Lefty adapt to being a machine? I think yes and no. Lefty is a survivor and if he has to be a machine to survive he'll be one but he has certain escapes such as his rebetika and hashish. He also learned from co-workers how to work but not to speed beyond what everyone else is working at. That ability of workers to control their pace was always limited, more so as the assembly-line developed, and that ability eroded over the years.

I was angry at the arrogant "visit" of the two men from the Ford Sociological Department. Their purpose was to control employees and break down their independence and pride. They assumed the right to barge into a private residence, ask personal questions & even lecture on hygiene.

The house invasion and quesioning is a tactic which strips away a person's humanity and individuality. Lefty cooperates but at the cost of his dignity.

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About Big Businesses like Ford and immigration in general: "The Immigration Act of 1917 banned thirty-two kinds of undesirables from entering the United States, and so, in 1922, on the Giulia, passengers discussed how to escape the categories. In nervous cram sessions, illiterates learned to pretend to read; bigamists to admit to only one wife, anarchists to deny having read Proudhon; heart patients to simulate vigor; epileptics to deny their fits; and carriers of hereditary diseases to neglect mentioning them." (73-4) Proudhon was the nightmare of American industrialists such as Ford.

Proudhon opposed individual ownership of large industries because workers would lose their rights and ownership. His goal was to return te control of the productive process back to the workers (quite the opposite of what we see happen on the Ford assembly line).

Proudhon believed in co-operative associations in large-scale property ownership. He was the enemy of state capitalism and state socialism as he wanted to limit such authority.

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Rebetika and hashish were ways to escape the grinding conformity to machine-like behavior and the loss of one's country. It's the melancholic music of the diaspora, of people without a country, or without a community.

The last link -- with incredibly hugh letters -- is dedicated to a famous rebetika artist. It has lyrics, a photo of Smyrna burning, and additional history and there are other sublinks with photos.

Hope it works for you.

I rather liked Sourmelina (Lina) who would have been scandalous in those days. She was a Roaring Twenties girl, Greek style. She had a good heart to go with the bravado but she was sly with her husband Jimmy and that wasn't right. Then again is was an arranged marriage and perhaps they both got what they wanted from such a marriage. Jimmy Zizmo seems shady. Unlike Lina's blase attitude, Desdemona was disturbed to find out he was Pontian and also that he wasn't Greek Orthodox. Zizmo also became unpopular with a group of Greeks when he said that Greeks burned Smyrna. From the Turkish websites I've read, Turks claim that the Greeks burned their own homes. Greek websites claim the opposite. This got me to wondering about the nature of Pontus and Pontians and if Zizmo was Greek or not.

Euxeinos Pontos is the Greek name for the Black Sea. Pontus is a northeast province of Asia Minor; a long and narrow strip of land on the southern coast of the Black Sea. Prior to the Ottoman Empire, Greek settlements abounded on Pontus with additional cities on the rest of the Black Sea shoreline. Pontus is now the northern part of Turkey and Turkish names have replaced Greek ones. Smyrna in the Bithynia region is now Izmir, and so on.

I think Zizmo, as with modern-day Pontians, was viewed with suspicion by the Greeks as being a type of hybrid? His loyalty would be questionable. Lefty seemed to trust him and that trust seems to be based a lot on family-type relationships, however tenuous.

a cocky performer, so seemingly at ease handling his dangerous material. We forget, for a moment, the grim meaning of these bright, lethal objects. We watch them spinning in the air, and we are entranced by their impermanent, improbable design."

Welcome back, Ginny! Yeahhh!

Maybe we should start a list of what's happening? No one is as they seem. Here's the whole immigration/assimilation process that makes an American but not an American -- the great melting pot scene is saying something like. And Zizmo is a Pontian which is Greek but not Greek and may be something else entirely. And brother and sister are husband and wife, and which is the relationship really -- both, neither? And your aunt is your cousin is your mother, your uncle is your cousin is your father. Meantime the cocoon keeps spinning, ready to metamorphose into another form and then back again to a cocoon. And the author photo in the back of the book does wink at us, don't you think? He's devilously funny. In "The Virgin Suicides" he uses a plot and people as a large metaphor and to say something universal.

I think I need to take two aspirin myself.

Welcome, Ginny, welcome welcome.

The Treaty of Lusanne of 1923, was known to Greeks as The Catastrophe of Asia Minor. After 3000 years of settlement on the Black Sea -- many of the settlements in what is now known as Turkey -- Greeks lose their independence. Useful sublinks on Venizelos are World War I, the Treaty and the Catastrophe.

The Ottoman Empire at its height consisted not only of Turkey but the countries of the Balkan Peninsula; the islands of the Mediterranean; parts of Hungary and Russia; Syria; Palestine; Egypt; part of Arabia; and most of North Africa. By the end of the 19th Century, the spirit of nationalism (that old spirit of place) grew and groups throughout the Empire were demanding independence.

Of course, countries are appearing and disappearing quickly all over the world; but this is a pretty current map.

Iraq is the pink land mass in lower right, bordered by Turkey, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Turkey has the Pontus area on the Black Sea.

In 1914 the Ottoman Empire (now reduced to one country: Turkey) entered World War I, joining Germany, Ausria-Hungary and Bulgaria (the Central Powers) against the Allied Powers which included Russia, France, England, and -- later -- the U.S.

The Allies won the war and the Ottoman Empire was cut up amongst the allies, many anxious to have control of areas with the potential for oil production. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which ironed out the terms of division and reparation, is where I believe Clemenceau made his infamous remarks about oil.

From three disparate provinces of the Ottoman Empire potentially rich in oil, Britain created, under its control, a new country called Iraq.

The other allies were anxious to be a part of the oil industry. Major Arthur Maxwell in the novel symbolizes those interests and that's why he wasn't interested in the fate of Armenian or Greek refugees. The eyes of the allies were fixed on oil profits and for strategic locale in the oil-producing world. The U.S. had become an ally of the new Turkey. In the Greco-Turkish War that made Lefty, Desdemona and Dr. Philobosian homeless, Britain and the U.S. withdrew financial support from Greece while France and Italy supplied arms to the Turks.

Greek and Latin Poetry

The metrical "feet" in the classical languages were based on the length of time taken to pronounce each syllable, which were categorized as either "long" syllables or "short" syllables. The foot is often compared to a musical measure and the long and short syllables to whole notes and half notes. In English poetry, feet are determined by emphasis rather than length, with stressed and unstressed syllables serving the same function as long and short syllables in classical meter.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrical_foot

Distillation of some reviews on the claims of the book: the Holocaust has been employed to advance political interests . . . . compensation money intended for survivors has been diverted and claimed by the Holocaust industry from German and Swiss governments. . . . interest in the Final Solution only arose after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War when it was needed as a political weapon. Finkelstein supports the Palestinan cause. He is the son of camp survivors and professor at Columbia U.

Obviously this is a controversial book and one has to navigate strong bias on the issues (pro/con Finkelstein). Take the book's claims as you will.

According to the above link, mana means "mother". Since Lefty uses that word a lot, it might be rather like the trite, stereotypical Irish exclamation of "Saints preserve us" or "Jesus Mary and Joseph!" -- swearing without swearing. (Do the Irish really say such things?) In my Slovene upraising -- Roman Catholic -- adults used JM&J a lot.

I can't verify the accuracy of the dictionary but will use it for a while and see how it holds up.

ANNA, hoorah! You're getting the book! Your participation has been awesome already; can't wait to see what you do with the book in hand.

BEN, I'm not sure about the humor of the book appealing only to Greek-Americans. That would be a limited audience. I'm not sure.

On a first reading I noted to myself how ambitious the author was, attempting to be the American James Joyce. Joyce in his novel Ulysses melded Irish culture with scenarios, twisted though they be, from Homer's Odyssey in a thematic wandering in search of finding oneself. (And I'm oversimplifying Ulysses theme and plot.) Joyce incorporated the ancient with the modern in his story and time itself turns every which way. That's how I see Middlesex. I formed an opinion after first reading M of how successful Eugenides was/wasn't regarding his literary ambitions; and that opinion may change by the end of this discussion with the help of everyone's insightful posts.

From the first stanza of Homer's Odyssey:

Plundering the stronghold of Troy refers to Homer's previous tale of The Iliad where Greeks waged war at the gates of Troy (now known to have been located in Turkey). Odysseus is one of the conquering Greeks, he who thought of the infamous Wooden Horse to trick the Trojans, but when he tried to return home the Gods kept waylaying him with misadventures.

Eugenides calls upon his Muse in the third paragraph of the book:

"Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome! Sing how ...Mount Olympus ....nine generations .. Providence ... massacre ... blew like a seed...to America ... industrial rains ...fertile soil . . . ." [and this paragraph followed by] "Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That's genetic, too."

I think this is an homage to Homer and Joyce as well as giving readers a thematic wink-wink. Of course, it was common practice for Ancient Greek writers to call upon the Muse in the beginning of their tale as well as throughout the tale. And while there are other works that address the Muse, the allusion of Troy/Turkey and Greece seems to connect Middlesex, Odyssey, and -- by reflection -- to Joyce's Ulysses.

GINNY, I don't know if we can say that Eugenides disregards the reader because, so far, he seems to be playing fair which IMO is the opposite of disregard. Perhaps he distrusts a reader's ability to notice allusions or remember history and that's why the heavy wink-winks? So far his allusions and other literary techniques seem above-board.

Please understand that while I read a lot of Greek literature (in translation) I'm posting a hypothesis and will test it throughout this discussion to see if it holds true. There are also many other aspects to this novel.

Sometimes, after initially being dubious about a book's value, after the discussion and during our wrap-up in final thoughts I've realized that the book was a keeper for me. And then there are those other times. I sloughed through Drabble's Seven Sisters but in final thoughts I concluded that the book wasn't worth the read and she's off my list of to-read authors. Never ever again will I read Drabble.

Feel free to come back for final thoughts when we share our impressions and evaluate the book.

BEN, now that is interesting. So your experience has shown that Simultaneous Conception is possible? I was intrigued with how Zizmo put clues and conclusions together over the silmultaneous pregnancies. Two pregnancies = Lina is gay (if I've got that part of the book right). Do you understand his response? How he came to his conclusion? Perhaps this is a version of the SC among a herd of cattle. Did Zizmo say or imply that Lefty was guilty?

I do agree that the allusion to Homer and also Joyce in the third paragraph is about plot -- the surface events that'll occur within the novel but it may also be something more. In which case I do think there should be monsters in Middlesex. I'm trying to make sense of this novel and wonder if that first section sets out the theme or intent of the author. I think we'd need to look at the WHY of the Odyssey (not just the WHAT or HOW?). Why was Odysseus punished by the Gods with wanderings; why did Stephen and Bloom have their odyssey in the streets of Dublin. Knowing the why may or may not help with the theme but I think the allusion is there for more than just the plot.

If I can understand the theme then the plot would naturally follow. Don't know if the theme is that clear in the beginning?

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BEN, I wasn't suggesting an interpretation to the Minotaur episode and/or Zizmo's response to the pregnancies. I was asking for help. The episode left me confused, totally baffled, and I thought you might know or have an idea of what was going on in Zizmo's head? (Pages 117-120) It probably doesn't matter that much as far as the rest of the novel goes.

Theory that the caterpillar and the adult were the same individual in different forms and that adult forms were hidden within the juvenile body. There is not generation but growth. Note that the second paragraph in the link gives the example of boxes which may be symbolized in Desdemona's silkworm box.

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From Stedman's Medical Dictionary: "HOMUNCULUS: 1) an exceedingly minute body which, according to the views of development [preformation] held by some medical scientists of the 16th and 17th centuries, was contained in a sex cell. From this preformed by infinitely small structure the human body was thought to be developed. 2) The figure of a human sometimes superimposed on pictures of the surface of the brain to represent the motor or sensory regions of the body represented there."

The above discussion of the theory of consciousness states (with interesting sublinks at the end of the article)

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Can someone help tie this together, add to it, or subtract the extraneous? From what I've read I think this is why we're getting from our reading the 'my grandfather is my uncle is my cousin' examples as a type of timeless and spaceless human racial memory.

I'm strongly inclined to throw up my hands and say "Rubish" about this theory of preformation. But I'm waiting for cooler, clearer heads to prevail. Since its being used as a literary device, I'd like to understand it better and its purpose in the book.

So far the message I'm getting from Eugenides is the philosophy that time is circular rather than linear which we see, for instance, in Greek-Turkish wars from the Iliad to the 1920's aftermath of WWI and onward to today. We see the idea adapted from Preformation about growth rather than linear generation and this idea is circular also. The narrator's consciousness is representative of that concept of circular time. Past, present, and future in consciousness and events are not separate and linear but circular.

I've been trying to think of the beginning allusion to the war in the Iliad and the aftermath of Odysseus' punishment. The allusion to Odysseus starts with the ending of the Greek-Turkish wars in Troy, after Odysseus had pillaged Troy. (The idea of war as profit is not new nor is defining one's worth with wealth however obtained.) Odysseus didn't pay proper reverence to the gods for a victory -- he felt he'd won because of his own intelligence. The god Poseidon delays Odysseus' return home through a series of misadventures as punishment for his hubris in thinking he controlled nature/fate.

I'll wait until Marjorie and Ginny have finished reading Book 3 before talking about anything specific in that part.

Even back then the Great Books were working on me, silently urging me to pursue the mjost futile human dream of all, the dream of writng a book worth of joining their number, a one hundred and sixteenth Great Book with another long Greek name on the cover: Stephanides. That was when I was young and full of grand dreams. Now I've given up any hope of lasting fame or literary perfection. I don't care if I write a great book any more, but just one which, whatever its flaws, will leave a record of my impossible life.

There are a lot of examples of hybrids or splinterings in this book. Zizmo/Fard, Cal/Callie, empires and nations, conflicts withiin nations. Is humanity's hubris the cause?

(There really was a Fard by the way and he was a silk merchant.)

The first part of the timeline gives information on Fard.

There are race riots in Detroit and the narrator's father, Milton, goes to his store, gun in hand, to protect it from looters. Milton hears someone try to break into the store: "He put down the sandwich [he was eating] and tiptoes out from behind the counter, holding the gun. / He didn't intend to use it. The idea was to scare the looter off .... And without thinking Milton stepped toward the glass door and shouted, 'I've got a gun!' / Except it wasn't the gun. It was the ham sandwich." (245)

Now fast forward to the chapter "The Gun on the Wall" (377-397). Callie is visiting the summer home of The Object: "As I crossed the living room I noticed an old hunting rifle over the mantel. Another gun on the wall. I tiptoed by it." (378)

Callie has sex with Jerome and The Object. Then an accident and hospital visit:

The last part of the chapter comments on the silkworm. Any thoughts on this or any other aspect of Book 3?

Listen, this book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, just look at what it won:

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Nominated for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award, Fiction.
2002 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Transgender.

So there's something good about it. It IS a fabulous intergenerational sprawl of a Greek American family and the older immigrant stories and people are so real you think you knew them (or you suspect you knew a couple of them). It touches, effortlessly, many key events of history, like a Woody Allen movie, kind of a James Michener Woody Allen combo. The writing is good, plenty of classical allusions and threads and metaphors (Drabble on Speed) and essentially it's a good sprawling beach book, very enjoyable.

The hermaphrodite bits don't actually fit in very well but am not thru the book yet and out of respect for the Pulitzers (need to go look up WHY they gave it and who the other books nominated were) need to say that yes, (are there no other Greek saga writers around? Too bad Michener died, his own The Fires of Spring does this bildungsroman so much better). But again, it's an epic with all the trappings of a modern Odyssey, let's give the guy a break.

The Devil's Advocate.

Hope that for now we can talk about what's inside this book.

SELDOM mentioned too about Milton's 1944 enlistment. And to me the 1960s era scenes are vague, appearing to be not immediate experiences but something casually gleaned by the author from news acounts.

I just found out about Lefty's name (late information I know). Lefty is often used as a nickname for Eleftherios which means 'freedom' in Greek. Calliope as GINNY mentioned is a Greek muse. She's the muse of epic poetry; suitable for the narrator certainly. Desdemona in Shakespeare's play was quite dramatic wasn't she? She took to her bed too like Eugenides' Des, never to rise again although for a different reason.

-- Free Will versus Fate

-- Individualism versus Conformity

-- Humans connected through history (events, culture,

-- Circular nature of repeating history

-- Culture of money and the ramifications

-- Transformation of identity/reinventing the self (a familiar

-- The dual nature of life

These are not opinions/conclusions/judgments of the author (or myself) but a list of possible themes in Middlesex that underlie and enhance the surface plot. Themes in fiction are the subject matter but not the argument for/against that subject matter. I believe that Eugenides' novel is ambiguous on themes/issues and doesn't provide the 'one right answer' which would be different for each of us anyway. That isn't his intent as far as I can determine from the text.

Please post any additional themes to the list. I think there are more.

6. "All I know is this: despite my androgenized brain, there's an innate feminine circularity in the story I have to tell" (p. 20). What does Cal mean by this? Is his manner of telling his story connected to the question of his gender? How?

followed by this:

7. How are Cal's early sexual experiences similar to those of any adolescent? How are they different? Are the differences more significant than the similarities?

followed by this:

9. How does Cal's experience reflect on the "nature vs. nurture" debate about gender identity?

Interesting posts everyone. I need to take time and read them over thoroughly before any comments on my part.

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Cal explains first attraction for The Obscure Object by likening that to feelings generated in "Pied Beauty," a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins which begins, Cal says:

"... 'Glory be to God for dappled things.' When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheaded girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing in her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the gold highlights in the strawberry hair. It was like autumn, lookng at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors." (323-4)

I found Eugenides' poetic allusion to be clunky and not much of an allusion since he gives us the title and full author's name. He could have been less obvious so the impressions of why Cal was attracted would be discovered by us rather than being told to us. He could have left off the famous poet's name and title and the beginning line too. Maybe just describe her 'pied beauty' or 'dappled looks'. Eugenides didn't trust his readers to recognize a more subtle allusion to a famous poem.

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Here is how Cal explains the naming of The Obscure Object.

"Luis Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire didn't come out until 1977. By that time the redheaded girl and I were no longer in touch.... [That film] is what I think about when I think about her.... The plot was clear enough.... An older gentleman played by Fernando Rey is smitten with a young and beautiful girl .... I didn't care about any of that. It was the surrealist touch that got me. In many scenes Fernando Rey is shown holding a heavy sack over his shoulder. The reason for this sack is never explained. (Or if it is, I missed that, too.) He just goes around lugging this sack, into restaurants and through city parks. That was exactly how I felt, a mysterious, unexplained burden or weight. I'm going to call her that, if you don't mind. I'm going to call her the Obscure Object. For sentimental reasons. (I also have to protect her identity.)" (325)

So this is Cal about the attaction and the naming (romance and anonymity). I thought the Obscure Object was from a recent book/film but on re-reading the section of Middlesex, it's Brunel who pops up. Have you seen any of his films? I remember the unexplained visual of a dead donkey in a grand piano in one film. Strange and surreal images and full of hidden meanings, seemingly deep, that dominate the screen and viewer's mind.

GINNY posted a B&N question from their Reading Guide

Part of circular storytelling, and world perception too, is based on time and space. There are male authors who have this way of thinking and perceiving -- in lesser or greater degrees from one another -- including William Faulkner and James Joyce. Faulkner once said (and I have this quote in yellowing paper taped over a bookcase):

The typical approach to communication is viewed either as male=linear and female=circular. Of course this division doesn't hold all the way (re Joyce & Faulkner and many native cultures).

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LINEAR = the end is most important. Hierarchy; rational order. A linear thinker assumes their goal is prime and the other person has no goal of their own. Exclusive viewpoint in that the other (person) is outside. Time goes in a straight line from point A to point B to point C. Time is non-reversible, nonrepeatable; events separated by space and time. Events are cause, then effect.

CIRCULAR = process of developing; and the means are as important as the ends. Emphasis on the interconnectedness of all. Circular is often thought of as feminine and cyclical, in tune with a woman's body and/or the cycles of nature. Time is not a straight line but a circle where beginning and end meet and in circular (women's) storytelling themes are repeated and sometimes revised/changed. Sense of open-endedness. Inclusive viewpoint.

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We see in Middlesex, the repeating history such as Turkish and Greek hostilities, then expansion to wars in general, the sense of growth/change in events or people rather than a new generation of events or people; the telling isn't linear because the narrator tells in the present what happened in the past (Bursa, Smyrna, events before Cal's birth etc) and so many other similarities to circular/gender storytelling.

From the link: "Open-endedness [in circular tales] does not preclude success. The emphasis is on learning, growing and changing. The emphasis in women's quests is on dealing with people and life's tasks as successfully as possible, not with achieving an end result. Self-enlightenment in a woman's quest is a never-ending, ongoing process .... Men's quests achieve self-knowledge by exclusion of the 'other' while women's quests are fulfilled by inclusion of the other."

Well-known authors on 'feminine circularity in the story' are Helene Ciroux and Irigaray.

Androgenized means containing male characteristics and Cal says that despite this, there's female circularity in the storytelling.

While such circularity is traditionally, historically, acknowledged as originating with the female, I believe I said that it wasn't all females or all males this or that. Joyce and Faulkner are circular storytellers as I mentioned. I also noted that many native cultures are storytellers in that tradition. And Cal is saying -- masculine brain but feminine circularity in storytelling.

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NELLIE asks "...is Eugenides exaggerating the circularity of Cal's/Calliope's story because he is a man pretending to tell a story from a female perspective?"

I don't know that he's exaggerating the style any more than James Joyce or William Faulkner. Even Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" has some of the aspects of circular storytelling. I also don't think Eugendes is a man pretending to tell a story from a female perspective, but rather that he's reconciling and merging male/female perspectives in what Cal calls his androgenized brain. There's been a lot in the novel about merging/mixing/androgenizing, almost a Mendelian hybridity, that we see in immigrant's becoming Americans, to Zizmo/Fard and his speckled history, and Cal/Calliope. Circular storytelling, as Faulkner and Joyce saw it, is a more inclusive and ultimately more powerful form of stories.

All crystallized in the poem "Pied Beauty."

I'm still considering what the novel is ultimately about and don't expect to find a single satisfactory answer, if I find an answer at all. Certainly there's the surface plot which is important on its own level. But Middlesex also can be a story about breaking down barriers between male/female and merging the two and accepting a more inclusive (male/female) voice. And I begin to perceive that Eugenides -- on one level of the novel -- is talking about the metamorphosis of himself towards circular storytelling. (A circular retrospective?) That is one of the many levels of meaning in the text. I don't know but what Eugenides may be saying that the melding of the two makes a more powerful whole. We'll see.

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In talking of circularity in storytelling, I was responding to the B&N Reading Guide's specific question (quoted above) that GINNY posted. I love having the Guide as a concrete base from which to explore aspects of the novel and to see what unfolds; I learn through the such questions and my search to answer the questions.

I didn't judge the novel, pro or con, in my response to the B&N Reading Guide question. Final thoughts of the novel's merits/demerits will come later; now I'm exploring what the author is saying and how he is saying it.

Middlesex was now almost seventy years old. Though we had ruined it with our colonial furniture it was still the beacon it was intended to be, a place with few interior walls, divested of the formalities of bourgeois life, a place desinged for a new type of human being who would inhabit a new world, I couldn't help feeling, of course, that that person was me, me and all the others like me.

Why can't women parallel park?

(Because low testosterone inhitibts spatial ability).

Well-done circular writing, ANNA, is more interesting to me than the linear which I feel is generally narrow and constricting.

Like many of my fellow posters, I preferred Book 4 where everything now seemed to fit -- which might be the intention of the author, a coming together and melding of diverse parts.

GINNY (hi!) once mentioned the tone of the author and how it was confused. I thought back on the various sections of the novel and think the tone deliberately changed/mutated/metaphorsized with each book.

Book 1 was written like a Greek myth with magical overtones, almost magical-realism.

Book 2 was second generation Greek with ethnic color and tension about assimilation.

Book 3 was the maturing Cal/Calliope with a more detached voice but still confused.

Book 4 is the "Pied Beauty" of melded diversity where Cal faces issues and finds/defines himself. Cal accepts his different parts of male and female rather than trying to be just one.

We finally see too the meaning to Chapter 11's name but it's part of the (genetic?) controversy. Did he live up to his name (fate/genetic determinism) or did he create a new name for himself by his later actions (free will). What kind of genetic theory covers the last one of free will? Wouldn't the same two theories be considered for the Cal/Calliope metamorphoses? Fate or free will?

Only at the end of a discussion and/or a second-read, do I look at reviews of the book or author interviews. We're at that point now and I found some incredible interviews. I must say that I find Eugenides funny, with a Greek sense of humor, intelligent and kind. I found things in the interviews that confirmed some of my speculations while reading, and some were not confirmed.

Eugenides also speaks on nature vs nurture and fate vs free will in

From PBS NewsHour, Eugenides speaks of going through a personal metamorphoses as writer and father; Greek myth influence:

With Borders, the author talks about having to learn to write again with Middlesex and the real prototype for Dr. Luce:

With Powells, Eugenides talks about the point-of-view, the real Obscure Object and Cal inventing the past in order to understand his life and this quote: "I have a tragic-comic sensibility, I guess. I can't imagine writing something devoid of humor, yet I don't like slapstick that doesn't admit tragedy. I blend them. It's just central to the way I see them."

The BOMB interview is the longest and interested me the most as a writer. Eugenides spoke of the influence on Middlesex of the birth of his daughter; how he wanted to create a comic epic; said Grace Paley was right; and spoke of one of my favorite chapters in Jame Joyce's Ulysses:

I don't read reviews or pay much attention to the notes on dustjackets until after I've read a book. Interviews come later too. I want to decide on my own what the book is about and that way, even if a book disappoints artistically, I've had the pleasure of exploring uncharted territory.

There actually aren't that many interviews online but these are representative. The B&N audio wouldn't work for my webtv but computers should be able to play it.

From how Eugenides presents this phase in Cal's life, Cal tries on a label/identity and then ultimately makes his own identity by choosing what he'll accept and not accept.

My thoughts on the book tally with Marjorie and Lorrie to a great extent. (Oh I agree wholeheartedly MARJORIE about the lack of smoothness, BEN's disappointment, and LORRIE's sense of boredom.) Can't say that I liked the book when I read it the first time some months ago but I had a better idea what the author was doing in the second read. Overall I think Middlesex is rough around the edges and wish the author had laid it aside for a few more months (after 9 years of writing!) and then gone back to it to iron out the kinks. Eugenides is a fine writer and his first book The Virgin Suicides was a success even with its depressing subject.

The first impression I had of Middlesex still stands in that I thought Eugenides was trying to write the GAN by mostly emulating the masterpeice Ulysses by James Joyce. Everything was thrown into the novel including the kitchen sink and they weren't woven together, a necessity when writing with such complexity. IMO this is its major flaw. Joyce managed complexity; Eugenides didn't although I say "Bravo" for the effort and ambition.

There few -- if any -- American writers who have the talent to go as far as Eugenides has. It was an original work, that's for sure. Eugenides' ambition obviously wasn't to write a popular novel to be forgotten in a year or two, but only time will tell if this is a lasting book.

I read a book first for pleasure. If I find it's an interesting work (and/or if I'm in a book discussion like this one at SN), I'll read it again and this time look for the literary techniques. My second read of this book confirmed my first impression but at least I got a better idea of Eugenides' technique and understood the humor and that he wasn't disregarding the reader deliberately. I would read anything else written by him because he has incredible writing ability and because he said he wasn't going to attempt such a complex work again. (smile)

Oh okay, okay, if he does write another complex work, I'd read him hoping he'd learned from Middlesex what works for him and what doesn't.

I had fun, gang! Thanks everyone and a special thanks to GINGER for her catching enthusiasm and to NELLIE for her leadership; and MARJORIE, BEN, FAIRANNA and Everyone who's posted here, you're all great. Now where is our GINNY? I'm on pins and needles waiting for her final thoughts.