TORONTO – Superstar author Jeffrey Eugenides is getting weary of questions about whether his new book, “The Marriage Plot,” is autobiographical.
“It’s incredibly fatiguing. It happens with every novel, no matter what you write about,” the 51-year-old said during an interview this week.
Eugenides burst onto the scene in 1993 with his acclaimed debut “The Virgin Suicides,” which was later made into a much-discussed film by Sofia Coppola. His next novel, 2002’s “Middlesex,” vaulted him into the literary stratosphere. A stunningly imaginative and expansive tale about a male hermaphrodite, the book won the Pulitzer Prize, was chosen as an Oprah selection and had legions of readers clamouring to see what the rock-star writer would do next.
They had to wait nine years to find out, but were rewarded this month with Eugenides’ latest novel, “The Marriage Plot,” which follows a love triangle between English major Madeleine and two fellow male students at Brown University (the author’s alma mater) in the early 1980s.
In the beleaguered world of publishing, the book’s release was a joyous event. A billboard of Eugenides went up in Times Square. A launch party in New York City attracted literary heavyweights Jonathan Franzen, Martin Amis and Zadie Smith.
“The Marriage Plot” was soon lauded as another highly erudite, yet eminently readable offering from Eugenides. Still, much of the media coverage has been pre-occupied with whether it is autobiographical.
Did Eugenides base the character of Mitchell Grammaticus on himself (both are from Detroit and of Greek descent)? Does the Brown setting reflect the author’s time at the school? And is the character of manic-depressive biologist Leonard Bankhead based on the late author David Foster Wallace (with whom Eugenides had a passing acquaintance)?
Eugenides, an instructor at Princeton University, can’t seem to escape the speculation.
“Last time I wrote about someone who was intersex and I would still get the autobiographical question even though it’s obviously about as imaginative a leap as I can make,” said the author, who lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter.
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“Now, I’m getting it again. You get it with everything you write. That’s how people read. We all do it to a certain extent.”
“But people need to understand that you obviously draw from your life in order to write a novel, so there are going to be many things that resemble the writer’s experience. But what happens in a novel is very different than what happens in a writer’s life.”
In particular, critics have seized on the possible Wallace connection. The “Infinite Jest” writer struggled with depression before committing suicide in 2008.
Many have honed in on the fact that the troubled author often wore a bandanna, as Leonard does in “The Marriage Plot.” But Eugenides, who says he “hardly knew” Wallace, is quick to tick off a list of differences between the two.
“When you read the book, I think you see that despite resemblances to various people, Leonard finally becomes his own person. There are too many contradictions between his life and Wallace’s or anyone else (for this to be a) roman a clef.”
“I think people can speculate about that (connection), but that’s before they’ve read the book. Once they’ve read the book they stop obsessing about it so much.”
Even if he were to write a book about Wallace, said Eugenides, it would only be his version of the writer.
“Most writers really do invent their stories, but the only way to make them believable is to find the connection between literature and life and that connection brings in a certain amount of autobiographical detail that critics then exaggerate and think what you’re involved in is some kind of extended memoir or something – which is not at all why I’d go into fiction.”
“Fiction is a freeing form to get away from the facts of your life.”
During his media rounds, Eugenides has also faced repeated questions about the extended period of time it takes him to write each book.
The author says he can usually tell after about 150 pages whether he wants to move forward with a new project.
The kernel of “The Marriage Plot,” he said, came about when he was taking a break from “Middlesex” in the late 1990s and began writing a story about a debutante party. He abandoned that manuscript, but the character of Madeleine stuck with him, eventually jumping into the pages that would become “The Marriage Plot.”
“Suddenly, I connected to different concerns than the debutante party book had been about – semiotics, college, college love problems, the whole concept of the extent to which romance is a construct that we learn about through reading,” said Eugenides.
“And that interested me more than the debutante party book did. The prose seemed to have a kind of energy to it … and there was a personal connection – the ’80s and studying semiotics – that seemed more original to me … and I just felt excited in a way. So I followed her, and wrote a lot about Madeleine and soon I had 100 pages of her life which is mainly the first chapter of ‘The Marriage Plot’ as it exists today.”
The author says he’s made a conscious decision with each novel to explore a different aspect of storytelling. While “The Virgin Suicides” saw him experiment with language, “Middlesex” dealt with plot and “The Marriage Plot” focuses on character.
The logical question, then, is what is the next frontier for Eugenides?
“The next one feels like it’s going to be an amalgamation of all the things that I’ve done,” he said.
“The next one will probably be bigger in scope in terms of its plot. So I’ll bring back some of the ‘Middlesex’ atmosphere but it’s going to have characters on the level of ‘The Marriage Plot.’ Hopefully, if things work out I can get all cylinders firing at once.”
Fans can take heart, though, that they might not have to wait so long for that next project.
“I’m going to be faster now,” said Eugenides, adding that he has a book of short stories coming out in a year or two.
“I’m getting the hang of it after all this time.”
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