Books

I'm currently reading Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, his 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

At first I was surprised where the book took me. See, I'd recently taken a break from Peter Balakian's The Burning Tigris because I was having nightmares about the Armenian Genocide. Well, within a few chapters Middlesex had me reading about the burning of Smyrna in 1922. The main characters, Greeks from Asia Minor, encounter an Armenian physician in Smyrna. Luckily I didn't dream about fires and dead bodies, but Eugenides did paint an incredibly clear picture. As the Greeks and Armenians stood on the shore trying to escape the burning city, I realized I was holding my breath while I read.

Middlesex has reminded me how much I loved my 'Classics in Translation' class in high school (Eugenides mentions ancient Greek Lit quite a bit). If I remember correctly there were only 4 of us in the class. We sat in the large office of the Head of the Upper School (our teacher), at a wooden table, by the big leaded bow window overlooking the lower field. Sounds much more preppy than it actually was (maybe). I remember reading Agamemnon by Aeschylus outloud and really digging it.

It's funny the things that end up really grabbing your attention in school--as well as ancient Greek Lit in high school, I got pretty wrapped up in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays in college. My American Lit prof probably didn't mean it and probably wouldn't remember, but she jokingly said the English Dept needed an Emerson-type and maybe it would be me someday. I was thrilled.

So Middlesex has me thinking about all of this and thankfully not dreaming about the Armenian Genocide.