I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.

 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, first published in 2002

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Middlesex is a story about coming and going, a tale of making and unmaking. It follows the life of Cal, who was AFAB (assigned female at birth), raised as a girl to the age of 14, then discovered that he was intersex and identified as a male from that point forward. It is a fictional story, which I think is generally the case on this blob, but useful to remember, as it does not reflect the experiences of an intersex person, nor does it speak on behalf of or allude to the experiences of all intersex folks. In today's world, Cal may have identified as non-binary or changed their pronouns, but this book came out over 2 decades ago (I know, wild to think that 2002 is that long ago) so it is a product of its moment. Here's the family tree... 

               Euphrosyne, mother of

Lefty (Eleutherios) and Desdemona, parents of       ----    Cousin, Sourmelina, married to Jimmy Zizmo

     Milton              and         Zoe                           Theodora (Tessie), daughter to Sourmelina and Jimmy

Milton marries Tessie, they are the parents to

Cal   +  Chapter Eleven

If that family tree looks incestuous in its growth pattern, then you hit the nail on the head. Again, to be clear, in this work of fiction, Cal's hormonal/chromosomal status is impacted by inbreeding, but this should not be taken to suggest that that is the case for intersex folks writ large. The internet varies in its definition of the term/its expected prevalence, but it seems about 1.7% of the world's population, on the high end, is intersex. 

But I digress. The novel follows Cal (with an omniscient version of Cal serving as narrator) from his ancestors in Greece (Lefty and Desdemona, siblings and then Cal's grandparents), to his parents (distant cousins), to his early life, and then later jumping to his adult life in Germany.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well hello, blobbists! 

  I am potentially trying to finish up this blobbety blob around my 38th birthday, which is about a month away, so we'll see! There may be more entries in the next few weeks for those who care to read them ;)

 I enjoyed reading Middlesex, as it is a very beautifully written (imo) book. It won the Pulitzer Prize, so I think other people think it was very written as well. I thought Cal was a very relatable and intriguing protagonist, and the cast of characters with Lefty and Desdemona through to Cal was engaging. I think my only complaints about the book are (and sorry if by some Freak chance you read this, Mr. Eugenides, feel free to ignore my opinions as a mere reader):

• The book follows Detroit's history after making its way from a small part of Greece (now Turkey), and while I thought there were some beautiful Detroit historical nuggets, there were times when it felt a bit too much like I was reading a fictionalized history of Detroit. 

• While I believe that anyone should be able to write books from any perspective, and I see the skill and empathy required to do so, there was a part of me that couldn't get over the fact that this book about an intersex, potentially now non-binary person, was written by a cis straight man. More on this later. 

• In the end, I was a little bummed we didn't spend more time with Cal. We ended up rewinding all the way to his grandparents, and then fast-forwarding a bit to see him in the present, but the book kind of wraps when Cal ages back up to 14, so there was a whole wide gap of Cal's adulthood that was absent.

An introduction to some of the cast of characters

Father Mike, jilted lover of Tessie, and surprise last minute villain

I'll let you read the book to find out the villain part, but I liked this line about him: 

• His shortness had a charitable aspect to it, as though he had given away his height.

Desdemona, lifetime worrying, long-suffering, gender prognosticating grandmother to Cal

Desdemona was my favorite character. She had such beautiful complexity to her, and I loved her from the moment we saw her sitting with her silkworms in (then) Greece. I know it probably sounds weird to say it, but I kind of ship an incestuous romance if it's written well (we all know how I feel about Hotel New Hampshire) and while there are obvious social and biological reasons why this is taboo, I also understand how close a sibling relationship can be, and it doesn't seem THAT wild to me that occasionally it would translate into something different, something more, for some folks. Here are some of my favorite Desdemona moments:

• Desdemona would have felt no more ashamed had she herself been for sale, displayed naked on the green sofa, a price tag hanging from her foot. This is after Lefty gambles away their money and they have to have a big yard sale and move in with their son, and it was just such a lovely image.

• The worst had happened. For the first time in her life my grandmother had nothing to worry about. 

• To anyone who never personally experienced it, it's difficult to describe the ominous, storm-gathering quality of my grandmother's fanning. Desdemona had six atrocity fans. I loved this - Desdemona fans herself with historical fans about Greek atrocities, which is obviously not a laughing matter. But the image of it is just so poignant and perfect. 

Lefty, later

Lefty is many different men throughout the book, but I liked him best in his later years, after he experienced speech paralysis after a stroke. Here's a line of how Cal describes their relationship. 

• Although he never said a word to me, I loved my Chaplinesque papou. His speechlessness seemed to be an act of refinement. It went with his elegant clothes, his shoes with woven vamps, the glaze of his hair. And yet he was not stiff at all but playful, even comedic. When he took me for rides in the car Lefty often pretended to fall asleep at the wheel. Suddenly his eyes would close and he would slump to one side. The car would continue on, unpiloted, drifting toward the curb. I laughed, screamed, pulled my hair and kicked my legs. At the last possible second, Lefty would spring awake, taking the wheel and averting disaster.

Desdemona and Lefty, star-crossed lovers who keep their secret (mostly) by pretending to re-meet as strangers when they immigrate to the US

I love this line:

• Early on, the emotional sympathy she'd felt with Lefty had been so absolute that she'd sometimes forgotten they were separate people. It reminds me of times when my sisters would cry when we were little and I would just plop right down next to them and start crying, too, because obviously we had something to cry about. ;)

Cal - NOTE: I will make reference to Cal's name when he was younger because he does so throughout the novel, but I want to acknowledge that for many trans folks (which Cal does not identify as, per se, but there are similarities of experience) this is considered a 'dead name' and it should not be used. 

• When Calliope surfaces, she does so like a childhood speech impediment. Suddenly there she is again, doing a hair flip, or checking her nails. It's a little like being possessed. This was such an interesting idea, and I'm sure one that many folks who experience any kind of gender or identity shift have to navigate.

• And here is where my first dates generally go wrong. I lack sufficient data. I loved this line from Cal when he's trying to date a woman named Julie in Germany. She references an ex, and he fears that he will then be asked to share his laundry list of exes, only to be outed as not really having any. I feel this way about many of my dates, and while I could, of course, make up data, it would be so much easier from a societal pressure standpoint, to simply have some!

Milton, son of Desdemona and Lefty, husband (and cousin) of Tessie, father of Cal and Chapter Eleven

• He possessed a flinty self-confidence that protected him like a shell from the world's assaults. What would it feel like to have this, I wonder? Cal wonders at one point looking at German nudists what it would feel like to be so free with one's body without fear of retribution or rejection or ostracization, and I wonder what it would feel like to wear self-confidence like armor. I mean, I'm not un-confident in my self, but sometimes I see people who have this Milton-esque self-confidence and I wonder from whence it came. 

Tessie, aka Theodora, daughter to Sourmelina and Jimmy Zizmo, cousin to Desdemona and Lefty, wife to Milton and mother of Cal and Chapter Eleven

Tessie and Milton have a bit of a 'star-crossed lovers' vibe as well, since Desdemona is aware of how much the family is inter-mixing and wants to 'right her wrongs' at this point. They find their way to each other in the end, anyway, but I loved the scenes of them courting each other as teens. Milton plays the clarinet in an attempt to seduce and amuse Tessie, and we find out that she has picked up the accordion, partly to spite her mother.

• The accordion seemed nearly as big as she was and she played it dutifully, badly, and always with the suggestion of a carnival sadness. I love this sentence so much.

A few general reflections

Smyrna, a city that no longer exists in the same way, a kind of Brigadoon

I loved the descriptions of Smyrna, in part because they were so cosmopolitan and lovely, but also because my grandmother was born in a free city that now has a different name, so I think I've always found something quite romantic about being born somewhere that technically no longer exists. Smyrna, for reference, is where Lefty and Desdemona find themselves en route to the US, and it is undergoing a tumultuous time, including Armenian genocide. Dr. Philobosian, later a good family friend, meets and helps Lefty and Desdemona at this time, after which his family is tragically slaughtered.

• In Smyrna, East and West, opera and politakia, violin and zourna, piano and daouli blended as tastefully as did the rose petals and honey in the local pastries. 

• (And did I mention how in the summer the streets of Smyrna were lined with baskets of rose petals? And how everyone in the city could speak French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, English, and Dutch? And did I tell you about the famous figs, brought in by camel caravan... and the smells of almond trees, mimosa, laurel, and peach, and how everybody wore masks on Mardi Gras and had elaborate dinners on the decks of frigates? I want to mention these things because they all happened in that city that was no place exactly, that was part of no country because it was all countries, and because now if you go there you'll see modern high-rises, amnesiac boulevards, teeming sweatshops, a NATO headquarters, and a sign that says Izmir...)

Balls of yarn to say goodbye

I think this was my favorite moment in the book. I don't know if it truly used to happen, but I love the idea of it either way. When Lefty and Desdemona board a ship, the Giulia, for America, this scene takes place.

• It was the custom in those days for passengers leaving for America to bring balls of yarn on deck. Relatives on the pier held the loose ends. As the Giulia blew its horn and moved away from the dock, a few hundred strings of yarn stretched across the water. People shouted farewells, waved furiously, held up babies for last looks they wouldn't remember. Propellers churned; handkerchiefs fluttered, and, up on deck, the balls of yarn began to spin. Red, yellow, blue, green, they untangled toward the pier, slowly at first, one revolution every ten seconds, then faster and faster as the boat picked up speed. Passengers held the yarn as long as possible, maintaining the connection to the faces disappearing on shore. But finally, one by one, the balls ran out. The strings of yarn flew free, rising on the breeze.

Who do we write as, does it get weird, and why?

 I jotted this note down in my book as I was reading, and I'm still marinating on it. Like I said earlier, I think it's so important that we not dictate who writes as who, and that there is a desire and ability to write from many different identities and perspectives. That being said, there was a part of me that asked about Eugenides' motivation for writing this book, centering on this character. I think in particular I feel that there is still such an underrepresentation of the work of authors who identify as intersex, trans, and/or non-binary, and so it felt a little bit like a space was created for an important conversation, but in another way it was also taken away from someone for whom the story would be more authentic and more true. The cynical part of me also felt a little bit like, well, this feels like a fictionalized memoir of Eugenides' life, with some more historical heft and the 'twist' of an intersex character, since it needed something splashy to get a Pulitzer. But maybe that's harsh! In doing a very small amount of googling about this, I have found things like this: 

As a whole, the community agrees that Middlesex's intersex protagonist is not believable. Most significantly, the intersex community has had issue with the author's decision to make Middlesex's fictional protagonist intersex due to his grandparents being brother and sister. 

I definitely see the problematicness (is that a word?) of this, and portraying it as a sort of scientific basis for Cal's state of being.

Hair

I liked the way that hair came up in the novel, first for Desdemona, and later for Cal. 

• These braids were not delicate like a little girl's but heavy and womanly, possessing a natural power, like a beaver's tail. Years, seasons, and various weather had gone into the braids; and when she undid them at night they fell to her waist. I had a friend who kept her hair very long for a very long time, and I like thinking about all the years and moments that were living in those fibers.

• Hair safely restored beneath her hairnet, Desdemona glowered around the yard, submerged in a despair too deep for tears. 

Cal, later: "Cut my hair? Never! I was still growing it out. My dream was to someday live inside it. I loved this line. 

Emotions, and how hard it is to express them

• Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in 'sadness', joy', or 'regret'. Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, 'the happiness that attends disaster.' Or 'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.' I'd like to show how 'intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members' connects with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age'. I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants', as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.' I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. I love this paragraph, and I do wholeheartedly agree.

Unanswered Questions

• Why is Chapter Eleven called that? OK, so I consulted the interwebs, and apparently Eugenides explains this (on page 512) because Cal's brother bankrupts the family, and that's the reference to Chapter Eleven, but that is all they ever call him. But that doesn't make sense because he wouldn't do that until he was much older, so what did they call him before? And also I'm a pretty close reader and I 100% missed the explanation, so maybe it could have been a bit clearer. It felt a little too 'twee' to have a character with a wacky random name when it didn't really have that much meaning in the end.

Referents and Reverberations

There were a few books in particular that this book reminded me of as I read it. 

(1) Proust/In Search of Lost Time - this line from Middlesex: 

• An infinite number of possible selves crowded the threshold, me among them but with no guaranteed ticket, the hours moving slowly, the planets in the heavens circling at their usual pace, weather coming into it, too, because my mother was afraid of thunderstorms and would have cuddled against my father had it rained that night.

Reminded me of this line from The Guermantes Way, on why we wake up each morning as ourselves and no one else 

• So how, then, searching for our thoughts, our identities, as we search for lost objects, do we eventually recover our own self rather than any other? Why, when we regain consciousness, is it not an identity other than the one we had previously that is embodied in us? It is not clear what dictates the choice, or why, among the millions of human beings we might be, it is the being we were the day before that we unerringly grasp.

(2) Hotel New Hampshire - for many reasons, not least of which the siblings/lovers storyline. For some reason this line in particular made me think of HNH:

• For a while we lived with a single lightbulb, which Milton carried from room to room. 'This way I can keep track of how much power we're using', he said, screwing the bulb into the dining room fixture so that we could sit down to dinner.

(3) The Night Watchman - there's a section in the later part of the novel where Cal runs away, not wanting a medical surgery, and ends up being an exhibitionist (Hermaphroditus) of sorts to make a living in San Francisco. It reminded me of a part in The Night Watchman, a Louise Erdrich novel, where Patrice is kidnapped and forced to 'exhibit' herself as Babe the Blue Ox with some excessive cleavage and a skintight suit.

Lines I Liked:

• My mother pictured a daughter as a counterinsurgent.

• Meanwhile, in the greenroom to the world, I waited. 

• Automobiles were the new pleasure domes.

• Despite my grandmother's corrective lenses, the world remained out of focus.

• Generally speaking, American's like their presidents to have no more than two vowels. Truman. Johnson. Nixon. Clinton. This is specifically in reference to Americans not wanting a Greek president/the failed attempt of Dukakis.

• I never know what I feel until it's too late.

Words that were new to me:

rebetika - Rebetiko, plural rebetika, occasionally transliterated as rembetiko or rebetico, is a term used today to designate originally disparate kinds of urban Greek music which in the 1930s went through a process of musical syncretism and developed into a more distinctive musical genre

Well friends, there you have it! Onwards to Ms. Welty and The Optimist's Daughter.