And the process is not always the same, but finally there is a sentence that seems to suggest the entire narrative and the tone and the narrative strategy and everything all in one.

They’ve come to me in different ways with the three books. You’re absolutely right that what I’m searching for with the first sentence is the entire book. When in the process do you lock in the first sentence? There's an elegance and a completeness to them: When you look back at those three sentences, you can see how they reflect the entire book. I'd like to start by talking about your first sentences. When the book came out in hardcover, Eugenides answered enough questions about how he designed 'Marriage Plot' to satisfy the pleasure centers tickled by the big 19th-century social novels, but also to be self-conscious enough about books and reading to amuse the postmodern crowd. So we asked Eugenides to reflect on the writing of all three of his novels, the four he abandoned - and to weigh in on some of those controversies he's thus far avoided. We met last week in his publisher's office in New York's Flatiron building. In person, he locks right in, holding a handshake a beat longer than you'd expect, maintaining an eye contact that's both magnetic and searing. (It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award 2002's 'Middlesex' won the Pulitzer.)īut while Franzen seems to agonize over perception, over Oprah, Eugenides radiates no such angst. 'The Marriage Plot' (just available in paperback) made plenty of top-10 lists but was shut out from the list of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists - stoking arguments about whether those awards were out of touch with readers. Indeed, Eugenides - like Jonathan Franzen - is that rare writer so successful with both readers and critics that he tends to be at the center of debates that have nothing to do with his work. The billboard, promoting Eugenides' latest novel, 'The Marriage Plot,' spawned its own Twitter feed and lots of jealousy among other writers - even a parody earlier this year by Jennifer Weiner.

He looks more professorial (albeit a professor with a porny mustache) than that cocksure author who spent parts of last fall on a Times Square billboard, clad in an almost jaunty vest.

Jeffrey eugenides books