“Extreme Solitude”
Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Extreme Solitude” in the New Yorker is exactly the type of story I aspired to write in my college creative writing classes. Everything from the Barthes references to the dynamic between the two characters to the way he paces his sentences — even their first names (Leonard, Madeline) were ones I would have liked to have picked out. But the difference is that I was a college sophomore, and Eugenides writes for the New Yorker; my attempts were, well, sophomoric, and Eugenides’ are not.
I was never very good at writing fiction, and didn’t read nearly enough of it to ever improve. I thought I’d get good by reading more Hegel - which, of course, was wrong. So, as someone who spent all of undergrad reading philosophy books instead of novels, and running for miles daily (admittedly, sans hand weights), this sentence is particularly close to my heart:
Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights
I still get that feeling when I read novels. I hope it never stops.
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Reading fiction that so closely resembles what you’d been trying to write during a significant portion of you college years is unsettling. On one hand, you feel sort of flattered: you have the same tastes and inclinations as a very good writer! On the other hand, the impotence that comes with seeing someone so clearly articulate everything you’ve tried, and failed, to express - down to the smallest details - is discouraging: the attempts you made that once seemed decent enough to present in a workshop are embarrassing when you see what they were really supposed to sound like.
“Extreme Solitude” also made me think about whether reading a certain author a lot when you’re growing up can change the way you think sentences should sound for good. You know when you’re reading something and the rhythms and inflections of a phrase just sound so completely right? I’m quite certain that this depends on the kinds of things you read when you were small or adolescent, or the way your parents read to you. Eugenides sounds completely spot-on to me, rhythmically speaking, and I suppose it makes sense: Middlesex came out when I was 15, and I’ve watched The Virgin Suicides at least 10 times.
