Catching Up

Have been catching up on my fiction reading lately. This time it's Middlesex and I am enjoying it at a time in my life when I have the gift of time for myself. Back in 2002 when it published and all the rage for a good while, times were exceptionally tough. J was a baby and I had plunged head-first into being a single mom running away from a marriage that was had no hope of resuscitation. The assessment on the health and prospects for the marriage were accurate and the decision to cut my losses early was a good one too. 

Notwithstanding the level of complexity my life got mired in was not something I was prepared for. Not that anything would have changed had I known - that was a stubborn and defiant age. I would have done the same sorts of things, maybe watched over my shoulder more and been apprehensive of what is to come. So maybe it was for the best that I proceeded with great naivete combined with lack of prescience. Tactically, it meant almost no time to read fiction - something that was like breathing air for me until my life fully unraveled. For all those reasons, I am grateful I am where I am now, reading the Jeffery Eugenides book. I had been very curious about this author ever since I watched the Virgin Suicides. Of how to write he has some very wise words:

"I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you're writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest friend you have. That way, you'll never dumb things down. You won't have to explain things that don't need explaining. You'll assume an intimacy and a natural shorthand, which is good because readers are smart and don't wish to be condescended to. I think about the reader. I care about the reader. Not "audience." Not "readership." Just the reader."