Teiresias in Detroit

by Kathryn Koromilas

[Published in Greece Now, January 2003 ]

Jeffrey Eugenides’ second novel is just about your average Greek-American hermaphrodite

Jeffrey Eugenides hit the literary big time in 1993 with his slim but peculiar debut The Virgin Suicides. Heavyweight New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani remarked that Eugenides tale of five beautiful but unhappy sisters and the boys who are obsessed with them “insinuates itself into our minds as a small but powerful opera in the unexpected form of a novel…lyrical and portentous, ferocious and elegiac”.

Six years later, Sofia Coppola wrote and directed the film version (dad Francis Ford co-produced), thus securing ongoing interest in the novel and in Eugenides, who had since published fiction in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Best American Short Stories and Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. He had also received Guggenheim Foundation and National Foundation for the Arts fellowships, Whiting Writers’ and Henry D. Vursell awards before moving to Berlin on a fellowship at the American Academy.

Nearly one Odyssean decade later Eugenides, still in Berlin, completed his much-anticipated second novel. Middlesex is an epic Greek tale, tracing in its 500-plus pages the genetic and social history of Calliope Helen Stephanides from Asia Minor to Detroit to Berlin. And there’s a curious twist in that story: in its course, Calliope is transformed into Cal. Eugenides’ narrator suffers from a rare hermaphroditic condition that has him born looking like a girl even though he is genetically male.

Inspired by Herculine Barbin - a 19th century hermaphrodite whose memoirs were discovered by Michel Foucault - Eugenides studied the hermaphroditic condition pinpointing a rather unique type, namely the 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome which only manifests itself in small inbred communities. Eugenides then put hermaphroditism and small inbred communities together and came up with…Greek!

Why did you decide to make hermaphrodite Cal Stephanides a Greek-American?

I didn’t set out to write a story about a Greek family. I wanted to write about a real, living hermaphrodite. Hermaphroditism brought up classicism. Classicism brought up Hellenism. And Hellenism brought up my family. Only the outline of the story is autobiographical, however. My paternal grandparents migrated from Asia Minor, as the grandparents in the novel do. But, of course, they weren’t brother and sister, as Cal’s grandparents are. I should make that very clear. The skeleton of the story comes from my family’s history but the meat on that skeleton is all invented.

My grandparents died when I was very little. I didn’t know a lot about them. When I was very young, our house was full of immigrant Greeks. Though I don’t speak Greek, the sound of it is very familiar, the music of my childhood, you could say. Still, I never knew the details of my grandparents lives. One of the pleasures of writing Middlesex was that it allowed me to get to know my grandparents imaginatively in a way I never had in life. I learned a lot about the conditions of their lives and the things they had been through and suffered and overcome.

What intrigued you about the possibilities of a hermaphrodite protagonist/ narrator?

Every novelist needs to have hermaphroditic imagination. The job is go into the heads of both men and women. So, when people ask me why I chose a hermaphrodite as a narrator, I ask in return, “Why isn’t every novel narrated by a hermaphrodite?”

Cal is a modern incarnation of his mythological ancestor, Teiresias. Do you tend to see modern-day Greeks as direct descendents of the ancient Greeks?

I don’t put much stock in that sort of thing. I think it’s just as ridiculous for modern Greeks to draw personal pride from ancient Greece as it is for modern Egyptians to draw pride from ancient Egypt. Ancient Greece is a gift to the world. It belongs to everybody. Even to an American like me. My narrator refers to Greek mythology a lot, but always in a mock epic fashion. Cal is a real person, living in the modern world. He’s aware of the weight and grandeur of classical Greek thought and he invokes it. But it’s always tongue in cheek. Middlesex is a comedy. And comedy, by my lights, is the only way to deal with the fact of being Greek-American.

How does the heritage of ancient Greek survive in the world of a Greek-American?

As a souvenir plate on the wall, with Zeus’s head on it. Now, that’s funny…

In an interview with salon.com you talked about the times when your “Greek blood is running high”, about the times the Greek would “bubble up” in your father, even Cal senses it bubbling when he says, “Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times, that’s genetic too”. How Greek do you feel? Do you call yourself Greek-American?

I feel American, period. Cal feels a little more Greek than I do. Both of his parents are Greek, after all, whereas I’m only half Greek. If I hyphenate my identity I need three hyphens: Greek-Anglo-Irish-American. It’s so much simpler, and so much closer to the truth, to just say “American.” I m a mongrel like everybody else. That said, I’ve always been attached to my Greek heritage. I travel to Greece often. Last year we were in Corfu for Easter. We had such a wonderful time we’d like to go back every Easter.

Middlesex is set in Detroit, your hometown. You describe the intensely divisive race relations between black and white communities; was there ever any racism targeted at Greeks?

In the early 20th century, in the United States, Greeks weren’t considered to be white. It seems amazing now, but that’s the way it was. In my own life, however, I’ve never experienced any racism for being Greek. My grandparents I’m sure did. But the racial divide in Detroit has always been between blacks and whites. It would be foolish, nearly criminal, in fact, to paint Greeks as victims of racism in a society so bent on victimizing African-Americans. We just have no right to complain.

You’ve thrown in a few Olympics references, too. How do you think Greece will accommodate the demands of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games ?

Greeks always come through at the last minute. I think its great that the Olympics are back where they began. I expect them to go well. I’m very optimistic about Greece and I think the Olympics will give the country and the people a boost of confidence. The Olympics will re-introduce Greece to the world, but this time as a modern society.

Will you visit Greece in 2004?

I’m not sure; it may be awfully crowded. There’s a possibility a friend may let us stay in this Athens apartment. If that’s the case, I may get there.

We are anticipating the Greek translation of Middlesex. How do you find your work in translation? A necessary evil, or a task that offers more possibilities to the original text?

You can’t control the translations of your books into languages you cant speak. So for me, that includes Greek. I guess, yes, a translation is a necessary evil, but an evil most writers would gladly allow to be committed. You know your work will change drastically in translation. You try not to think about it. You choose a reputable publisher and hope for the best. But it’s also nice to know that your book will exist in another language and that people in countries will be able to read it, if they so wish.

Your next adventure?

Ill be writing a novel about another family in Grosse Pointe. One character will be half-Greek. That’s it. It’s back to the regular old American novel for me.