How Soon Is Vow?

“Colm Toibin owes me a pint!” laughs Jeffrey Eugenides. “I just sold lots of his books last night in Waterstones in Picadilly! People were asking me what I had read recently that I liked, so I went on and on about The Empty Family. As they were coming up to get my book signed a lot of people had bought it, so I’m going to get him to buy me a drink tonight!”

Eugenides is on a gruelling book tour, to promote his third novel, The Marriage Plot, following on from the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex and his highly lauded debut, The Virgin Suicides.
Exploring less rarified territory than the travails of a Greek hermaphrodite or the self-immolation of five sisters, it is nevertheless hugely compelling: in this instance the power lies primarily in the character analysis and development.
“I think creating character is probably the most difficult thing a novelist can do,” he muses sipping coffee in Dublin’s Morrison Hotel. “I learned a lot about creating characters with Middlesex. Usually when you finish a novel you have learned something in writing it and you feel like moving on to the next level. I just felt that I could give it a go this time and really have a character-driven book and let the characters dictate where the plot is going to go.”
The novel opens in Brown University on Graduation Day in 1982 and follows three students throughout the next 12 months: Madeline Hanna, an English literature major and incurable romantic, her boyfriend Leonard Bankhead and the third part of the love triangle, Mitchell Grammaticus, who is infatuated with the protagonist.
Like Eugenides, Grammaticus is of Irish and Greek descent, hails from Detroit and travels to India to do charity work, which begs the question, to what extent is he autobiographical?
“All of the characters have a lot of similarities to myself,” he states. “I can’t really write a character without pouring a lot of my own thoughts and feelings into each one. You divide yourself when you are writing a book and put a little bit of yourself into each character.
“However, on the surface of it Mitchell has the most obvious resemblance to me and it was maybe more difficult to write his part because real life kept conflicting with fiction,” he elaborates. “The invention I needed so that the novel would function dramatically was not always consistent with what actually happened to me in my life – so I had to discard most of my autobiography while leaving a kind of shell of biographical detail to make Mitchell seem real for me.”
Many critics have seized upon the similarity between the character of Leonard and the late novelist and contemporary of Eugenides, David Foster Wallace. Does this frustrate him?
“Yes, I’m a little annoyed by it,” he concedes good-naturedly. “The speculation was started by New York Magazine on their blog and then ran wild. I’ve dealt with it a couple of times and hope to be finished with it soon. It seems to be starting to fade away now people are reading the book and encountering an individual which – if it reminds them of anyone at points – finally becomes his own person, his own character.”
One striking element in The Marriage Plot is the paramount importance of books to the characters, whose lives seem to be a quest for enlightenment through the medium of literature. As a creative writing lecturer does Eugenides feel that the power of the novel has waned since the dawn of the internet and growing media saturation?
“There are a lot of kids in my readings that tell me that novels are affecting them in the same way that novels affected me at that age,” he counters. “I remember college as being a time of such passionate reading that each book you encountered, you almost ingested it like a drug. It would flavour your being for a certain amount of time until you read another book.
“I wanted to examine the real effects that reading has on everyone but especially young people,” he continues. “I wasn’t trying to write a book about books as some people have said, it’s a book about young people falling in love and having a lot of difficulties. What they are reading happens to be extremely important to them especially in light of having romantic illusions or religious illusions.”
So what is the role of the novel today?
“I think it’s the same that it has always been,” he says. “I think the novel operates on many different levels: on one level it’s a reflection of the time we’re living in. You can go to the novel to heighten your perceptions of society. People can learn a lot about human behaviour and psychology from novels. It is also an entertainment, a high form of entertainment.
“I read novels that I really love, I feel that they make me more alert,” he adds. “Sometimes I feel like I can acquire the observational powers of a great novelist by reading that novelist – so I feel their stimulant in my brain which you can take outside, into your own life, and be more perceptive. So novels work as a practical help in figuring out your life and also as a pastime of great pleasure.”
Eugenides work has certainly brought considerable pleasure to his many devoted fans, though it was the medium of film that brought him to a wider audience when his first novel, The Virgin Suicides (1993) was adapted for the screen by Sofia Coppola. What input did he have?
“We talked, she asked me questions about the book and about my town and the school I went to,” he says. “I went to the set while they were filming for three days and I talked to Josh Hartnett a lot about his role and how to act it. But I was not at all heavily involved.”
Eugenides was more than pleased with the finished product, including Coppola’s choice of soundtrack.
“It’s a good film and she did a lot of interesting things that I wouldn’t have thought of, like using the band Air to provide the soundtrack instead of going the ‘70s route,” he states. “I thought that was very smart and it made it contemporary and different and the music is so haunting. Her father was on the set and he said that soundtrack is half of a film. It’s that important. So she really hit a homerun with that.”
His following tome, Middlesex (2002), won the Pulitzer Prize, a feat that surely alters the trajectory of a writer’s career?
“It affects your public status in that you’re known as a Pulitzer Prize winner,” he reflects. “ You get a different level of invitations to festivals and things like that. The personal status as a writer remains the same: it is no easier to write a book after the Pulitzer and it is no harder. The pressure always comes from the next book and the difficulties intrinsic to it.”
So what can we expect next from Eugenides?
“I have a book of short stories just finished that I have been writing over the years so it will be a kind of compendium of those,” he says. “I think I will write one or two more and that will be enough for a collection so it shouldn’t be much longer. Then I’ll write another novel. I may be writing a script for The Marriage Plot. I’m deciding whether I am going to do that or not.”
Given that he is in Dublin for the day I query the author on one of his first literary fixations, James Joyce.
“I was obsessed with Joyce from the age of 16,” he smiles. “He is the reason I wanted to become a writer, in imitation of Stephen Dedalus – who is an imitation of Joyce.”
Is it true he walked with a cane in college in tribute to his hero?
“I had what I thought was an ashplant for a while that I walked around with,” he laughs. “That was my affectation, to pretend that I was Joycean. I already had glasses, I was half-blind so I had that part of Joyce down pretty well! I thought a cane would help!”

The Marriage Plot is published by Fourth Estate.