The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides: A review

People who have read The Marriage Plot seem to fall into two camps: They love it or they find it pretentious and hate it.

In fact, when you get right down to it, the act of writing a novel, any novel, could be seen as pretentious. What makes you, the writer, think you have anything of importance to say to me, the reader, anyway? How presumptuous of you! However, that's not my camp. I admire the courage and the tenacity which it takes to put oneself out there and write a novel. Even a bad novel deserves some respect for the effort it took to produce it. But The Marriage Plot is not a bad novel. In fact, it is a very good novel and I am in the "love it" camp.

In his much-praised novel, Eugenides imagines three college students from his alma mater, Brown, in the early 1980s. They are: Madeleine, a passionate reader and English major, who is writing her senior thesis on the "marriage plot" which lies at the heart of so many great English novels such as those of Jane Austen and George Eliot; Leonard Bankhead, a brilliant and charismatic Darwinist who is trying to hide his mental illness, manic depression, and function normally in the overheated intellectual atmosphere of Brown; and Mitchell Grammaticus, who is seeking answers to questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love, but who is also obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his life partner.

Leonard shows up one day in Madeleine's semiotics class and soon she is as obsessed with him as Mitchell is with her. She enters a highly-charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him which will have implications for the path that her life takes after graduation. Mitchell watches from the sidelines as Madeleine becomes more and more involved with Leonard. Meantime, he becomes ever more fascinated with Christian mysticism and with the quest to become a moral person.

This is a book which, in large part, is about books and about reading. There are continual references to many of the best-known and best-loved books in English literature, as well as to many lesser known - at least to me - works in the field of semiotics, religious thought, and philosophy. From all the books mentioned, one could make up a reading list that would keep one busy reading for months if not years.

Perhaps I am way off base but I felt that Eugenides was drawing upon autobiographical experiences in writing this book. Many of the twists of the plot had a very personal feeling to them. I felt that he knew these characters and cared for them. I found that many of their experiences and emotions took me back to my own college days and that I could easily identify with the characters, also. That, in the end, was why I enjoyed the book so much.

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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