It is no news that Money is God in America, but Jeffrey Eugenides tackles this stark fact with a mixture of crude and subtle means in her latest book, ”Early music”. He has here is a collection of ten short stories. Eight have been published before, most in the New Yorker, a couple are new.
Jeffrey Eugenides grew up in Detroit and 58 years, had a megasuccé with the big, noisy novel ”Middlesex,” which in 2003 received the Pulitzer prize. It deals with, among other things intersexualitet and bind together his own Greek family’s story with ancient myths about hermaphrodites, among others, the seer Teiresias who for seven years was turned into a woman. At the same time giving himself the author of the u.s. 1900-talshistorien, from förbudstidens days and forward.
Jeffrey Eugenides is usually counted to the second-wave postmodern american storytellers, often in the same breath as Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace. His debut novel from 1993, the ”Death virgins,” about five sisters who commit suicide, became a 1999 film by Sofia Coppola. The latest novel that came in English was ”An act of love” in 2012.
the text sneak up on people who have slipped outside the social codes. Before you fully understood the context, it feels quite natural to be there, with the teacher who happened to reply to an sms flirten from a 16-year-old student, or with the man standing in garden and looking at the house on the wife and the children. It takes a while before you understand that the teacher ended up in court, sexanmäld of the student and to the man in the garden has a restraining order, for good reason.
the Money, as I said. Indrivningarna and betalskuldernas mara puts itself in the soul and in the few books I have seen so many glädjekalkyler of building contractors, fuskbyggen and shops that go to the forest, as in this. And desolate, trashiga environments where it drops from the ceiling and the fans are broken. Where they see overgrown Esso-stations and semi-finished elementbyggen on the marsh in the middle of nowhere and the thing after the thing breaks while banks aggressively start to be turned against one.
Among the stories I like the little extra is ”Öspipett” where Tomasina invited her friends to a noisy party to celebrate that she is this evening going to do in vitro fertilization on a mix of some of the former pojkvännernas semen. Ingredients: 1 pinch of Stu Wadsworth, 1 pinch of Jim Freeson, 1 pinch of Wally Mars. This was plan B. Plan A had been killed. It included love and wedding. Tomasina had to be 40 years and ”the best soldiers had left the field and concluded the marital peace. All that remained was a rag-tag-group of vänsterprasslare and losers…”
Eugenides is adept at portraying the social case, ever so slowly.
in the bathroom, and the elect the lords might afterwards offer a cocktail of seminal fluid, which during the evening is to be sprayed in with the help of a öspipett in the ägglossande the hostess.
But Wally Mars, who was the boyfriend of three months a long time ago and was now a completely uncharged friend, didn’t really have the same cool attitude. He took an initiative. Flushed out the others ‘ semen and filled the bottle with his own. When dopdagen came, he looked down in the crib. Potatisnäsan. The protruding ears. No doubt.
In just this short story, the text is screwed up and the tone high. But it is not general. Jeffrey Eugenides manages to get style and content to cooperate. Sometimes it is american pratprosa. Sometimes sparingly and underskruvat.
couple of the stories, but in the vast majority, he keeps my interest up. The short story ”Condominium” begins: ”my Dad shows me around on his new motels” and it doesn’t take many rows until you realize that the son will not benefit from his father’s lägenhetsaffärer in Florida. Not the mother either, but for husfridens sake chirping she in while she is terrified the son gives some quick messages.
Eugenides is adept at portraying the social case, ever so slowly. Where the reader is whispering no, don’t take the loan, the crap in that bet, keep a low profile, pay your debts, instead, continues the story inexorably in the wrong direction. But the american dream of success is not to be cautious, but daring. And where has Jeffrey Eugenides, a merciless gaze.
He also looks with tenderness on the people who make stupid choices that they against better judgment hold on to. Two phd students, also parents and breadwinners, the ports in the ”Early music” in a quandary because of their passionate interests. The man on the installment plan buying a clavichord (precursor to the piano), and because of it pretty quickly loses its pianoelever and with them their incomes. And his wife who produces outlandish luktmöss instead of writing complete their thesis.
Both refuse to see clearly. He plays and plays their early music while inkassobreven form on high. Making calls to China and the world over about their minimally profitable mustillverkning instead of fixing a reasonable job. It is in this short story you can read some nice lines about how couple do to stay together: ”At breakfast time, send you jam and you ask, ’How have you been today?’ and pretend to care. That stuff works really.”
a responsive and skilled translator, Niclas Nilsson, 2018, together with George Saunders was awarded Kulturhuset stadsteatern’s international literature prize. Both the author and translators of this book offer a perspective that perhaps moves the world view a tad.
Read more: A hermafrodits memoirs
