Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Phil Mason suggests this title and writes:

A Pulitzer Prize winner published in 2002, it's an epic about three generations of a Greek-American family who traveled from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus and ended up in Detroit.  They live through several of the city's history-making eras and experience some provocative twists and turns relating to genetic abnormalities and family secrets.

And Marcia adds: With some arm-twisting, I think Phil is willing to lead the discussion.

Clint writes: Lefty and Desdemona may be fictional, but the destruction of the ancient Greek city of Smyrna was real. This is quoted from the trailer for Marjorie Houspian Dobkin's Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City. The photo of Greeks escaping the burning city is from another source.

In September of 1922, Mustapha Kemal (Ataturk), the victorious revolutionary leader of Turkey, led his troops into Smyrna (now Izmir) a predominantly Christian city, as a flotilla of 27 Allied warships -including 3 American destroyers- looked on. The Turks soon proceeded to indulge in an orgy of pillage, rape and slaughter that the western powers anxious to protect their oil and trade interests in Turkey, condoned by their silence and refusal to intervene. Turkish forces then set fire to the legendary city and totally destroyed it. There followed a massive cover-up by tacit agreement of the Western Allies. By 1923 Smyrna's demise was all but expunged from historical memory.

These are probably among the frescoes at the Detroit Institute of Art by Diego Rivera that Eugenides mentions.

 

A critique of Eugenides's Nation of Islam chapter appears at:

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=4650  Here Kelli Kavanaugh attempts the real story of Wallace D. Fard and the Nation of Islam. And of course the Nation has its own Web at www.not.org

Here's a summary of Calliope's part in Antigione:

Teiresias: The blind prophet. He warns Creon that the gods do not approve of his treatment of Polyneices' body or Antigone. Creon then insults him. Teiresias responds with a prophecy foretelling the death of one of Creon's children, warning that all of Greece will despise the king if he does not relent. The prophet is an important part of Sophocles' vision. Through him, the will of the gods is made known, and his existence implies that there is a definite will of the gods to defer to and obey.

Tiresias was the son of Everes and the nymph Chariclo; he was a blind prophet, the most famous soothsayer of ancient Greece.

The most famous account of the origin of his blindness and his prophetic talent is as follows. When Tiresias was walking in the woods one day, he came upon two great serpents copulating; he struck them with his staff, and was thereupon transformed into a woman. Seven years later, she/he passed by the same place and came upon the same two serpents copulating; she/he struck them again with the staff and was turned back into a man. Some time later, Zeus and Hera were arguing over who had more pleasure in sex, the man or the woman: Zeus said it was the woman, while Hera claimed men got more pleasure from the act. To settle the argument, they consulted Tiresias, since he had experienced life as both sexes, and Tiresias sided with Zeus. In her anger, Hera struck Tiresias blind. Since Zeus could not undo the act of another deity, he gave Tiresias the gift of prophecy in compensation.

Another account says that Tiresias accidentally saw Athena naked, and she covered his eyes with her hands, thus rendering him blind. When Tiresias' mother Chariclo asked Athena to restore her son's sight, the goddess could not undo her own action but gave him the gift of prophecy as compensation.

Clint writes at the last minute: Some questions I may raise at the meeting:

1.  Did any of you ever live on a dairy farm? If you did maybe the same picture came to mind when Callie and the Object were making out. If you want one of your cows to come fresh how do you know it's the right time to take her to see the bull? One way is when you observe her mounting her fellow cows, bull fashion. This common sight indicates cross-sexual behavior is not uncommon in other species.

2. I missed the significance of Chapter Eleven's name. Does it indicate he was bankrupt form birth?

3. So many names and places and events are real which ones aren't? For example, a Baker and Inglis girls' school seems not to exist, at least by that name but Baker and Inglis were author's of a popular high school Latin text. Did Eugenides steal it therefrom?

4. Is Dr. Luce built on the real John Money?

 

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