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Julia had settled down…

…on her side and was already on the point of falling asleep.

Was she tired? Probably. Was that why? Nope. It was because she made the mistake of reading a book that sounded a m a z i n g in theory – yet was a complete fail in practice. Sandra Newman’s JULIA, based on – you probaly guessed it already – George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984. I must have read it at least 20 times and it never fails to leave me completely devastated. And it’s still so valid today. The only bad thing I can say about it is that it brought us one of the worst reality TV franchises – looking at you, Big Brother. Who’s watching now, huh?

So, anyway, this woman comes along and probably thinks to herself: let’s explore Oceania from a feminist POV! Very en vogue, that sort of retelling of male-focused classics, and generally an interesting and promising concept. If done right. And thus she conferred with the cultural heirs of Orwell and eventually got the rights to rewrite on of my favourite novels EVER from the perspective of Julia, Winston’s love-interest (to simplify). A friend gave it to me saying she found the first pages too tedious to read and asked if maybe I wanted to give it a try? Sure I wanted! I mean, on top of the intriguing idea, what a great title. However, I purposefully lowered my expectations – after all, no matter how good, I don’t think anyone could out-do the uncrowned king of dystopian novels. And yet, I should have buried those expectations at least twenty thousand leagues under the sea. Lo(w) and behold, it was bad. So bad, I felt compelled to write a brtual(ly honest) review on GoodReads.com. Here’s my full review, including spoilers:

I had high hopes for this yet was careful not to expect too much – after all, there was no way it could live up to Orwell‘s masterpiece. The first half is really dreadful to read and gave me nothing. Julia is nothing but a sexdriven cynic who believes she has everything figured out. As soon as the book reaches the Winston-Julia-plot from the original, I felt it got more interesting. Honestly though I can’t say if the writing changed or if it was just my excitement for what I knew was about to come. Probably the latter, because Julia’s experience in Room 101 is unnecessarily gory, her encounter with Diane (?), the Inner Party woman, and her monologue on 2+2=5 felt like something you’d find on Sparknotes. The worst part is the ending. The reason why Orwell‘s 1984 has so much impact today is because it denies you any glimpse of hope. Having Julia join the resistance that overthrows the government and Big Brother felt simply wrong. Too much of a fairy tale ending where the knight in shining armour aka soldiers/rebels saved the day and the nation.

Probably a good read for anyone who can’t stand a dystopian ending. Apart from that, would sadly not recommend. Bonus point for making me want to re-read Orwell now.

So please, do yourself a favour, and don’t even bother to read it. Life is too precious and there are so many better books out there.

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My Body is a Cage

Fritz Zorn meets Arcade Fire meets The Intellectual Chaos.

I’ve scribbled and drawn this during a time I felt really bad. The Jüngling had just dumped me (via text message while he was on a faculty party less than 10min away from me), I was heartbroken, I ate nothing but dark chocolate (Schwarze Herrenschokolade) and drank red wine, cycled myself to exhaustion (>5 hours per day), cried myself to sleep every night, slept maybe 3-4 hours per night, listened to nothing but Mahler and Arcade Fire, and read nothing but destructive literature. Full-on Werther-style. Minus the suicide. So yeah, not the best of times. I tried to keep myself busy to stop my intestines from writhing and my heart from hurting. It was also the time I applied for a job at the theatre, so it wasn’t the worst of times, after all. Anyway, one of the ways to deal with how I felt and the fact I loathed to be me and that I tried to punish my body for what was going on in my heart was this drawing. It is a symbiosis of Arcade Fire’s My Body is a Cage from the Album Neon Bible (2007) – one of the best songs out there –

and the cover of Fritz Zorn’s Mars, a scandalous book with huge success in Germany during the late 70s and 80s; a ruthless account with the well-off bourgeois Swiss society on which he blames his lethal cancer. Fun stuff, yay! No, but seriously: that is one of the most intense things I’ve ever read. Every sentence is so strong, so violent, so powerful.

Whatever exists is inevitably flawed.

And so I channelled my black dog via two different media into a third one. It’s still up on my wall and reminds me whenever I struggle, that things can indeed get better even if it might not feel like they possibly can.

The bird symbol continued to play an important part in my life for various reasons, Fritz Zorn and his influence being just one of them. But that is a different story to tell. Until then, take care out there!

Yours The Intellectual Chaos.

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Genetics, Gender, and the Greeks. On Jeffrey Eugenide’s Middlesex.

Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.

Middlesex is Jeffrey Eugenide’s second novel. After the much promising The Virgin Suicides, it was not surprising that his 2002 novel of epic proportions would win the Pulitzer Price for Fiction in 2003. In 4 books, 28 chapters, and 529 pages, a monumental Bildungsroman tells the family saga of hermaphrodite Cal. It is a story about the American Dream, about love and obsession, rebirth and puberty, about migration and Greek/American culture. It explores questions of gender and cultural identity, incest (not the icky kind but the one you actually somewhat sympathize with) and other family secrets.

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

With a vigorous opening line like this, Eugenides clearly does not beat around the bush. What follows this promising beginning is the story of Cal Stephanides, former known as Calliope, and how they became a ‘he’, how they discovered, and learnt to accept and adopt their hermaphroditic nature. Together with Cal, we’re (literary hehe) travelling back in time to explore their teenage years respectively but also the story of how Cal’s ancestors immigrated to the US and their struggle to assimilate to the American way while also obtaining their cultural inheritance.

The first chapter: Yia-Yia Desdemona swings her spoon to reveal Cal’s gender antenatal and fails at the first attempt. A strong symbolic scene of how the Greek inheritance and superstition cannot stand up against genetically caused inter-sexism. Tradition VS DNA. Halfway through the book, you are so captivated by the Stephanides’ family saga, you almost forget about the eponymous hermaphrodite from the opening. The tale of Lefty and Des, who flee their hometown in Greece to escape the war, are siblings madly in love with each other. In Detroit, USA, they start a new life as immigrants – and as a married couple. Their incest remains a secret for many many years, until Des eventually comes clean to her grandchild. To cut a long family tree short: Lefty and Des have a son, Milton. Milton marries Tessie. Milton and Tessie have two kids, Chapter Eleven (whose proper name is never revealed to the reader) and Calliope. The three-generation family lives in a house called Middlesex. “Did anybody ever live in a house as strange? As sci-fi? A house that was more like communism, better in theory than reality?”

From here, Cal sets our on their teenage adventures. It is not so much a tale of a hermaphrodite as more of a personal account of the genreal confusions and struggles that come with pubertyy. This makes Middlesex – beside other factors – so brilliant: Eugenides never pushes the subject of inter-sexuality and gender identity too hard, there’s no in your face. Instead, it is neatly woven into the saga, never omitted but always acknowledged while basically telling a coming-of-age story. Our internally focalized narrator Cal occasionally slips into ironic, sarcastic, sometimes even stern comments to remind us of their genetic predisposition. However, there’s never a moment where you feel lectured.

Jeffrey Eugenides is a literary genius. Period. How he describes emotions in such striking imagery yet at the same time remains so pure, prosaic and pragmatic in his style is pure genius. I orgasmed at this specific sentence:

When he spoke to himself, it was in complete paragraphs. If you listened closely, it was possible to hear the dashes and commas in his speech, even the colons and semicolons.

Cal, the omniscient overseer beyond time, mind and existence, who dares to comment on his own conception, is an excellent and very unusual choice for the narrative voice. Cal is an extremely audacious, wondrous, pointy and eloquent narrator, who never ceases to draw our attention and empathy, may it be towards themself or their ancestors.

Middlesex is a collection of individual and very personal stories, all quite touching, skilfully woven together under grander themes.

Eugenides has a somewhat weird take on sex scenes though. Not that there’s a lack of very explicit sexual episodes. However, they all are a bit off in the way they are told: one is incestuous, one uses the clarinet (of all instruments!!!!) as an erotic metaphor for hormonally motivated lust, one is experienced by Cal twice simultaneously – by herself, with Jerome “sliding and climbing on top of me like a crushing weight. So do boy and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.” (yeah, that sarcophargus reference makes sex totally appealing) and at the same time impersonating Rex Reese, who is ‘busy’ with Cal’s real love interest, the obscure object. Cal lives his feelings, sexual fulfilment and satisfaction empathetically through someone else.

The whole 529 pages are amazing from beginning to end. Most intriguing is probably The Obscure Object. I re-read the whole chapter twice. But then there are also so many neat one-liners, you kinda wanna quote them all.

Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913.

I did what any loving, loyal daughter would have done who had been raised on a diet of Hercules movies.

“It’s like the paintings in the museum,” she said, “Just an excuse to show people with no clothes.”

What else is there to say? Much more. So much more. I warmly welcome you to read it and go into an in-depth analysis with me. It’s literary dimensions are of such significance, it should become a modern classics. Maybe already is. Furthermore, it matters. What a truly compelling, transatlantic and outstanding epos.

Go and read it. Please.