The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Summary

"Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Bankhead, while an old friend resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny." - from NPR.org

The good stuff

• It started with the books. And it went on and on with books. The Marriage Plot is replete with references to books. We catch the three main characters, Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell, in college and the first year out of it, and much mention is made of their reading material. In fact, two of the characters fall in love precisely because of books, and the other one in the triangle uses his readings and scholarship as a crutch for his unrequited love. However, it is Madeleine's reading list that speaks the most to me, since she loves the narrative and considers herself a "Victorianist," a specialization I would also love to have. (Just to show how much I enjoyed the books, see the list compiled below.)
• I only planned to browse through the book's first few pages. But Eugenides writes so smoothly that I found I'd already gone through 25% of the book before I looked up.
• I liked that Eugenides gave characters values that seem very archaic today, such as taking the marriage plot (in literature and in life) head-on and searching for faith even in organized religion.
• I enjoyed Mitchell's honesty and Leonard's fight to cope with his condition.

The not-so-good

• Even though I loved her reading list, I did not care for Madeleine at all. She was blind, oftentimes on purpose, to the course her life was taking or the consequences of her choices. She also got progressively whinier through the book. I did not like that she became childish whenever she was with her family, nor that it was the men in her life who made choices that would benefit her, such that she, not them, ends up with a promising life, through little effort of her own.
• This may be because I'm nearly 15 years out of college, but at certain points, I did not see what their fuss was all about. All the pretension from knowledge gained in college, the search for love, the quest for one's self--not that I've got the last of these down pat myself--but really, I was close to losing patience with them. And that's how I realized that I must really be getting old. These are not the issues I would worry about knowing what I know and being where I am now.

Quotes from the book that I highlighted and why

She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.

...because the line is counterintuitive.

Madeleine was perfectly happy with the idea of genius. She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get herself. She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it. When it came to letters and literature, Madeleine championed a virtue that had fallen out of esteem: namely, clarity.

...because we share this belief.

Religious feeling didn't arise from going to church or reading the Bible but from the most private interior experiences, either of great joy or of staggering pain.

...because it makes sense to me.

There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

...because it reads like a line that'll be in a "best quotes about books" website and will be quoted ad infinitum by book lovers.

It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.

...because the line is beautiful and true.


The ending

I still haven't decided whether I like it more than I didn't like it. I liked it because it was witty and right, given everything that happened. I didn't like it because it felt like the whole book was written just to get to that ending...

Over-all

(Errata: The initial version of this paragraph assumed that this book won the Pulitzer. I thought I was that behind on Pulitzer news that I didn't even know the award was given. Apparently, I was misled by the cover. So, it hasn't won the Pulitzer yet and I don't think it will. Thanks for pointing it out, Aldrin!)
In spite of the indulgence in semiotic theory, feminism in Victorian lit, and a deconstruction of the marriage plot itself, all set in the recession of 80's America (or maybe because of it) I wasn't all sold to the book. Though I flipped through the novel quickly and enjoyed reading it to some extent, I still think Middlesex was a stronger and more relevant novel. The female character in The Marriage Plot didn't speak to me and that disappoints me because I like well-drawn female characters, if not strong ones. In the end, I felt that, no matter how much I enjoyed reading the book, it didn't mean much of anything in the face of real life. Which, I think, is highly reflective of most literary theories.

And yet, the books...

The Marriage Plot started with the books, so I'll also end with the books. It may either be geekiness or even pretension on my part, but I did write down the books mentioned in it, along with who was reading them. Not that I intend to read all of them, but I am grateful that it reminded me of other books I still plan to read.

So, whose reading list do you prefer?

Mitchell

• Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis
• Confessions by St. Augustine
• Interior Castle by St. Theresa of Avila
• A Confession by Leo Tolstoy
• Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
• The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware
• A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
• Auguste Comte and Positivism by John Stuart Mill
• The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
• Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
• The Drama of Atheist Humanism by Henri de Lubac
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• The Cloud of Unknowing
• The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross
• V by Thomas Pynchon
• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Madeleine

• Modern Library Set of Henry James
• Love Story by Erich Segal
• Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal
• H.M. Pulham, Esquire by John Marquand
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
• Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida (also read by Leonard)
• The Role of the Reader by Umberto Eco (also read by Leonard)
• Writing and Difference by Jacques Derrida (also read by Leonard)
• On Deconstruction by Jonathan Culler (also read by Leonard)
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
• A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes (also read by Leonard)
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
• The Oxford Book of English Verse

Leonard

• Writings in General Linguistics by Jacques Derrida
• The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Ontogeny and Phylogeny by Stephen Jay Gould

Other books mentioned

• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac
• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
• New French Feminisms: An Anthology

By the way, this list is by no means exhaustive. And if you find mistakes or things I missed out, feel free to point them out.