I reviewed Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, which I enjoyed but had hoped and expected to admire more than I did. Here’s an excerpt. Jeffrey Eugenides has always sought to infuse his fiction with the pleasures of “old-fashioned” storytelling. He strives for a “Classical shape,” a “pleasing and elegant form,” for “something that seizes you, that grabs your attention and . . .
“For the young — and especially the young writer — memory and imagination are quite distinct, and of different categories. In a typical first novel, there will be moments of unmediated memory (typically, that unforgettable sexual embarrassment), moments where the imagination has worked to transfigure a memory (perhaps that chapter in which the protagonist learns some lesson about life, whereas . . .
She read my manuscript and said she loved it, and then she asked why I decided not to write the other part of the story in the same book. “I thought it was too ambitious,” I said. “I was afraid I couldn’t do it.” “That’s not a good reason,” she said. “Of course you can do it.” And now, I . . .
In the food issue of the New York Times Magazine, out this weekend, writers answer various questions. Mine was “How does rattlesnake taste?” Obviously I roped Dana, Max, and Nick into finding out with me, and obviously we intended to follow (to the extent possible) my former teacher Harry Crews’ instructions. Tracking down a diamondback in New York City proved . . .