American - Novelist | April 13, 1960 -
I was unemployable when I got out of college.
Jeffrey Eugenides
CollegeOutGot
I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least.
WriteRealizeEverythingGoingGet
I had a briefcase at one point, but it was a kind of 1980s New Wave briefcase. It was made of some kind of cardboard and it had metal hinges. It was kind of faux industrial looking, and I used to carry my books in it rather than a backpack. I didn't want to have normal student accoutrements.
LookingWaveStudentNewWantKind
It was painful, but sometimes you must have these painful moments where you tear yourself away from something that isn't working.
YourselfMomentsYouSometimesWhere
But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.
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I'm hopefully making the reader feel a lot about the characters and then about their own life.
LifeFeelOwnMakingCharactersLot
I want an ending that's satisfying. I'm more of a classical writer than a modernist one in that I want the ending to be coherent and feel like an ending. I don't like when it just seems to putter out. I mean, life is chaotic enough.
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One of the reasons that art is important to me is sometimes it actually feels more coherent than life. It orders the chaos.
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We're all well-acquainted with depression, we all know what the low moods are, but the mania was not something I knew much about. I didn't know that it would make someone dress extravagantly or start to pun, and to stay up and drink.
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I was directed because I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I didn't have a very good job or a way of getting published. I found those years to be among the most difficult of my life.
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It was a recession when I graduated, but I was so unequipped to have a job anyway, I don't think it would have mattered if the economy was booming. I think I was expecting bad jobs. But as it went on through my 20s, I began to wonder how things were going to turn out.
JobThinkBadWonderEconomyTurn
I mean, when I got to Brown, the place was riven, because you had older professors who were basically new critics and had been teaching a certain way for 30 years. And then you had this other gang who was down with the semiotic program. And as a student, you were, in a way, forced to choose which cohort you were going with.
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