Calliope/Cal: A Trustworthy Narrator, Thanks to Eugenides
I really, really enjoy Calliope/Cal’s tone in Middlesex. Give the credit given to author Jeffrey Eugenides, Calliope/Cal has the ability to help the reader capture the full emotional value of images, actions and sequences without the excessive reliance of adjectives. I was beyond moved reading the passage when Dr. Philobosian was walking through his home on page 60, witnessing that his family has been murdered. I literally felt the monotony of working on an assembly line, like Lefty did (passage starting at the last paragraph of page 95).
Calliope/Cal also uses short sentences like paintbrushes to an oil canvas,
“The heat precedes the fire.” (pp. 58)
“Summer was abandoning the ocean.” (pp. 75)
“Desdemona bolts awake.” (pp. 121)
So far, the narrator has done a fantastic job describing events of her/his past. It’s pretty vivid for someone who was physically hanging out in oblivion for practically ninety-nine percent of the first two books of the novel. This brings up the question of validity, how much should I trust the narrator going into Book Three? Just like Humbert in Lolita, how much truth does a narrative told in retrospect hold? Calliope/Cal sounds very grounded, and pretty trustworthy thus far.
Since I just mentioned Lolita, Calliope/Cal is like a covert version of Humbert in terms of their narration methods. Calliope/Cal and Humbert both describe things very well, and both accurate get their point across. But while Humbert uses words to be very precise in his description, it feels like Calliope/Cal doesn’t need to use words that are absent from her/his vernacular. Her descriptions fly off the page like she/he’s not even trying very hard. Though we don’t know much about Calliope/Cal’s personal life, I still feel like I have a good sense of her/his personality.
One aspect of Eugenides’ writing style that I really love is how, at what feels like a random time, he would have the narrator go off on a tangent about chromosomes and the science of reproduction, then use it as a stepping stone to smoothly proceed with the story Calliope/Cal is narrating. It reminds me of a short story I wrote last year, where I used tangential paragraphs as breaks in the narrative. I’m in no way comparing my writing to a Pulitzer Prize winner. But as a novice writer, I think it works really well if used correctly. It adds a fresh dimension, or two or three, to the story.
Being that half of me is of Greek ancestry, I feel that I should be more inclined to appreciate that I’m reading a book that incorporates Greek culture. Honestly, if we substituted all the Greek with Italian, Brazilian, Mongolian, or anything else, I feel like my enjoyment wouldn’t be any less. Eugenides does something very anti-Greek in his prose. He doesn’t shove Greek culture in your face. He doesn’t abuse the usage of italicized Greek words. He practically abstains from coloring Calliope/Cal’s voice with a Greek tinge. He successfully sculpts the narrator as an American with Greek roots, not an Greek-American living in a Greek-American bubble in America.
I was dying laughing after I read this following quote from the top of page 29. I’m wondering if anyone else understood the humorous implications,
“What do you mean there aren’t any girls? What about Lucille Kafkalis?” … “Lucille smells,” Lefty answered reasonably. “She bathes maybe once a year. On her name day.”
Tags: Calliope/Cal, Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Middlesex, Narrative, syntax
