I’m in the middle of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, another wonderful book. Though this one is a novel, Eugenides also brings to life the fullness of history. This time, the confident narrator can describe the very moment of his birth, which sounds impossible to pull off, but the writing is so rich that you believe all of it. It reads like epic.
Both these books remind me of a simple fact: writing intensifies and clarifies thinking, creating order out of chaos. Months of notes stuffed into bulging folders are forged and hammered until they fit inside clean covers, as if the outcome was inevitable, as if the truth was waiting to be found. Quite an illusion.