This month, club’s members
gathered on December 13, 2012 to discuss Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel The Virgin Suicides (1993) and watch its
film adaptation directed by Sofia Coppola (1999).
We took upon ourselves to note and consider major themes of the book, such as: the drama of coming of age, superficiality of male-female communication and chronic nostalgia. Also, focusing on the contrast between the novel and its adaptation, we talked about Gothicism and strong Faulknerian influences pervading the book.
We took upon ourselves to note and consider major themes of the book, such as: the drama of coming of age, superficiality of male-female communication and chronic nostalgia. Also, focusing on the contrast between the novel and its adaptation, we talked about Gothicism and strong Faulknerian influences pervading the book.
What I do as a writer, I work with situations, characters, certain situations and characters that appeal to me. And then, I try to imagine them and write the story that seems to flow from them. At a certain point, I can realize the themes are merging from this. But I never start from a thematic point of view, that I'm going to write about reinvention of self, identity, or any of these things. Usually, after the book is finished and I start talking about it, that it becomes analytical in that way. And in some ways it's a distortion of what the process has been, writing the book. - Jeffrey Eugenides, 3AM Magazine
by Sylwia Chlebowska
