The latest issue of mental_floss just hit newsstands. Rosemary Ahern’s cover story chronicles ‘The 25 Most Influential Books of the Past 25 Years.’ This week, we’ll be revealing five of those influential books here on the blog. And if this puts you in a subscribing mood, here are the details.
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
The Book That Showed Us That Mars and Venus Aren’t the Only Planets
In less enlightened times, the hero of Middlesex, Cal, would have been called a hermaphrodite. But after Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003, the intersex rights movement stepped into the spotlight, and pejorative terms for intersex people slowly began to fade. Like 1 in 2,000 American children, Eugenides’ hero is born with a body that exhibits mixed sexual characteristics. More specifically, Cal inherited 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome, which occurs when the chromosomes indicate one sex and the genitalia indicate the other. People with the syndrome are born looking like girls, but when puberty hits, they begin to look like men. At birth, Cal is every bit as feminine as the next girl. But as testosterone begins surging through his veins at age 12, Cal becomes more and more masculine. When doctors tell his parents that he needs surgery and hormone therapy to correct the problem, Cal runs away.
Middlesex addresses the fallacy that intersex people must conform to one gender or the other to lead happy, healthy lives. Beginning in the 1950s, babies born with ambiguous genitalia were assigned a sex in infancy. After that, surgeries and medical treatments would keep the child’s appearance in line with the chosen sex. Because female genitalia are easier for surgeons to sculpt, most intersex babies were made into girls. As they grew up, they were kept in the dark about their true biological status, and their feelings of “being born in the wrong body” were left unaddressed. Many wanted their sex changed as adults, only to discover that the surgeries performed on them as infants were irreversible.
It wasn’t until the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) was established in 1993 that intersexuality came out of the closet. The society is dedicated to ending the shame and secrecy surrounding intersexuality, and to outlawing the irreversible surgeries inflicted on intersex children. The ISNA also promotes the idea that traditional definitions of male and female are too narrow to contain the full spectrum of human biology. Although not officially affiliated with the ISNA, Jeffrey Eugenides has publicly stated that he hopes Middlesex will advance the cause. By all accounts, it has.
More Influential Books
Thinking in Pictures (The Book That Explained Autism from the Inside Out)
*
And the Band Played On (The Book That Forced Us to Acknowledge AIDS)
*
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (The Book That Lost Nothing in Translation)
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The book, while entertaining, is not the great hermaphroditic novel everyone made it out to be. It only won the Nobel prize and Oprah’s attention for that singular detail. Most of the book is a family tale about his grandmother and parents. The entire hermaphrodite storyline reads as a coda to an otherwise mediocre book about a Greek family.
Reports about how important this book is are pure rubbish.
posted by Daryn on 2-27-2009 at 9:20 am
I think that’s the great thing about these books– that we can debate just how important they are, and whether they should be on the list. Our arguments and justifications are listed in each entry, but we’re DEFINITELY looking to hear our readers’ ideas as well, and would love you to write in to 25books@mentalfloss.com with your suggestions and explanations for replacements.
posted by Mangesh Hattikudur on 2-27-2009 at 10:06 am
I completely agree with Daryn. After hearing so much about how great it was (including the misleading description on the back of the book), I was really disappointed.
It won the Nobel Prize? Yeesh.
posted by Rachel on 2-27-2009 at 11:00 am
to me, it doesn’t matter how “important” this book is. i really enjoyed reading it. it was a good story and a well written one.
hey, my reCaptcha is: began multi-
posted by the creature on 2-27-2009 at 11:37 am
I thought this book deserved a prize (maybe not the Nobel, a Pulizter perhaps), but not for the taboo topic it covered, but for the fabulous writing that Mr Eugenides produced.
For me, the way he wove the story throughout the generations had an very cinematic appeal, with the narrator having an almost omnipotent voice that allowed us to watch each scene being played out at the same time. I haven’t read too many books that can do this with the fluidity that Middlesex has. That, combined with the element of detail expressed throughout each individual sentence, was measured just enough to express the full emotions of the well-rounded characters without it becoming tedious and boring.
I thought this book was excellent, and the worst thing about it was that it ended up on Oprah’s book list, which is just tacky in itself.
posted by Kate on 2-27-2009 at 11:44 am
I was very excited when I heard that Eugenides had a new book out, because I so loved his other novel, The Virgin Suicides. I was disappointed in the novel because of my expectations were so high. He was the 1st writer I had read that wrote successfully in 2nd person, I loved the original story line in Virgin Suicides, and the narrative was amazing–all lost in the horrible movie by the way. Those elements were lost in Middlesex. The story was okay, the plot was okay, and there was little surprise for me in the ending. Nothing that made his other book special. I was so let down.
posted by Celeste on 2-27-2009 at 1:23 pm
I work for B&N down in Florida and as soon as this issue came into my store, I campaigned to feature it and all the books inside. Thankfully, my bosses realize the importance of such and awesome magazine featuring important books and our customers have been drawn to my display like geeky bees to flossy flowers.
posted by JulieB on 2-28-2009 at 5:37 am