Love in the Time of Jeffrey Eugenides
I’m an idealist but I’m not an idiot. I understand the gravity of the world’s state of affairs. This is the Holden Caulfield effect. Reality doesn’t do away with optimism, it just makes you have to work harder at it. People don’t think Holden Caulfield was an optimist because they don’t understand how it works. Optimism is not naivete. It’s a resolution after careful consideration of the facts.
I’ve always admired the way Jeffrey Eugenides writes. I knew the first time I heard the narrator opening The Virgin Suicides that if the script was taking any queues at all from the book that it was going to be my favorite. He writes prose because it’s pretty. It’s thick and heavy with depth and beauty, even while describing a grisly subject like five teenage suicides. It’s like eating a flourless chocolate cake. Nothing is superfluous.
This is how I feel about love, as it’s relevant to today. It doesn’t have to be innocent. That’s not real. It can acknowledge that there are things about dating that are kind of fucked up no matter how it goes. But it acknowledges this with reverence. The difference between realism and optimism is this extra step, this adoration.
Eugenides acknowledges all that is awful about having to deal with being a teenage girl or an intersex person. He doesn’t give us a surprise ending where some people reunite in the airport and live Happily Ever After. His reality is real, but it’s not the end of the story. Life goes on in Eugenides world because we will it to go on. I will it to go on.
Love for modern people isn’t airbrushed. You have to see how people are beautiful in their failures. The attraction isn’t in their reaching perfection, but in their continued reaching after they know it won’t be easy. There is strength in being optimistic about love because you know the risks. You know the odds. There is strength in trying. May you be strong.
