The novelist says he considers himself "too old" to be a romantic anymore. the force of the desire drives the prose, drives the plot," he says. "When I think about a lot of my favorite novels - Portrait of a Lady by Henry James or Lolita by Nabokov, they are all love stories.
Vulnerability and the heightened awareness that people feel when they're in love are what draw readers to love stories.
The stories in this collection are by no means tragic, but in order to even get to a measure of happiness, the characters usually have to go through a lot of difficulty," Eugenides says.Įugenides explains that the title of the collection comes from the Latin poet Catullus, who wrote poems about his desire for his girlfriend Lesbia - and the pet sparrow that keeps getting in the way.Įven when the sparrow dies, Eugenides says, Catullus is still thwarted: Lesbia is too grief-stricken by the death to pay any attention to the poet.Įugenides says he realized that these poems expressed the "two poles" around which the love stories in the anthology revolve: voyeuristic longing and disenchanted entanglement. "I started to realize that not only the love stories that I liked, but actually the love stories that everybody liked, had a certain bittersweet quality to them. He points out that love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births, on dysfunctional families and matrimonial boredom - and, in short, they simply give love a bad name. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.Writer Jeffrey Eugenides, who edited the new anthology, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro, takes a unique look at love through this short story collection. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Let everybody else suffer."-Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is DeadĪll proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart.
A love story can never be about full possession.
But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. "When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it.
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