"The book has many different characteristics: some are extremely old-fashioned storytelling traits, but there are also a fair number of postmodern traits, and the self-consciousness is one"
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Eugenides is smuggling a quiet defense of hybridity into what sounds like a neutral inventory. By calling attention to "extremely old-fashioned storytelling traits" alongside "postmodern traits", he frames craft not as a generational battleground but as a toolbox. The move is strategic: it rejects the purist fantasy that serious fiction must pledge allegiance either to comforting, linear narrative or to clever, destabilizing experimentation. He is arguing, in effect, that the most alive contemporary novels steal from both camps and refuse to apologize.
The key tell is his emphasis on "self-consciousness". In postmodernism, self-consciousness can be a taunt: the text winks at you, reminding you it's a construct, daring you to keep believing. Eugenides treats it less as a gimmick than as a characteristic - almost a texture. That choice suggests intent: to use meta-awareness not to dismantle story, but to deepen it. The novel can acknowledge its own mechanisms while still delivering the satisfactions of plot, character, and suspense.
Context matters because Eugenides emerged in the era after postmodernism had already become canonized classroom style. For a novelist trying to write emotionally legible books in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the anxiety isn't whether to be "experimental"; it's how to write with intelligence without freezing the reader out. His phrasing implies a balancing act: borrow the authority of older narrative forms, keep the ethical/epistemic doubt of postmodernism, and let self-consciousness function as honesty rather than smugness.
The key tell is his emphasis on "self-consciousness". In postmodernism, self-consciousness can be a taunt: the text winks at you, reminding you it's a construct, daring you to keep believing. Eugenides treats it less as a gimmick than as a characteristic - almost a texture. That choice suggests intent: to use meta-awareness not to dismantle story, but to deepen it. The novel can acknowledge its own mechanisms while still delivering the satisfactions of plot, character, and suspense.
Context matters because Eugenides emerged in the era after postmodernism had already become canonized classroom style. For a novelist trying to write emotionally legible books in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the anxiety isn't whether to be "experimental"; it's how to write with intelligence without freezing the reader out. His phrasing implies a balancing act: borrow the authority of older narrative forms, keep the ethical/epistemic doubt of postmodernism, and let self-consciousness function as honesty rather than smugness.
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| Topic | Writing |
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