It’s the birthday of Jeffrey Eugenides (b. 1960), who has written just three novels to date but who became a household name when his second novel, Middlesex (2002), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was chosen by Oprah for her book club in 2007.

Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan, the youngest of three sons, and grew up in the shi-shi suburb of Grosse Pointe; his father was the son of Greek immigrants and was himself a businessman who did better and better throughout Eugenides’ childhood. Eugenides studied at Brown University and got an M.A. in creative writing from Stanford—but before that, took a year off college to travel the world and volunteer briefly with Mother Teresa. (He said in one interview that he wanted to see if he could be a saint; he couldn’t.)

Eugenides’ first novel, The Virgin Suicides (1993), was inspired in part by his nephew’s babysitter, who said that she and all her sisters had attempted suicide. He wrote the novel from an unusual viewpoint, first person plural, a combined perspective of the neighbor boys who watch the sisters from a distance. The novel was made into a successful film by Sofia Coppola in 1999.

Middlesex explores the story of an intersex person, Cal, who is raised a girl but is genetically a boy and who also must cope with his family background as Greek immigrants. In addition to the Pulitzer, the novel was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and the Prix Médicis, although one critic accused it of “Clanking prose, clunky exposition, transparent devices, telegraphed moves…”

That same critic, William Deresiewicz, and in the same New York Times review (Oct. 14, 2011), had mostly high praise for Eugenides’ third novel, The Marriage Plot (2011), which is about three college students in a love triangle as they graduate from Brown in 1982 and face their futures. On some level, all three novels can be seen as coming-of-age novels. Eugenides’ most recent book is a collection of short stories, Fresh Complaint, which came out in 2017.

Eugenides was asked in one interview which three authors (living or dead) he would invite to a dinner party. His response began:

First I call Shakespeare. “Who else is coming?” Shakespeare asks. “Tolstoy,” I answer. “I’m busy that night,” Shakespeare says. Next I call Kafka, who agrees to come. “As long as you don’t invite Tolstoy.” “I already invited Tolstoy,” I tell him. “But Kundera’s coming. You like Milan. And you guys can speak Czech.” “I speak German,” Kafka corrects me. When Tolstoy hears that Kundera’s coming, he drops out…

Read the rest here. It’s hilarious.

Have a lovely Friday, invite your favorite authors to dinner, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.