My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead (Eugenides)

My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro
Jeffrey Eugenides, Ed., 2008
HarperCollins
608 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061240386


Summary
"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.... 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. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."—Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead.

All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 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. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio

• Birth—March 8, 1960
• Where—Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.A., Stanford
University
• Awards—Whiting Writer's Award; Guggenheim
Fellowship; Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Princeton, New Jersey

Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his three acclaimed novels, The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011).

Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan, of Greek and Irish descent. He attended Grosse Pointe's private University Liggett School. He took his undergraduate degree at Brown University, graduating in 1983. He later earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University.

In 1986 he received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship for his story "Here Comes Winston, Full of the Holy Spirit." His 1993 novel, The Virgin Suicides, gained mainstream interest with the 1999 film adaptation directed by Sofia Coppola. The novel was reissued in 2009.

Eugenides is reluctant to disclose details about his private life, except through Michigan-area book signings in which he details the influence of Detroit and his high-school experiences on his writings. He has said that he has "a perverse love" of his birthplace. "I think most of the major elements of American history are exemplified in Detroit, from the triumph of the automobile and the assembly line to the blight of racism, not to mention the music, Motown, the MC5, house, techno." He also says he has been haunted by the decline of Detroit.

He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, Karen Yamauchi, and their daughter, Georgia. In the fall of 2007, Eugenides joined the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.

His 2002 novel, Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Ambassador Book Award. Part of it was set in Berlin, Germany, where Eugenides lived from 1999 to 2004, but it was chiefly concerned with the Greek-American immigrant experience in the United States, against the rise and fall of Detroit. It explores the experience of the intersexed in the USA. Eugenides has also published short stories, primarily in The New Yorker. His 1996 "Baster" became the basis for the 2010 romantic comedy The Switch (with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman).

His third novel, The Marriage Plot (2011), has been called by Carlin Romano in the Chronicle of Higher Education" the most entertaining campus novel since Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons. The plot is based on graduation day at Brown University in 1982.

Eugenides is the editor of the collection of short stories titled My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead. The proceeds of the collection go to the writing center 826 Chicago, established to encourage young people's writing. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
When it comes to love," writes Jeffrey Eugenides in this wonderful, if upsetting, collection of stories, "there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims—these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name".... Though every reader will grouse about overlooked favorites...Eugenides has chosen splendid work.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post

Pulitzer Prize winner Eugenides (Middlesex) has assembled something quite extraordinary here: a fascinating, consistently compelling, and superbly edited collection of short stories about romantic love. Part of the collection's appeal is its range and depth: at 600 pages, it offers gems and new discoveries at every turn. Readers move, for example, from Harold Brodkey's bawdy tribute to young love and orgasm in "Innocence" to Alice Munro's sober study of an aging philanderer's late-blooming love for his ailing wife in "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." There are classic love stories, e.g., James Joyce's "The Dead" and Anton Chekhov's "The Lady with the Little Dog," as well as more experimental, contemporary tales, e.g., Lorrie Moore's self-help-styled "How To Be an Other Woman" and George Saunders's dizzying, futuristic A Clockwork Orange-inflected world of trendsetters and tastemakers in "Jon." Some of the best moments come from younger writers, who somehow manage to match the masters here step for step. An essential acquisition.
Patrick Sullivan - Library Journal

The sparrow in the title of this anthology was one prong of an inconvenient love triangle described by the Latin poet Gaius Catullus in 84 B.C. The pet bird belonged to a girl who was loved by the poet and, unfortunately, her own husband. The sparrow takes the brunt of the lover's displaced jealousy, until it dies, taking his girl's happiness along with it. According to author Jeffrey Eugenides, all love stories since have followed the same template: "there is either a sparrow or the sparrow is dead." Frequently in these 26 stories, that sparrow takes the form of an inconvenient spouse, though it becomes apparent that the sparrow's presence is what makes the song so sweet. William Trevor provides a glimpse of the ordinary happiness that eludes a pair of lovers who take the unorthodox path of making a workaday love out of an illicit one, while Lorrie Moore gives a welcome take from the perspective of the mistress herself ("When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet"). The selection is well packed with classics—stories from Faulkner, Chekhov, Joyce, Nabokov, and Carver among them—which speaks for Eugenides' comprehensive scope but may feel remedial to some. Contemporary tales by Deborah Eisenberg, Denis Johnson, Miranda July, and others pack more surprise. Though all the entries illuminate the amatory state, none are much of an advertisement for its wholesome pleasures. Warns Eugenides: "Read these love stories in the safety of your own twin bed. Let everyone else suffer. —Amy Benfer
Barnes & Noble Review

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead:

Start with general questions:

1. Eugenides warns in his introduction that these stories aren't for the faint-of-heart—they end on sad, bittersweet notes. Of those stories you read, did the endings disappoint you? Choose one or two stories and talk about the mood and the endings.

2. Here is Eugenides' definition of love stories, which he has used to select the stories in this volume:

A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims—these are eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.

Is his definition to somber for you, too narrow? Completely wrong?

3. Talk about the title of this collection, "My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead," from the Latin Poet Catullus. As Eugenides says, "In each of the twenty-six love stories, either there is a sparrow or the sparrow is dead." Can you identify the sparrow in the stories you've read...and determine whether it's alive or dead?

4. Which stories were your favorites...and why? Which were your least favorites...and why?

5. Don't be afraid to draw some comparisons among stories. For instance:

• "The Lady with the Dog" and "Spring in Fialta."
• Either of the above with "Moonlight in Flight" and "Lovers in Their Time."
• Perhaps the self-sacrifice of "Mouche" and "The Bear Came Over the Mountian."
• Perhaps the accusatory lovers in "The Hitchhiking Game" and "Tonka."

Questions on selected stories:

6. FIRST LOVE AND OTHER SORROWS

a). What is the significance of the story's title—why is "first love" a sorrow?

b). This story pits the head against heart, rationalism against emotion. Which wins out...and for whom? Which is ultimately more important in a relationship?

c) What do you predict for the marriage of the boy's sister and Sonny? Why does the sister agree to marry Sonny? Does she love him?

7. THE LADY WITH THE LITTLE DOG

a) Why does Gurov realize (or decide?) he loves Anna? Does he love her?

b) Given the last line: "the end was still far, far off, and that the most complicated and difficult part was just beginning," what do you predict for Gurov and Anna?

8. LOVE

a) Who is Dotty Wasserman...and what does she have to do with this story? Is she real...or a make-believe character in couple's life?

b) Notice the slippery role time plays in this story: characters recall the past—but there is also a reference to how the future plays out. Why is time so "slippery"...what has time to do with love?

9. A ROSE FOR EMILY

a) To what extent is the "we" of the community responsible for Miss Emily's demise?

b) Why did Emily poison Homer? Was she a cold-blooded murderess...or insane?

c) Talk about Faulkner's unusual timeline. See our LitCourse Study Guide for "Miss Emily."

10. THE DEAD

a) What is the significance of this title? Who/what is dead?

b) How would you describe Gabriel? After Gretta tells him the story of Michael Furey, Gabriel realizes that he "had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love." Is Gabriel capable of any depth of feeling...for his country or for his wife?

11. THE HITCHHIKING GAME

a) Who is the young woman—what is her true personae:: the aggressively flirtatious "hitchhiker" or the shy woman at the beginning and end of the story? What about the young man— what is his real identity: promiscuous or faithful and loving?

12. MOUCHE

a) Is "Mouche," the boaters' name for the young woman, meant to be derogatory or affectionate or playful or...what?

b) N'a Qu-un Oeil, "who perhaps loved her more than any of us" agrees to share Mouche with all the others to give her another baby. All agree and exclaim, "Honest." What do you think of the agreement?

c) Notice that this is a story within a story, in which the narrator, an older man reminiscing, may be pulling the reader's leg. Consider how that might affect the meaning of the story's last word.

13. LOVERS OF THEIR TIME

a) Why does Norman wonder at the beginning of this story whether his and Marie's affair could have happened "at any other time except the 1960's"? What is the significance of that decade?

b) Could he and Marie have had a future...or was their love inevitably doomed—as much, say, as Anna Karenina's?

14. THE MOON IN FLIGHT

a) In what way does the narrator intrude in this story? What tone is used—is it sincere, ironic, sarcastic...? And why might the author have invented such a narrator? The narrator seems to be playing with the entire convention of storytelling: we could do this for the couple...we could do that for them.

b) What is the last line about—"art cannot rescue anybody from anything?" Or is this story just too hard to understand?

15. SPRINGTIME IN FIALTA

a) We learn early on (third page) that this will be the last time the narrator will meet Nina: "for I cannot imagine" fate consenting t "a meeting with her beyond the grave." How does that knowledge color your reading of the entire story?

b) The narrator admits that through his constant meetings with Nina, he "grew more and more apprehensive...because some-thing lovely, delicate, and unrepeatable was being wasted: something which I abused by...neglecting the modest but true core which perhaps it kept offering me in a pitiful whisper." He rationalizes that "any practical chance of life together with Nina.... was absurd" (p. 245). Was Nina, in fact, "offering" something? Was she in love with our narrator?

16. HOW TO BE AN OTHER WOMAN

a) The 2nd-person perspective "you" is quite unusual in fiction. Why does Lorrie Moore use it...what effect is she hoping to achieve...and is she successful?

b) Notice the title: Moore doesn't use the typical "the" other woman...or "another" woman, but "an other" woman. Any ideas?

c) Really, in the end, does the lover's surprise revelation make any difference? He's already proved himself dishonest. Why was that the breaking point?

17. YOURS

a) Why are these two people, of such differing ages, together?

b) What does the "yours" of the title ultimately mean?

18. TONKA

a) Was Tonka not good enough—or too good—for the narrator of this story? Was the baby his...or was Tonka unfaithful?

b) What does the narrator come to learn in the last three paragraphs of the story? What is "the bandage that had blindfolded him" refer to? And how did it make him "better than other people"—that "small warm shadow that had fallen across his brilliant life"?

19. RED ROSE, WHITE ROSE

a) Is there anyone you like in this story?!

b) What is the significance of the yellow slippers at the end? Why does Zhenbao reform? And what does "reform" mean? Does he come to love with Yanli? What is her future?

20. FIREWORKS

a) This story starts and ends with fireworks...of very different kinds. How do they differ...and what is their meaning to the story, especially given the story's title?

b) What is the significance of the collect phone call from Jeff? Later, Starling wishes he had accepted the call. Why...what do you think?

21. WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE

a) Did Terri's first husband "love" her as she insists, even though he tried to kill her? What does it mean to love someone?

b) Is Mel right—that love is absolute? If so, then as Mel wonders, how can you love one person...then come to hate that person...and fall in love with another?

22. THE BEAR CAME OVER THE MOUNTAIN

a) What is the magnificent central irony of this story?

b) What does the title mean in the context of the story?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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