Jeffery Eugenides and George Saunders' Lonely Hearts Club

What do Jeffrey Eugenides and George Saunders have in common? The answer, among other quirky anecdotes revealed when the two authors appeared at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble on Jan. 10, turns out to be something more than just their writing prowess: both are Greek-American, and both had grandfathers who sold fruit for a living.

At the event, Eugenides (Virgin Suicides, Middlesex) read from his introduction to the new anthology he compiled and edited, My Mistress’ Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro, which went on sale the day of the event. George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia) is one of the authors featured in the book, alongside such literary greats—both living and dead—as James Joyce, Eileen Chang, William Faulkner, and Harold Brodkey. Saunders read from his featured story “Jon,” a bizarre, dystopic tale of a boy who happens to have a microchip in his neck that allows corporations to advertise inside his brain and then study his responses to their products. In writing the story, Saunders explained that he was attempting to mimic the “half-smart, half-inarticulate” tone of one of his freshman writing students at Syracuse University. His remarkably animated reading from the perspective of his “clueless” protagonist frequently drew laughter from the audience.

Eugenides then read part of Milan Kundera’s contribution to the anthology, “The Hitchhiking Game,” expressively but cautiously—as though he were describing something very mysterious. The tone of his reading nicely complemented the approach to love stories he discusses in his introduction to the book: that great love often takes the form of imperfect and even one-sided relationships. In Kundera’s story, about a girl pretending to be a prostitute for her boyfriend, tender love and tough sex coexist in the same relationship. As for why Eugenides chose to read this story among all the others, he didn’t say. He instead left it up to us to read them all and figure it out for ourselves. Afterwards, in response to one woman’s inquiry as to whether he had suffered a tumultuous love affair himself, Eugenides replied that he was glad to be middle-aged and married and thus exempt from any further romantic worries.

Presumably to defend his selection, Eugenides also mentioned the recent success of the film Away from Her, based on Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which closes the anthology. He joked that if he had unintentionally overlooked any great stories, he was “not sabotaging an artistic project, but only a charitable one,” since all proceeds from the book will go to the 826 Young Authors’ Project.

Perhaps since the anthology contains no new material, the audience was hungry to find out what the next “real” project would be for each author. Eugenides divulged that his next work concerns three days in the life of a family, while Saunders revealed that he is writing a children’s book from the point of view of a fox who can’t spell.