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Overdue

Ep 012 - Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

Overdue

Headgum

Craig Getting, Arts, Books, Podcasts, Literature, Comedy, Andrew Cunningham

4.62.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2013

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Breaking a three-show "books from circa 1900" streak, Andrew tackles Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex, a tale of love, incest, time-jumping, emigration, and hermaphroditism.

Like the book itself, this show tackles some fairly heavy topics while still keeping things light and conversational. Join us for a discussion of duality, transformation, and just why "normal" isn't really a thing.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale,

0:05.0

they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

0:10.0

Plus, these are books you should have read by now.

0:30.0

And welcome to Overdo. This is a podcast about the books that you or myself or my

0:40.0

compatriot have been meaning to read. My name is Craig. My name is Andrew.

0:44.0

And I decided to mix it up this week because I couldn't settle on a good open.

0:49.0

My favorite football team is the compatriots. Yeah. The old England compatriots.

0:56.0

Yeah, that's the thing. Later on this episode, Andrew is going to tell us all about

1:01.0

or some about Jeffrey Jennings' middle sex. But before we get there, I want to answer a question

1:08.0

from one of our listeners. From a couple episodes we read or I read,

1:14.0

Turn of the Screw by Jeff Knock, who wrote Turn of the Screw? Henry James wrote Turn of the Screw.

1:19.0

And Jillian asked, you know, why was it called Turn of the Screw?

1:24.0

She didn't stutter when she typed it into Facebook. She just asked, why was it called Turn of the Screw?

1:29.0

And I'm kind of surprised we didn't answer this because it seems pretty elementary.

1:34.0

It seems like one of those things that we should kind of institute as part of the show.

1:38.0

Like, why is this book called what it's called?

1:40.0

Why is this book, welcome to this part of Overdo where we talk about why the book is called what it's called?

1:45.0

In this week's Mailbag, why didn't you do your basic due diligence? Love your fans.

1:53.0

And from what I understand in the Turn of the Screw, I went back to the text

1:59.0

and the story, which if you will remember, if you've been listening for a couple of weeks now,

2:06.0

you will remember as a ghost story about children and not ghost children, but children

2:12.0

and some ghosts who are involved.

...

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