My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead

O colecţie de povestiri, clasice (de ex. Cehov sau Maupassant) şi contemporane (de ex. Alice Munro sau Kundera), despre dragoste şi multiplele ei feţe editatã de Jeffrey Eugenides. O privire caleidoscopicã, uşor tristã, asupra dragostei cu dezamãgirile ei, cu problemele familiale, cu plictiseala din cãsãtorie, cu loialitatea pe care o impune. Eugenides explicã dorinţa lui de a muta centrul atenţiei de la tipica dragoste romanţioasã la modul în care iubirea se împlineşte dupã ce a trecut vâvãtaia iniţialã, când deja s-a ajuns la acel "şi au trãit fericiţi pânã la adânci bãtrâneţi".

O carte cu de toate despre dragoste, cum ar veni.

Inegalabilul Cehov: "Frenzied card-playing, gluttony, drunkness, constant talk about the same thing. Useless matters and conversations about the same thing took for their share the best part of one’s time, the best of one’s powers, and what was left in the end was some sort of curtailed, wingless life, some sort of nonesense, and it was impossible to get away or flee, as if you were sitting in a madhouse or a prison camp!"
"[...] this small woman, lost in the provincial crowd, not remarkable for anything, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, now filled his whole life, was his grief, his joy, the only happiness he now wished for himself; and to the sounds of bad orchestra, with its trashy local violins, he thought how beautiful she was. He thought and dreamed."

Tãiosul Maupassant: "She babbled incessantly with the continuous sound of those winged toys that spin in the breeze, trotting out the most unexpected, amusing and astonishing things. In that mind of hers, which seemed like a patchwork of rags of all kinds and colours, not sewn together but only tacked, there was fairy-tale fantasy, bawdy, immodesty, impudence, jokes and surprises, and a sense of fresh air and scenery such as you would get travelling in a balloon."

Si întorsãturi imprevizibile de fraze (bãnuiesc cã astea sunt învãţate pe la creative writing): Gilbert Sorrentino –"The late June night so soft one can, in retrospective, forgive America for everything."; "All you modern lovers, freed by Mick Jagger and the orgasm, give them, for Christ’s sake, for an hour, the use of your really terrific little apartment."; Lorrie Moore –"After four movies, three concerts, and two-and-a-half museums, you sleep with him. It seems to be the right number of cultural events."; "Shave your legs in the bathroom sink. Philosophize: you are a mistress, part of a great hysterical you mean historical tradition. They will survive you after a nuclear attack –they are tough and hardy and travel in packs- but right now they’re not having any fun. And when you look in the bathroom mirror, you spot them scurrying, up out of reach behind you."; David Gates – "[...] marry a man who wasn’t on speaking terms with his own desires."