Eugenides

You just delve into certain subjects, and the patterns start to crop up. With Middlesex, the narrator’s grandparents were silk farmers. I was interested in writing about that and the town in Asia Minor they came from. Then, as I started reading about silk, I came upon the legend of the Chinese princess said to have discovered it. This is a beautiful story, and it immediately seemed to have a connection with the story I was writing. So when you’re working on something, especially something as long as Middlesex—I think Joyce said this—everything out in the world seems to refer to your story. You constantly find things that metaphorically align with what you’re working on. Slowly, as you write the book, you become aware of these correspondences, and then you make them cohere into a pattern. So in the case of Middlesex, the thread of silk becomes a metaphor not only for genetic transmission but for storytelling itself.