I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest friend you have. That way, you’ll never dumb things down. You won’t have to explain things that don’t need explaining. You’ll assume an intimacy and a natural shorthand, which is good because readers are smart and don’t wish to be condescended to. I think about the reader. I care about the reader. Not “audience.” Not “readership.” Just the reader.

" He also says he has been haunted by the decline of Detroit. Not “audience.

The Virgin Suicides has been filmed while Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award the International Dublin Literary Award and France's Prix Médicis. Jeffrey Kent Eugenides (born March 8 1960) is an American novelist and short story writer. He has written numerous short stories and essays as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides (1993) Middlesex (2002) and The Marriage Plot (2011).