I cut this bit out of Middlesex for a simple reason. After reading the manuscript, my editor, Jonathan Galassi, said he thought the book lost focus during a certain fifty or sixty pages, and suggested I do some cutting. I went to work and cut everything extraneous to the central plot of the book. He was a little shaken when he saw how thoroughly I had followed orders. When I told him I had excised this particular subplot, he lamented, “But I liked that part.”

Nevertheless, what’s gone is gone. The only regret I had was losing the Motown history. It seemed essential for a book like Middlesex, which contains so much of Detroit. I was born the same year Barry Gordy founded Motown, which is the kind of thing my narrator would have made a lot of. But that will have to wait for another day, another book. I do remember the early days of Motown, when people would go to the Roostertail to see Little Stevie Wonder and the Primettes (that’s The Supremes to you.) It’s a subject I’d like to delve…