The Namesake

I've just finished it. The quickest read ever (by quick i mean a matter of weeks). it didn't blow me away the way the Interpreter of Maladies did but it was very great nonetheless. Her prose is so simple and everything about the book is just so very natural. Except maybe the whole name business that obviously was carefully plotted, constructed as a guiding theme to flesh out the rest of the pages. AND Jhumpa Lahiri, why did you have to lie when you said during your lecture at Brown that you loved the movie version!? I'm not going to go through the whole "does the movie do the book justice?" judging business because I firmly believe the original and its renditions, although impossible to not be compared, have to be judged in their own merits. That said, the movie, in and of itself, was not all the great. I am well aware that the essence has to be shortened, simplified, but should never be meant to be simplistic. Ok enough with the bashing...

She treats most of her main characters amazingly well. Gogol's wife, Moushumi - who was once again squarely left out in the movie, treated as some sort of Gogol's rebound girl - is such a crazily fresh, tangible, humanly, and important character! Overall, if you look for a seamlessly plotted book, this might not be the one for you. which leads me to think that a novel is not her favorite thing to write after all. On several occasions, she would just leave her climaxes unresolved, unexplained at the turn of the page. This recurrent lack of denouement kind of reminds me of the way she treats each story in the Interpreter of Maladies.

I'm impatiently waiting for my copy of Unaccustomed Earth to arrive! I hope for it to be breathtaking and nothing less. Interpreter of Maladies already set the bar really high. But i'm sure it won't disappoint but short stories are where her strengths lie obviously.

Jhumpa Lahiri

The ugliness of the last entry's lay-out is beyond words and I know this but it's just difficult to put together text and images on a clean slate especially when the ambitious soul in you wants to justify each respective image to either side magazine-style. anyways, something needs to be worked on.

So Jhumpa Lahiri was here last week and warmly greeted with a chock-full MacMillan Auditorium. Although not uncommon I was in fact surprised to see so many people from Providence community in attendance. Much to my greater surprise and disappointment, however, is that a few minutes before the talk began the event coordinator announced that "photography is not allowed both during the reading and the book-signing." I was disappointed because I had been intent on taking a few close-up shots of her in particular and the enthusiastic ambiance in general. And I was surprised because why, in such a safe environment that is Brown and in such a non-political event, photography was prohibited with such rigor.

The logistical stiffness was carried over to the air of her speech. As a common practice of a reading, she spent most of the time reading a long excerpt from her latest book Unaccustomed Earth, which tells of a story of an immigrant Indian family and Indian diaspora. Needless to say, it was powerful and convincingly woven together. That is perhaps what I like most about this author of "ethnic literature"; instead of romanticizing and breezing through the all too familiar themes of alienation, acculturation, and emerging identity, Lahiri approaches this array of meta-issues from a specific angle, so her take is new and refreshing, and her observation sharp-eyed and personal.

Then again, that is the nature of her authorial voice and I highly admire her for that. But what surprised me was the 15-minute Q&A and the stiffness she brought to answering each of the Q's. Although I know that a lot of authors are impersonal, nonchalant if not non-social, the lack of facial expressions on her part surprised and in fact slightly bothered me. This might say something about the popular hope and expectation of a public figure; since we are familiar with bubbly TV stars, celebrities, singers and such, we expect, and often judge, all other noted personalities to be along the same lines, which is obviously unfair for them. But a little smile or a perfunctory hi is probably not too much to ask.

That said, I was immensely impressed and inspired (and my book was signed!). She corrected my perception of short story. She loves writing short stories because so much has to be put in in so little space and it is this intensity that exhilarates her. I think she delivers this intensity because it is well felt in her seemingly aloof stories. Similarly, no hierarchy, she thinks, should be established to separate novels and short stories in terms of prestige. This summer, I hope I'll be able to finish all her three books and I'll probably understand and appreciate the art of short story a little bit more.