There and Back Again

With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, I wish I had hobbit feet, given the amount of trekking around I’ve been doing lately. Nothing so interesting as Middle Earth, however. I’ve been sightseeing nursing homes and extended care facilities for my dad, thus, the hiatus in these blog posts lately. So it is with delight that I return to an exotic voyage, and wind up my reviews of books on India with Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitizer Prize winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies.

The fact that I’m commenting on this now is a sad demonstration of how little I am caught up with modern authors. Lahiri published this in 1999, but by the time I get to it, it’s already enshrined in the modern canon. I first heard about it while wiling away the hours driving the Nikipedia back and forth, back and forth. There has to be something worthwhile to do with all that car time and given my proclivity for productivity, we were listening to the Teaching Company’s Art of Reading. If it hits the sonorous products of the Teaching Company, you can be certain it’s gone from trendy to enshrined.

While the three previous books I’ve mentioned about India mostly dealt with India and people arriving there, this one pretty much concerns people who’ve bought a one way ticket and landed in the other direction—Indians lost and wandering around the U.S.

Ms. Lahiri’s spare use of language nevertheless manages to create some resonant tone poems. I’m always interested in finding a way to understand people whose culture, values and choices appear very foreign to me, and Ms. Lahiri really gives voice to a subgroup that is sometimes voiceless in the juggernaut of American culture. Even though I think I’m pretty much a squeaky liberal, I am certainly guilty of thinking of some groups as “those people”, and find it really soul-expanding to be helped to understand. Both Ms. Lahiri (and another writer I love, Nahguib Mahfouz) really help to create a feeling of commonality, without betraying their culture’s uniqueness.

I just wish her characters weren’t so sad. Wow, it’s really bleak for Indians in the U.S. Even with family and a good income, Ms. Lahiri’s characters are really in a struggle to define themselves, eke out happiness, achieve authentic relationships, and they have a tough time succeeding, if at all. For anyone who has trouble wrapping their mind around arranged marriages, Ms. Lahiri offers a window into what they might be like—i.e., not much different than the Western choose-for yourself-and-be-miserable. I wouldn’t say either system has a lock on the secret to happiness or misery. Maybe people operate much more out of their own characters, even within different cultural contexts.

The stories are soulful and ambiguous, and normally I really like narratives that serve up stuff you’re still chewing on later. But jeez, couldn’t she have left some of them at least a little happiness? Maybe it’s the economy now compared to 11 years ago; maybe it’s my own personal life experiences lately. But I’d like to see a little hope, a little romance, or, gosh, the tiniest touch of humor. I’ve heard Lahiri compared to Raymond Carver, but no dice, in my opinion. I mean, Lahiri’s characters have jobs, families, spouses, big houses—couldn’t they enjoy a little of it? Carver’s characters are often busted, sick, broke, and they still sometimes have hope and happiness. Okay, what Carver and Lahiri have in common is—they both write/wrote short stories.

All said and done, it’s a helluva first publication (although my guess is she’d been cranking the hard disc for a good long time.) She’s gone on since the 2000 prize to become a literary lion with a veritable bookstore shelf all to herself. Yeah, I’m jealous. She’s a good read. Just not on a dreary day.

An Indian Epic

It’s harder to comment on excellence than on the mediocre or mundane, but I’ll give it a try anyway. Paul Scott’s magnum opus, The Raj Quartet, is just that: excellent in every way. The characters will haunt your thoughts for years, the setting is so vivid you’ll look for turmeric stains on your fingers, you’ll never be able to hear the sound of a sitar again without it meaning something to you, and seeing Indian locations in the news will forever after remind you of defining incidents in the book.

The Raj Quartet is, obviously, four books that make up an entire saga. All of the characters are somehow inter-related, and many know each other. Spanning the early part of the 1940’s, the past events in the lives of the characters keep intruding on the lives of others. What emerges is a portrait of Anglo-Indian relations and relationships, the political and the private, as complicated as a mandala. There are enough broken love relationships for a Hindu epic; characters who could behave well but choose the opposite; rather ordinary people who somehow rise to greatness; the silly, the sordid, and the sots. You’ll find yourself in love with a few of the characters, and some of them you’ll wish you could shake firmly (or worse). Good people are not necessarily rewarded, and by the end you feel sorry for even the worst villains, or at least understand them a bit.

Yeah, it’s long. Like everyone, I hope for short books that give me a satisfying sense of accomplishment—gee, I actually completed something. But, fond though I am of my blue pencil, I don’t think an editor could have cut a word in the 1,984 pages that make up my edition. Don’t let it stop you—consider it a cheap vacation. You might even learn more than you would on an actual trip to India, at considerably less cost. Although once you read this work, you’ll be looking at airfares the same way I am.

In the interest of honesty, I must admit that I saw the 14 episodes of The Jewel in the Crown before reading the books. This PBS series from the 80s is also terrific. Because I saw it first, I don’t know if the visuals would have matched my imagination, but I will say that the series is worthy of the book—subtly acted, not too many pretty boy actors, minor characters and subplots given their due. Fourteen episodes are a lot, but I’ve seen it twice now, and truthfully I’m thinking about watching it again with the Nikipedia. She won’t get all the subtlety at 16, but it’s no bad thing to see how complicated life can be, and what a variety of choices people make, with sometimes appalling consequences.

Along with Kristin Lavransdattir and Middlemarch (gosh, maybe I really do like LOOONNNNGGG books) this is probably in my 10 top list of all time. Read The Raj Quartet and expand your soul.