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.