Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies (1999) is our highlight this week at the ALR blog. Fans of Lahiri’s first published story collection will also want to read her novel The Namesake (2003) and her most recent publication of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth (2008) to follow her map of questions about self and family. A story is a series of sentences, one after another, but it does not follow that perfect sentences make a perfect story. While the smooth, minimalist sentences of Interpreter of Maladies can feel unemotional, the stories gather a pathos that will certainly move readers. Her exploration of the Indian-American experience, especially the effect of immigration on the different generations, provides a study of human nature that transcends age, gender, and nationality: everyone hopes and everyone grieves. The nine stories in this collection model for writers the truth that there is no more compelling subject than human relationships.In an interview with The Atlantic, Lahiri says that she likes her prose to be plain. She continues: “Even now in my own work, I just want to get it less—get it plainer. When I rework things I try to get it as simple as I can. … My writing tends not to expand but to contract.” The following quote from the title story “Interpreter of Maladies” can be taken as evidence of her success, though plainness and simplicity by no means exclude elegance or emotion. Mr. Kapasi, a tour guide, fantasizes about having a relationship with Mrs. Das, an Indian-American whose family is taking a tour in his cab, and her request for his address to send him some pictures makes him hopeful:
The paper curled as Mr. Kapasi wrote his address in clear, careful letters. … As his mind raced, Mr. Kapasi experienced a mild and pleasant shock. It was similar to a feeling he used to experience long ago when, after months of translating with the aid of a dictionary, he would finally read a passage from a French novel, or an Italian sonnet, and understand the words, one after another, unencumbered by his own efforts. In those moments Mr. Kapasi used to believe that all was right with the world, that all struggles were rewarded, that all of life’s mistakes made sense in the end. The promise that he would hear from Mrs. Das now filled him with the same belief. (56)
This is as smooth as language can get. Mr. Kapasi’s memory of the act of translation, a thematically significant trope, beautifully parallels his trust that he will hear from Mrs. Das again. At first it seems as simple as saying, “This is like that,” but coupled with the fact that Mr. Kapasi no longer remembers several of the languages he once knew, his naiveté here ought to warn him and does warn us readers that all struggles are not rewarded, and that some things will never make sense. By use of simple words, clear verbs, and little decoration, Lahiri describes the dear self-deception that is the source of much of Mr. Kapasi’s behavior.
My favorite story is “A Temporary Matter,” the first in the arrangement. One of the most perfectly constructed stories I have ever read, it describes the slow disintegration of Shukumar and Shoba’s marriage a few months after the stillborn delivery of their first child. That information is delivered on page three with as much sterility as one would find in a hospital: “When he [Shukumar] returned to Boston it was over. The baby had been born dead.” The story’s title is apparent in the first sentence, when the couple receives a notice that due to winter storms, their electricity will be temporarily turned off for one hour every evening for five days. During the outage, over dinner, Shoba initiates a game in which they each tell the other a secret, from a harmless lie to an unfaithful impulse. But the temporary matter gradually becomes, of course, their marriage, and the two secrets that Shukumar and Shoba tell each other at the end of their game are shocking symbols of their grief.
About the symmetry of the narrative structure of “A Temporary Matter,” Shoba and Shukumar are progressing equally on opposite paths, a perfect X. As she spends more time away from the house at her work or the gym, distancing herself from the painful memories and unfulfilled hopes, Shukumar spends more time at home, sometimes not leaving the house for days. In fact, purposefully to avoid Shoba, he moves his desk into the baby’s room, though he does little work on his dissertation. Another reversal is the shopping and cooking, which Shoba had taken great pleasure in, foresightedly buying and preserving food she thought was in excess of their needs, and which she now leaves to Shukumar, who has discovered for himself the small pleasure she left there in the remains of the carefully labeled rice. Dinnertime in the candlelight has become the one time of day when the couple meet to spend time together, but if things continue as they have begun, the routines Shukumar and Shoba have invented for themselves will cease to intersect.
Lahiri’s characterization of the story’s two principle characters—the others are all peripheral, occurring only in Shukumar’s memory except the Bradfords, themselves a picture of what the husband and wife will never be—is built on a slowly amassed pile of significant details. Shukumar’s first description of Shoba has her just home from the gym with the remains of her makeup darkening her eyes, but on the fifth day he reports, “She hadn’t been to the gym tonight. She wore a suit beneath the raincoat. Her makeup had been retouched recently” (20). This litany of facts assumes significance in light of the last confession Shoba makes at dinner, that she will be moving into an apartment. She is ready to make complete her distance from him, absenting herself completely from the house she treats “as if it were a hotel” (6). At first Shukumar interprets her appearance as a return to normalcy, to their previous intimacy, but after she breaks the news it becomes a sign that Shoba has begun planning for the future again, yet one that does not include him.
The notion of the lights going out is a significant metaphor, one of the few that Lahiri indulges herself in. The act of confession becomes easier for the couple in the dark; on the first night Shukumar moves the impromptu candle holder farther down the table, “making it even more difficult for them to see each other” (11). As they communicate more freely and for the first time in months, Shukumar begins looking forward to the evening, thinking all day about what he will say to his wife upon her return from work. He takes more care with the food and himself, even leaving the house to buy candles to facilitate their nightly game. On the fifth day, however, the electricity has been repaired early, and their truth-telling must occur in the light. After Shoba tells him she is leaving him, Shukumar tells her against her wishes “the one thing in her life that she had wanted to be a surprise” (22), the gender of their child, a boy. After these confessions have been received in silence, Shoba turns off the light, and they sit together at the table, crying. In the darkness they become more enlightened, hiding their wounds from the harsh light of day.
Shoba tells Shukumar, “You didn’t have to tell me why you did it” (18), which could be the words of the author herself. Lahiri practices an eloquent restraint from commenting on the morality, decisions, behaviors, or emotions of her characters. Shukumar is drowning in grief, but Lahiri never once mentions the word. Her sentences, clinically correct, only imply the emotional states of the man and woman who did not become parents; even when they cry, she observes the fact like a reporter. Did you find Lahiri’s narrative style appropriate or comforting? Singly, each of these stories carries the lonely reservation of characters walking over strange and foreign ground, missing communications and suffering grief; but together in a collection, that burden might become commonplace through too much familiar treatment. What did you think about “A Temporary Matter” and about the eight other stories? Did you find them too different or too similar? What was your experience reading Interpreter of Maladies?
If you love Jhumpa Lahiri, visit her website or listen to her read and discuss William Trevor’s story “A Day.” If you want to talk more about Interepreter of Maladies, take a look at the reading group guide from Houghton Mifflin or leave a comment.
Nice post, Kelly. I completely agree about "A Temporary Matter." Damn fine storytelling. It's structure is what I admire most about it. Rather than an arc, the shape of the story is the narrative equivalent of a gradual avalanche or mudslide. It's downhill for the characters the whole way. It's pretty fascinating to me how Lahiri steps back and lets us observe the slow accumulation of tragedy.
ReplyDeleteIn her other stories, though, Lahiri’s characters often feel like pawns too coolly controlled by their queen. It’s clear that she knows what she’s doing—she’s writing about globalization and the Indian-American experience—and that’s fine, but sometimes it isn’t fine. When it isn’t fine, I find myself overly conscious of the fact that Lahiri’s characters are vehicles for a case study rather than characters in their own right.
Most of her characters are first-generation immigrants who are struggling to raise their families in a country very different from their own. For some of them, it’s vitally important to hang onto Indian culture; for others, assimilation is the ultimate goal. That’s the case study: assimilation versus multiculturalism; it’s a fascinating topic, to be sure, but I think the topic often gets in the way of the storytelling that executes it.
On the other hand, Lahiri’s commentary on globalization with respect to the Indian-American experience is probably the thematic oomph that won her the Pulitzer. It’s good stuff, and it needed to be written. As far as I can tell, though, if it weren't for the socio-political thrust that holds these stories together, then there wouldn't be anything too remarkable about Interpreter of Maladies at all.
I did, however, find a noteworthy exception in “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar.” Actually, this story worked pretty great for me. At first, I was skeptical about the first-person plural narrator; my skepticism didn’t last very long. It struck me, at the end of the story, that Lahiri’s point of view choice was probably a stroke of genius. Not only does it speak to the communal values so central to her portrayal of Indian culture through the collection, but it also adds a fascinating “us versus them” to the story that contributes to the impact of its haunting final sentence. The narrator, though painfully aware of her participation in the injustice done to Bibi, communicates her heartbreaking knowledge that she cannot do anything to avoid complicity. In this story, Lahiri is at the top of her game; her cool control pays off because we can feel the precision with which she employs narrative voice.
The last story, “The Third and Final Continent,” is perhaps what bothered me most about the collection. It’s far, far too optimistic and lacks the layers of irony she would have needed to give depth to the optimism. The happy ending feels false to me. It’s like a shiny red ribbon tied around the prepackaged gift of an immigrant success story. That’s really all I have to say about that. I'm sure there will be plenty of folks who disagree.
One last thing: it bothers me that all of Lahiri’s characters are members of the middle class or academics (it bothered me more in Unaccustomed Earth, though). It just feels so, I don’t know, bourgeois; it certainly doesn’t help the coldness of her prose, either. But that’s just me. All in all, Lahiri’s a fantastic writer with an original voice and I’m a better writer for having read her work. There’s just something missing from the page, most of the time, that for the life of me I can’t put my damn finger on.
Travis, what a good observation about the sometimes too abstract and theoretical approach Lahiri takes to some of her stories. In the better ones, I think, her agenda is only visible in the background; but I quite agree that too often her 'case study,' as you say, is too prominent.
ReplyDeleteIf the book "Interpreter of Maladies" is about first-generation immigrants, "Unaccustomed Earth" is about their children, who have or have not successfully acclimated to American culture, or not. You're right, though, that it is an educated, middle-class book. Perhaps part of what you're resisting is that it has such a clear target audience.
One last word on her sentences--I wonder if there might not be such a thing as too perfect? As if all the zest and verve might have gotten edited out in her quest for 'plain' language. Is it carefully controlled narrative distance, is it a byproduct of overly judicial cutting, or is it true coldness?
Lish says he purposefully edits Carver down to bring out the "bleakness" in his stories, but what this almost always results in is a complete absence of any sort of morality. The closest we get is someone saying: "I made mistakes, I didn't know it would turn out like this..." and so on. Lish was certainly striving to minimize backstory and explanation and, at times, everything that connects these people to one another for the purpose of foregrounding the immediate action of the narrative present. The reader, in some ways, doesn't get as involved in the tendrils that could shoot out from the story, and the author (plus the editor, of course) is able to hone in on the moments depicted and wring them fully of their potential. This control is so absolute that it even extends to our reaction to the story: that, we say, is how things really happen and how people really behave.
ReplyDeleteThose of us who make it our business to understand how stories work then, of course, make the next leap of understanding and are able to observe how the "realistic" moments in these stories are carefully orchestrated to provide the illusion of reality. But, in some ways, we may be more inclined to give the Carvers of the world a free pass because we don't think he has any other agenda besides "telling a good story." As a writer who often writes about these kinds of "morally bankrupt" characters myself, I think its dangerous to assume that just because a story doesn't have an obvious thematic agenda (immigrant Indian experience, Lahiri, done!) that it isn't doing the exact same kind of socio-political work.
Lahiri's work, in contrast to Carver and to Wolf, almost always foregrounds the connections that people have to each other, and the social duties and niceties that people feel they have to engage in (or what happens when they don't engage in them. The stories in "Unaccustomed Earth" address this even more so). This sense of duty and propriety drives the motor of many of the stories in the collection and can, at times, seem a little morality-play-esque if the reader is looking for the kind of story that seems to step back and just lets everything happen without judgment or comment (and we see the worse end of this in, for example, Wolf's "Leviathan," or the stripped down "The Bath").
Are Lahiri's characters merely pawns in her game? I think Rohin's commentary in "Sexy" can be read as convenient, but we do get the hint earlier in the story that this child is taking advantage of the situation he's in, and that Miranda isn't exactly behaving as one should behave with a seven year old child:
"When he didn't reply, she went to the kitchen to pour herself more coffee.
'Some for me please, ' Rohin called out.
She returned to the living room.'"Some what?'
'Some coffee. There's enough in the pot. I saw.'
He goes on to talk about how the stewardess let him have coffee, which he relates to his father meeting his mistress on the plane, and it is this information, of course, and not the fear that he will have a tantrum, that is the real reason she lets him have the coffee. Her tiny victory, selecting the ugly mug so that he won't break one she likes, is yet another example of how her character is always preparing for the wrong things. This point is driven home in the next scene, where Rohin "bullies" her (or, as I read it, she bullies herself out of guilt and feeling sorry for him) into putting on one of the items of "mistress" clothing that she thought would prepare her for having an affair. The "big picture" question that "Sexy" addresses is how to prepare for the inevitable moment when a relationship ends, and what one realizes about themselves when that happens. The emotional weights that the characters in this story carry, for this reader, certainly makes up for any narrative distance that the prose keeps.
Hillary, I think you're quite right about the complexity of "Sexy" that emerges in multiple readings (or a very astute first one). The author's extreme lack of commentary about the moral choices or behavior of her characters is perhaps not as absent as it appears at first glance; she comments by suggestion and implication. The child might be a narrative device, but he has motives of his own that multiply the main character's emotional problems. Character pairings bring out many subtle tensions that tell about the characters and about the author.
ReplyDeleteI'm not convinced that it's possible for an author to erase herself completely from her story: not even Carver's editor could cut Carver from his fiction. But the way that Lahiri lets herself be seen is in the gaps between the reporter-like sentences, when the reader can infer the emotional impact of a brief line of dialogue. (It comes as no surprise that one of her favorite authors is William Trevor, who often writes in this way himself.)
Your comment about the characters' emotional weights, Hillary, perfectly expresses the reason I can forgive Lahiri for her narrative distance and her sociopolitical agendas. Not that the purpose and techniques driving the stories are not visible, but that they are eclipsed by the emotional impact. The best of these stories hurt beautifully.
I wouldn't fault anyone for having a socio-political agenda. I don't even think you could say that Lahiri even has an agenda. If anything, she comes off as strangely pro-West if you compare her work to other Indian writers like Kiran Desai (whose novel The Inheritance of Loss I highly recommend to everyone). So it's not that I detect a message or a clear bias in Lahiri, because I don't. But I think there are pros and cons to this.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to compare Lahiri's collections to those of Edward P. Jones (whose children I would have if he weren't black or if I weren't racist). Both authors are writing about minority migration; Lahiri's characters from India to America, and Jones' from the American south to Washington D.C. I consider both authors to be engaged in what I previously called a "case study." But I think Jones succeeds in a lot of ways that Lahiri doesn't. One reason for this, for me, is his prose, which I prefer but I suppose that's just my personal preference. Although, I do believe his writing elicits more are filled with far more compassion and sympathy than Lahiri's. Both authors are academics, and I think it's fair to say that academics in general have a tendency to condescend. Especially to their characters. That's how I feel about Lahiri, whereas I don't about Jones. It's not that she judges them or anything like that, but I think she puts herself on a sort of pedestal as someone to whom her characters should look for guidance on how to survive the assimilation experiment. She seems to suggest that they will all be okay if they could only approach their their trials the way her well-adjusted Indians in "The Third and Final Continent" do. Suck it up, get an advanced degree, and put a smile on your face. When you do that, everything's gonna be all right. The coldness in her prose, and I think it is definitely coldness, reflects this attitude.
Another reason why Jones is really awesome and Lahiri is only a little bit awesome is that his stories are so diverse. They deal with vastly different characters who are all in vastly different narrative situations. I think this is a huge reason why his stories work so well for me. In a collection organized around a clearly identifiable theme, or whatever you want to call it, then the individual stories should probably not have too many other things in common. Otherwise, they might start to get a little bland. I think this happens to Lahiri. Her characters each have their own little situation to deal with, sure, but they’re all basically the same person. They all have the same narrative voice, they all have the same anxieties, and most of them are even on the same career path. It got old really fast for me. Maybe it’s why we seem to love the first story but have a difficult time speaking at length about the others? I don’t know, but it’s definitely why I pretty much hated the last story.
That being said, somebody posted this comment on my blog today: "Seriously, what the fuck are you even talking about?" He makes a good good point, I think.
Ah Hubbs, we are going to have to agree to disagree. I absolutely think that many of the stories in this collection provide their own haunting and memorable situations (the willful Mrs. Sen and her magic knief, the delusional Mr. Kapasi and the reverse-assimilation issues of the Das family, Twinkle and the Jesuses, Boori Ma, 'nuf said) and some, like "This Blessed House," "Sexy," "A Temporary Matter," and even the basic drama in "Interpreter of Maladies" could easily stand as fully functioning stories without any of the socio-cultural background details that are specific to the Indian-American experience (of course, I love those details, too, and wouldn't want to see them go).
ReplyDeleteI also think there may be something really cool going on underneath the surface in many of these stories. I recently taught the Pañcatantra, a collection of fables and stories that date, roughly, from 6th century C. E. India. These tales are mostly concerned not with any religious agenda (as are many of the contemporary works from other cultures) but with something called niti, which means "conduct in everyday life." These niti tales usually begin with a pithy saying, a sūtra, which they proceed to either uphold or deconstruct, depending on the purposes of the tale's frame narrator.
To me, many of Lahiri's stories function in a way similar to these niti tales; not just a how-to guide for assimilation into Western culture, but a broader set of instructions for how to handle the ethical issues that crop up in daily life.
The great thing about the Pañcatantra is that it crops up in all kinds of unexpected places (Aesop's fables and The Thousand and One Nights, just to name a couple), and serves as a handy reminder to my students that many of these experiences and issues are universal, and part of the age-old question on how to live life in the right way (the pursuit of "the good").
The other thing, of course, that ancient Indian lit. is know for is having character "types" rather than characters, but, as I said in my last comment, I really think that Lahiri gives us enough of the inner life of her characters to avoid this pitfall.
Hey, guys, I'm going to jump in on the tail-end of this conversation. It's interesting to hear what you think about the characters and whether or not they are types, etc. I agree with you Hillary; I think that Lahiri includes enough character development that she strays away from falling into the character type trap. At some points, I did get a big frustrated (or bored?) because some of the characters did seem a bit repetitive, but all of them did include details that made them their own characters. The stories did not include the same character over and over, but, rather, characters who may have shared traits.
ReplyDeleteTravis, I do see what you're saying about the repetitive nature of some of the stories, but I don't look down on Lahiri's collection as much as you seem to. Don't you think that she did an effective job of showing aspects of human nature and how people behave in everyday situations and also tragedy (like the loss of a baby, divorce)? Yes, she did give characters the same jobs, etc., and there were several affairs, but there were always different aspects--different motivations coming into play. I guess I agree with you, but I think you're being too harsh.