Welcome

A daily record of what I'm thinking about what I'm reading

To read about movies and TV shows I'm watching, visit my other blog: Elliot's Watching

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Has Jhumpa Lahiri ever written a bad story?

I'm guessing that Jhumpa Lahiri has never written a bad story, a bad anything, in her life, that her first-grade book reports were probably worthy of publication in the New Republic. That doesn't necessarily mean every single story, novel, essay she's written is great - but she has a certain elegance of style and structure that raises every one of her works to a very high starting point - then, as with every writer for that matter, some are better than others. I do think she's best in the short story format, from what I've read of her, and I also think it's better to read her collections over a long period rather than in one sitting, as the stories do have a certain sameness, not only of topic but also of ending - a flash of insight, a little twist, that somehow illuminates the hidden corners of the story and pulls together most of the loose strands. Her story Brotherly Love in the current New Yorker, fiction issue, is very long not necessarily by Lahiri's standards but certainly by the New Yorker's, and I doubt they would have taken this one on in a standard magazine issue - but it's great to have a near-novella length work though over a day or so; I'm about half-way through the story and will hold off on overall judgment, but the story so far is impressive and notable for a few points. The story, at least to this point, is set in Calcutta, late 1940s, after the India-Pakistan partition, with many Hindi living as highly impoverished even by Calcutta standards refugees and the few remaining Muslims feeling threatened. Teh brothers of the title are S. and U. (I don't remember exactly how to spell their names), S. the older a bit more timid and withdrawn, U. more the rebel and the socially active. Story starts as they are late teens, fascinated by the private (English) country club, gated and off limits, and by the game of golf; the sneak onto the course at night to play with a castoff club - till they are caught and a cop beats U. with the club before letting them take off (as others do, he mistakes U for the older brother). Over time, U. becomes radical and politically active. Two things strike me about the story so far, regarding theme and style: it's one of Lahiri's few if not only story to focus on Indians in India (unless the brothers become immigrants to the U.S. later in story?) - as her work has almost enitrely been about the immigrant experience in the U.S., with children becoming inevitably more assimilated and to a degree estranged from parents - much like so many immigrant stories (both Roths, e.g.) with the major exception that in this ethnic group the immigrant parents are highly educated and professional. Second, I have always noted Lahiri for her lapidary sentences and paragraphs - almost any single one of which, selected at random, could be an epigram or a passage in Bartlett's. Surprisingly, Brotherly Love is constructed mainly, or at least largely, of sentence fragments - not sure why but maybe she has so much ground to cover she's going for speed over style and nuance. To me, the fragments diminish the art of the story, making it seem more like a notebook entry than a finished piece - but we'll see how it goes, they may add to the cumulative effect.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.