Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest collection of short stories "Unaccustomed Earth" left me with the feeling of watching life unfold in slow motion. I felt as though as I was walking through treacle, time slowing down to a crawl as I took a break from reading to venture out on a short shopping expedition. Luckily, the effect faded after 5 minutes.
The book has been reviewed to death already: no less than twice on the NY Times – effusion I, effusion II. (login subscription needed) Though not all critics have been kind to her- this one likens reviewing her books to throwing pebbles at an elephant. Another faults her for too narrow a canvas. Not that I completely agree with the paeans or the criticisms.
The title piece "Unaccustomed Earth" deals with the conflicting
feelings of a daughter guilted by her obligation to offer her widowed
father a place in her household, worn out as she is by the care of a 3
year old and impending arrival of second child. By far the longest
single story in the collection, Jhumpa spends a lot of time detailing
the minutiae of daily life, but is curiously reticent on tiny details
that bothered me. For instance,the father is identified as living in
Pennsylvania, but inquiring minds, mine especially, want to know- which
part of PA? Is it Philly or Pittsburgh or Mechanicsburg or Scranton –
anything would do, just a simple name gleaned off a AAA map would have
sufficed.Not fair at all, when Seattle and Garden City NJ are
identified by name in this piece while Pennsylvania is mentioned flatly
as many times as the father. How odd!
While other reviews focused on the cultural implications of a
‘chaste unrequited’ love of a woman for a family friend, viewed through
the eyes of her daughter ( ‘Hell-Heaven’) or the events that serve to
put a spark back in the sputtering marriage of Amit and his wife Megan
(‘ A Choice of Accomodations’) or the alcoholic meanderings of a
brother trying to reconcile with an estranged sister (‘Only Goodness’),
I found the story ‘Nobody’s Business’ to be the most refreshing of the
lot. All the other stories revisited familiar paths and pitfalls of the
Bengali-American experience, while ‘Nobody’s Business’ takes off on a
sudden tangent. It’s when you get the unexpected that you sense there
could be more to the practiced plot/character cliches that we have been
seeing from Jhumpa Lahiri since her much acclaimed ‘The Interpreter of
Maladies’. It starts off curiously enough, with a much discussed (on Sepia Mutiny), almost badly edited first line:
Every so often a man called for Sang, wanting to marry her. Sang
usually didn’t know these men. Sometimes she had never even heard of
them. But they’d heard that she was pretty and smart and thirty and
Bengali and still single, and so these men, most of whom also happened
to be Bengali, would procure her number from someone who knew someone
who knew her parents, who, according to Sang, desperately wanted her to
be married. According to Sang, these men always confused details when
they spoke to her, saying they’d heard that she’d graduated from
Columbia, when really it was NYU, calling her Sangeeta, when she really
went by Sang. They were impressed that she was getting her doctorate at
Harvard, when really she’d dropped out of Harvard after a semester, and
was working part time at a bookstore in the square.
Someone even took a shot at presenting a neatly edited version of this:
From time to time a man would call for Sang, wanting to marry her. Or, more properly, curious if she were someone he could marry.
Calls at all hours, odd little messages left, hushed and rushed voices,
saying they wanted to meet her. Where did they get the number? Friends,
families, aunties, uncles – the usual crowd. She was young and pretty
and smart and Bengali, said the usual crowd. So, calls at all hours,
odd little messages left, and hurried snippets of conversation, full of
odd claims about her: she was at Harvard, she was at Columbia, hadn’t
she gone to NYU? Sangeeta, they called her, and Sang didn’t correct
them. Why would she? She would see them once, and then never again.
I
almost concurred, until I actually read the story and realized that the
protagonist was not Sang, but her housemate Paul. The story was being
narrated from Paul’s viewpoint and the repetition of ‘according to
Sang’ took on a different meaning from merely bad editing. The story
wound on to its denouement, but it was the un-Jhumpa like approach to
tone and the lack of Indian references beyond Sang’s background that
was the standout. Maybe there is hope for Jhumpa yet.
Or, maybe not. She has made a career out of purveying the
Bengali-American immigrant sensibility, and all the hype and marketing
has been pushing that exoticizing aspect of her fiction, not to mention
the almost rock-star like marketing of her undeniably beautiful face
and immigrant background. Would we have seen the same splashes as these,
had it not been for a face made for camera? Would she be still lost
among the ranks of equally or more competent but lesser known writers
of similar origin?
Someone on one of the message boards commented on the phenomenon as
her having opened the market wide for writers of Indian origin.
Perhaps, though not always in expected ways, as I suspect could have
happened with Harvard whiz kid Kaavya Viswanathan.
Like Jhumpa, she had spent her early years in England, moving to the US
later. She was tagged with a humongous marketing campaign to position
her as the Jhumpa of the Chicklit club, which may have triggered the
plagiarism downfall in a curious manner. At least, that’s the spirit in
which I wrote this (sort of) fictional piece about Kaavya a couple of years ago.
Jhumpa has maybe escaped the pressure of her parents’ expectations at last, but her
characters still retain without fail a certain resentment, guilt and
angst against theirs. It may take some more years from now before
we will be able to see any writing in a fresh perspective from Jhumpa.
It’s just as well that her output is so slow in arrival, heralded by
dozens of photogenic interviews and articles, otherwise, we wouldn’t
pay attention to it at all, so commonplace would it have become.
Accidental Blogger 
15 responses to “A Metareview of “Unaccustomed Earth” (Sujatha)”
Meta or not, this is a very good review. Now that I have overdosed on Jhumpa Lahiri (review wise), I am even more certain that I won’t read the book.
When I read her debut short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies,” the reaction was lukewarm. This book seems to follow the same predictable tenor. I tend to agree more with this review that you have linked to than what the likes of Michiko Kakutani have to say although my own mini-review of Lahiri’s first book and literary style was a tad more polite. The Namesake remains unread on my book shelf. Now that I have seen the movie (which was good), I doubt that I will ever read it.
I just don’t find Jhumpa Lahiri interesting enough. Several readers on Sepia Mutiny compared her to Alice Munro and some to Edith Wharton. May be she is more Munro than Wharton who had the courage to take sides in a social dilemma. I also do not buy the explanation that a great writer only writes well about the world that he / she knows. Otherwise Flannery O’Connor, a socially awkward and later a mostly crippled woman confined to her home, wouldn’t have taken us for such wild rides. Nor would Carson McCullers have written “The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.”
As I said to you earlier, I find Jhumpa to be a competent but less than sparkling author – not someone I wish to read again and again. Also, I am afraid that since she is so identified with being “Bengali”, she may have given the impression to non-Bengalis that all Bengalis and Bengali lit are similarly minimalistic in their approach to life and bloodless in their emotions as Jhumpa’s “cultured” writing would suggest. Far from it. Although in the western press she is compared to several other women writers writing in English, Jhumpa herself named Ashapurna Devi, a Bengali author as a source of her inspiration. Ashapurna happens to be one of my favorite Bengali authors and the two are poles apart in their approach to story telling. While Ashapurna was robust, very funny and even moralistic, Jhumpa is anaemic, humorless and “butter won’t melt in my mouth” timid. Ashapurna Devi also wrote for teenagers with as much gusto as she reserved for adults. There were few pastel shades in her paint box. And yes, unlike Jhumpa, Ashapurna would have told you where in PA the dad lived.
Jhumpa Lahiri has a knack of choosing great titles for her books (usually, with an impressive literary or anecdotal background). “Unaccustomed Earth” is an excellent title as was “Interpreter of Maladies.” If only the contents within were as intriguing as the covers would suggest.
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I see what you mean regarding the writing of Ashapurna Debi, and only feel faintly envious because I can’t handle Bengali in the original. Luckily, there are a few recent good translations of her work out there that I can have my parents bring from India when they visit.
‘Unaccustomed Earth’ is a good title indeed, but what we get from this set of stories, barring the occasional flash of brilliance, is the ploughing of the same old ruts, which gets tiring when there is no relief to the melancholy.
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I knew nothing of this author, had never even heard of her, before encountering this post. (I must have missed your earlier post, Ruchira.) Now, after this review and a glance at some of the linked resources, I “know” much more. I have often imagined I could smell the work of a writing program graduate blindfolded, if you will. I have no problem with that first line–what am I missing?–except that it has a whiff of having been overcooked. I do have a problem with works whose strengths accrete in a sentence here or there, as seems to be the case with Lahiri. The result ends up appearing random, like the monkeys’ Shakespeare.
Sujatha’s meta- approach to Lahiri is salutary, reviewing the reviewers in order to extract something meaningful and worth sharing about the work of the author. Still, I feel a wave of sympathy for Harold Bloom after skimming the comments on Sepia Mutiny, which illustrate the banality of democratic discourse. Contributors want to vie with each other for the key to the writer, dispensing half-baked sociological accounts for her text, gossiping about her photogenic allure, appropriating her on behalf of a group qua group, and so on. It’s all ranking and tokens of literary sensibilities and web oneupmanship.
Ruchira’s brutal “a competent but less than sparkling author” is probably right. All that education, all that experience and culture, all those interviews and photo shoots produce…competence.
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Dean:
You sound like the elders of the Democratic Party (and Harold Bloom) who want to shut down the messy democratic nomination process and transfer the responsibility to those who “know.” The same reason why professional journalists don’t like bloggers.
Blogs are for blabbing and I think Sepia Mutiny being a self defined “brown” blog, readers feel comfortable in mouthing off among cultural peers about things they feel they have an in on. That is true of all niche blogs, be it of lawyers, philosophers or librarians. Another blogger said to me the other day that it requires some particular character traits to become a blogger – “unashamed” being one of them. (I am grateful he didn’t say “shameless”) Nonetheless, sometimes it terrifies me to realize how little I know about anything and how glibly I pontificate on so much!
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Dean,
I completely agree with your assessment of Jhumpa’s writing as ‘works whose strengths accrete in a sentence here or there, as seems to be the case with Lahiri. The result ends up appearing random, like the monkeys’ Shakespeare.’
All the breathless banter at Sepia Mutiny is no more than what presumably goes on in the homes and haunts of many who live by ‘The View’, or ‘Oprah’ or People or Teen magazine. Prurient curiosity in the lives of celebrities is a universal trait, as is pontificating on matters we know next to nothing about. We’re all human after all ;)
As resident Conspiracy Queen, I must remark on strange goings-on at amazon.com where Jhumpa’s book is listed as #2 in sales, with only 5 reviews up at this point of time, while the #1 bestseller has 700+ reviews. Does this mean that everybody buys the book just to brag about it without reading/reviewing it, or does it mean that reviews are being withheld from publishing for some obscure marketing reason?
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I’m flattered that a mere mention of Bloom (call it name-dropping) makes me sound like him as well, but deeply offended by the association with the stodgy Dems! However, I would opt for making the election process and political conversation even messier, much messier. It’s the unashamed breathless banter about literature that irks me! I mentioned Bloom because, of course, he stands for an elitism we like to believe has become no longer fashionable. But it remains the trend, and Bloom has been unashamed to steer the helm. Democratic discourse becomes banal, as I put it, when it serves another sort of elitism that cherishes celebrity. Thus, Jhumpa Lahiri is special because, like a fashion model, she can command the cover of a magazine. Why is Bloom’s elitism elitist, while the elitism of folks blabbing “about things they feel they have an in on” not?
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In honor of Bloom and his life’s work:
“I will not choose what many men desire,
Because I will not jump with common spirits,
And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.”
….
And well said too; for who shall go about
To cozen Fortune, and be honourable
Without the stamp of merit? – let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity:
O that estates, degrees, and offices,
Were not deriv’d corruptly, and that clear honour
Were purchas’d by the merit of the wearer!”
One wishes it was true readers’ acclaim that determined the merit of the writer’s oeuvre, rather than a concerted marketing campaign.
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They are being elitist alright, in that particular milieu. But I wouldn’t be so harsh. We all wish to be elitists from time to time (I know that I do) and seek out the forum where we can be – democracy be damned!
Yesterday I came across a news item that reports the crashing of another elitist party – that of the culinary niche, perhaps the most cliquish and protectionist of all fine pursuits.
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Oh, Bloom may be right in his purist dream. But with literacy, if not exactly literary meritocracy, flourishing, my take on literature is the same as it is on art. To each his own .. and let the mavens be warned. So, although I myself will not read the highly promoted Jhumpa no matter how much Ms Kakutani gushes, I do not begrudge those who are swooning over her.
I am looking forward to reading the other two Indian born story tellers though – Rushdie’s latest razzle dazzle with “the enchantress” and Ghosh’s “Sea of Poppies.” At least one of those two is also a book seller’s dream … and it is not just for his pretty face!
Sujatha, I am still reeling from the impact of the first line of the Hindu article you have linked to. They still remember Cliff Richard in India? :-) :-)
I will wait for Dean to chime in on the musical merit of C.R.
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Cliff Richard? I love a lot of British and American pop, but I can’t say I’ve spent enough time with his material to have formulated an opinion.
I stumbled on that NYT piece moments after submitting my comment above. First there’s the absurd notion that “pancetta is not done”–one of the major impulses of culinary elitism is this recourse to authenticity. Then there’s the blather about cooking being a “passion” and food being “a beautiful thing.”
Food. A “thing.” Really?
But there’s little in the story that has anything of significance to say about food, since it’s really about demographics. How otherwise does a line assuring us that foreigners “make some of the best Italian food in Italy (as well as some of the worst and everything between)” pass muster? And the author keeps telling us where one finds the “best” Italian food as if that were a datum one could look up in an almanac: prepared by foreigners, or in the home, or at a carbonara contest, or in Parma.
Let me repeat a fact I’ve disseminated a bit, perhaps even already here at AB. The best pizza in the world can be found in Whittier, California. Not Los Angeles’ west side, not Manhattan or Brooklyn, not Naples, not Chicago…Whittier freakin’ California! When will the NYT and the rest of the culinary world catch up with reality?
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Love the Shakespeare, by the way, Sujatha.
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The Amazon rankings are often paid-for, AFAIK.
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Any links to bear that up, Manish?
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Amazon rankings are paid for? I have always wondered about it, how did you find out?
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Her “Bengaliness” is actually the most annoying thing about her writing. Is her world so limited that she knows no other kind of Indians? This “Bengali-American” identity that she’s invented might be alright for a Bangladeshi, but for somebody whose parents came from West Bengal, and who goes on and on about visiting Calcutta, it’s a highly unfortunate narrowing of one’s own horizons. It’s no different from a white American writer being unable to see past her Catholicism or Jewishness.
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