20 May 2021: Like everything she writes, Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts knocked me out. There are images and lines, scenes and moments, that will stay with me. The book is a bit hard to describe: a novel, but without much of a plot; a series of scenes, really, all revolving around the main character--a middle-aged, single, female academic who is vaguely (and sometimes not so vaguely) unhappy with or uncertain about her life. It seems to me a major theme is her wondering about her aloneness and whether she regrets it (or thinks she should). Linked to that is a kind of amorphous and subtle exploration of why she might have made the choices she did, including some insights on her parents and how they shaped her. So...there's a lot there one might relate to. Ha.
I read the book as the first selection in my just re-started/now-just-two-person book club with Cory. Post-COVID vaccines, we can actually meet in person, which we did at his and Hannah's house tonight. The three of us had dinner first and then he and I sat outside and talked about the book for awhile before Hannah joined us for non-book conversation. It was a kind of perfect evening--and a useful reminder of some crucial ways I am not like that unnamed title character.
It goes without saying that there’s been a lot of reading going on here this summer. In terms of “work reading,” I’ve been thoroughly immersed in him and her. And then there was my Summer I class. But all work and no play gives Heidi a dull summer, so I’ve been doing lots of “fun reading,” too. Here are some highlights:
1) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. Everyone’s been talking about this book for awhile now, and for good reason. I picked it up in January, plowed through the first 100 pages or so, then had to put it down as the semester got really crazy. For me, it just wasn’t the kind of book I could read the way I read for fun during the semester—30 or 60 minute clips before bed or longer blocks over weekends. Once May hit, though, I turned back to it and read it in long and indulgent sittings. And it’s amazing—what a book! It might sound cheesy, but it’s almost like the book is alive in your hands. That’s just the way Diaz writes—the prose is so alive, so vibrant, so rich. And the characters are unforgettable.
2) When You are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris. I am cheating a bit by calling this “Summer reading,” since I bought this book over a year ago when I was apartment hunting with Vogel in Philadelphia. (The receipt is still in the book and served quite well as a bookmark.) But, after I read the first few essays, I let it get buried in a stack of books by my bed, only really picking it up again in May, once the last exam was graded. If you liked David Sedaris’ earlier books, you’ll like this one, too. All the things I love about Sedaris—his funny observations about language, his unashamed revelations about his own character, and the way he sometimes slips sentiment into his cynicism—all of that’s in here, too. I always read with a pencil nearby. I have a habit of making little smiles in the margins when something makes me laugh. At some point, I realized how pointless these marks are in a book like When You are Engulfed in Flames. It’s like pointing out ants at a picnic or something.
3) Butterflies Dance in the Dark, by Beatrice MacNeil. My parents picked this book up for me last summer when they took a cruise up North and stopped in Cape Breton. MacNeil was signing copies of her book in a little shop. My dad says he read the back, thought it looked interested, and picked up a copy for me—complete with inscription from the author. (“To Dr. Heidi,” it reads. My parents never miss out on the chance to tell people that I have a PhD. If I did it, it would seem obnoxious. When they do it, it’s kind of cute, I think.) Anyway, the book is enjoyable and not at all what I was expecting. Mari-Jen is unlike any first person narrator I’ve encountered before: she’s intelligent and creative, but also suffers from a learning disability and, later in the book, something quite like mental illness or at least severe emotional disturbance. At times, I found myself tired of her and her reticence. But MacNeil renders her with rich detail and real skill. What is also accomplished quite well, I think, is a vivid depiction of the region. I am also quite fond of Alfred and Albert, the main character’s twin brothers. They might be my favorite thing about this book.
4) Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpha Lahiri. This book had been on my radar for years and I’d already read three of the short stories in this collection—and loved each one (“This Blessed House,” “Sexy,” and the title story). I’ve blogged about Lahiri before here. Not much to say except that each story in this collection is amazing. Considering only the stories that were new to me, “A Temporary Matter” stands out for its absolutely devastating conclusion. Lahiri is absolutely one my favorite writers still working today. Part of me can’t wait to dive into Unaccustomed Earth, her new collection. But there is also a part of me that wants to put off reading it, since once I am done with it, I’ll have to wait who knows how long for another Lahiri book.
5) The Madhouse Nudes, by Robert Schultz. Schultz teaches at Roanoke (he started there a couple of years after I graduated), and I found out about this book after reading that it had been selected by the newly-formed Lutheran Writers Book Club. I picked up an old library copy online for a couple of bucks. Like the MacNeil book, this one wasn’t what I expected, but if you are interested in how the body is represented in art (especially the female body), Schultz gives you plenty to think about. He’s also a poet—something that shines through again and again in his beautiful prose.
6) Portisville, by Steve Cushman. Steve and I were first-year TAs together at UNCG. We even shared an office at one point. He’s a great guy so it makes me happy to hear he’s found success. Last summer, I picked up a copy of the book at Ed McKay's in Greensboro. Once I began Portisville, I had the distinct memory of hearing Steve read the first chapter at his thesis reading back in 2002—a testimony to the power of that chapter. The reviews of Portisville on the back cover describe it quite well: “lean, cool prose…a story crackling with reality,” “taut, raw, and gritty.” Steve’s got a new collection of short stories out which I might have to pick up.
Although my PhD. is in American literature before 1900 and I should, therefore, really love teaching courses in that area more than anything else (especially to English majors), I’ve got to say that there’s a certain joy in teaching an introduction to literature class to non-majors. When I teach these kinds of classes, my main goals are simply to get the students to realize that studying literature can be fun, that it does have some connection to their everyday lives, and that they can say smart things about it. Those aren’t particularly lofty goals, but they are awfully fun to guide students towards. To help along the way, I pick texts that are fun—surefire crowd pleasers.
This semester at Shepherd, I am teaching English 102, Writing for the Humanities, for the first time, a course that asks instructors to do a lot—it serves as the second half the of the freshman composition sequence and thus stresses research-based writing. Right now the department has it structured as an introduction to literary analysis, too, and the textbook we use is Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, one of these mammoth hard-cover books that contains a lot of the “greatest hits” of literature. You can take a look at my syllabus here. Most of the works I’ve chosen are works I’ve taught before or that I simply love.
And here’s why a course like this is such a blast for me to teach: as a nineteenth-century Americanist, how else am I going to have the opportunity to teach John Donne or Shakespeare or Robert Browning?
Now, though, I am also wondering if I shouldn’t have pushed myself towards teaching a few more works that I haven’t taught before, mostly because of the lovely hour or so I spent with a brand new story (brand new to me) yesterday afternoon. One of the few works I put on the syllabus without reading it beforehand is Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies.” I haven’t read all that much by Lahiri, but everything I read just knocks my socks off. This story was no exception. For those who don’t know much about her, you can read more here and here.
My first encounter with a work by Lahiri was several years ago, when I read a short story called “This Blessed House,” which was included in Convergences, a reader I was using in an English 101 class at UNCG. (The story was originally in Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri's 1999 short story collection.) “This Blessed House” is a great little story about an Indian-American couple who keep finding Christian-themed kitsch all over the house they just bought. The wife is delighted by the finds, the husband is annoyed—and the whole thing is just a great read. I remember being particularly struck by this passage:
“Though she did not say it herself, he assumed then that she loved him, too, but now he was no longer sure. In truth, Sanjeev did not know what love was, only what he thought it was not. It was not, he had decided, returning to an empty carpeted condominium each night, and using only the top fork in his cutlery drawer, and turning politely away at those weekend dinner parties when the other men eventually put their arms around the waists of their wives and girlfriends, leaning over every now and again to kiss their shoulders or necks. It was not sending away for classical music CDs by mail, working his way methodically through the major composers that the catalogue recommended, and always sending his payments on time. In the months before meeting Twinkle, Sanjeev had begun to realize this.”
This passage sums up what I think Lahiri does so well—captures the image, the gesture, the simple thoughts that make us human--and that in some way translate across lines of race and class.
My next encounter with Lahiri came through The Namesake, her first novel, published in 2003 and made into a pretty great movie in 2007. I won’t say too much about it, other than that you should read it (or at least see the film).
Anyway, as I mentioned, for my class on Wednesday, we are reading “Interpreter of Maladies,” the title story from Lahiri’s 1999 Pulitzer-prize-winning collection. This story, about an Indian tour guide who takes a young Indian-American family to the Sun Temple at Konorak, once again shows us everyday people who seem to be living happily enough on the surface, but dream of better things and harbor secrets and regrets. And that’s a clichéd and oversimplified way to talk about the story, I know.
Particularly moving are the passages where the tour guide, Mr. Kapasi, imagines that he and the young wife, Mrs. Das, will begin an important correspondence with each other and that he has found someone who will appreciate and value him:
“The paper curled as Mr. Kapasi wrote his address in clear, careful letters. She would write to him, asking about his days interpreting at the doctor’s office, and he would respond eloquently, choosing only the most entertaining anecdotes, ones that would make her laugh out loud as she read them in her house in
Of course, the story doesn’t end in this happy fantasy—not by any means, but that’s part of what makes it worth reading. The state of mind this put me in—that wonderful time after you’ve read a great story for the first time and you are still running through it in your head—left me in a great mood for the rest of the day. I only hope I can get my students to hold onto a fraction of that feeling when they read it.
The point of all this? Well, I guess there are three: 1) I am happy to be teaching introduction to literature, 2) it is great to know that I can still get that excited over a new story and 3) I wish I had time to read more Lahiri.
