To return to my lecturing days: I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase "sincere and simple" - "Flaubert writes with a style which is always simple and sincere" - under the impression that this was the greatest compliment payable to prose or poetry. When I struck the phrase out, which I did with such rage in my pencil that it ripped the paper, the student complained that this was what teachers had always taught him: "Art is simple, art is sincere." Someday I must trace this vulgar absurdity to its source. A schoolmarm in Ohio? A progressive ass in New York? Because, of course, art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.-Vladimir Nabokov, in an interview with PlayboyCurrent English-language writing, especially American writing, seems to strive towards telling "universal" stories that, while they may have "ethnic coloring" if one's name is something like Jhumpa Lahiri, are in the end about families and relationships "that we can all relate to" because the characters are "like your family and mine." Can we say that this is not particularly interesting stuff? Might we add that in most cases these types of stories are bland and not a little trite? Lahiri's upper middle-class children of Indian immigrants attend Ivy League schools, have marital problems, fret about babysitters, and get dismayed by culture clashes with their traditional parents. These are pretty narrow worlds - almost invariably there's an Indian man married to a white woman or a white man married to an Indian woman; doctors, lawyers, professors, and prep schools abound. Nearly everyone has, or is in the process of getting, a PhD. It would be a tremendous undertaking, counting the times these three letters appear together in this book. Though many good folk might be inclined to praise Lahiri for the "respect" she shows her characters, her lack of irony and condescension, here we find the root of the problem. Lahiri's brittle little world of shopping, house hunting, lavish marriage ceremonies; the mention of something called a "mommy group" that sent shivers of horror down my spine; the trips to Calcutta, London, and Rome of which no one frets about the costs; the characters whose capacity for self-reflection is ultimately as shallow as their spiritual crises - this is not the material of great fiction. A better writer would take these people with a pinch of salt, because they are slightly ridiculous, and would find a way to give the depth to their stories that is missing from their lives. Lahiri's stories, unfortunately, simply reinforce a series of platitudes about marriage and death and grief. Lahiri doesn't question that the United States is where people go to "make it," and the majority of immigrants who haven't made it or are just barely making it are completely absent from the landscape of Unaccostomed Earth. Although desperation and despair make appearances throughout, they are generally prompted by marriage strain, the death of a mother, a brother's drinking problem, unrequited love, or cultural displacement. Never is it suggested that the dreary accumulation of degrees and big salaries and household furnishings, or the steady intake of television and fast food, or that the vacuity of American life might take some blame. Lahiri's characters are incredibly materialistic and often more than a touch smug - and this may point to why she's so popular with book reviewers, who tend to exist in the same sorts of bubbles. In one story in particulary, about a PhD student (naturally!) smitten with his Indian housemate and distraught over her attachment to her creep BMW-driving Egyptian boyfriend, the who cares? factor is overwhelming. The student doesn't have much of a personality, and both the Indian girl and her Egyptian boyfriend are vile. The collection is not always so grim, and there's even one that is quite good - "Heaven-Hell," a portrait of a woman stuck in a suffocating traditional marriage, with a chilling finale - but generally we find the same worn scenarios, the same tiresome, self-obsessed people. There is something obscene about the naming of brands in fiction, and something suspect about the incredible rate at which they seem to crop up in current American writing. These products, foisted on people in every hour of their waking lives, are even given fawning descriptions in fiction now. If in the book someone has a breakfast cereal, one wonders why the name of that particular cereal is always deemed necessary for inclusion. To give but an iceberg tip from Lahiri's book: Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, MapQuest, Ovaltine, Fisher Price, Dunkin' Donuts, Tonka trucks, Lincoln Logs, Avon, Sears, Johnny Walker, Jordan Marsh, Good Housekeeping, U.S. News and World Report. All of which are, naturally, spoken of approvingly. If one were uncharitable one might suspect that Lahiri was even getting paid for all these sprinklings of good words about delicious donuts and smooth, enjoyable whiskeys. Jhumpa Lahiri's prose is simple and sincere, sincerely simple, simply sincere. In the U.K. paperback edition I read there are nearly fifty (!) positive blurbs from the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, and India. Comparisons are made to Hemingway and Chekhov by someone who has never read either or is hopping insane. A reviewer for the New Statesman says "Lahiri's work is the literary opposite of the fashionably sprawling and noisy fiction" that is common to the school of "what is called 'the immigrant experience.'" While it's easy to agree that said sprawling and noisy fiction is indeed excruciating, and while we all surely wait with bated breath for the day when such drivel will make its way to the same cultural junkyard that will be the well-deserved end for almost all of late 20th and early 21st century "culture," Jhumpa Lahiri does not, sad to say, represent a meaningful alternative. Another reviewer unintentionally hits the mark when she states Lahiri's writing is "unadorned," "deliberate" and "unshowy" - what she really means is that it's indistinct and not really above the grade of writing one commonly finds in so-called popular fiction. Indeed, the descriptions are often cliche - women, though in their thirties, often look youthful as high school girls, and Lahiri's male narrators sound exactly like Lahiri's female narrators (indeed the reader wonders about the sort of fellow who would describe his father as grey at the temples yet still looking "vigorous"). The writing isn't really much better than the kind of "unadorned" writing one gets in a John Grisham or Stephen King novel, though Unaccustomed Earth is what is considered literature these days, because it's about "serious" subjects, and not about lawyers tangled in webs of conspiracy or small New England towns in which unspeakable evils lurk. If Jhumpa Lahiri is one of the best America has, as these ecstatic reviewers crowding the cover and first several pages of my paperback proclaim, then these are dark days for American literature indeed. To that end I recommend readers pick a book by Ernest Hemingway or Anton Chekhov, and avoid Jhumpa Lahiri, unless you like knowing what dazzling university your fictional characters have graduated from and what they prefer in the way of breakfast cereals.
The title of Lahiri’s latest book—Unaccustomed Earth—refers to the first story in this collection but also to a motif dominating all of the stories: tales about a world unaccustomed to the shifts and changes taking place on its surface, a world uncomfortable with the destruction and loss brought on by hurricanes and tsunamis, unfamiliar with modern diseases and traumas, and unsure about the class and cultural conflicts that dominate relationships in the lives of Lahiri’s characters. The earth that we now inhabit, Lahiri seems to be saying, is one that our ancestors would not recognize. tDespite the uniqueness of modern society, the emotions and situations that Lahiri depicts are universal. Since reading her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1999 collection, Interpreter of Maladies, I have believed that Lahiri is one of the best writers of our generation, and—like her 2003 novel, The Namesake—Unaccustomed Earth provides only more evidence of this fact. What makes Lahiri’s work so accomplished and simultaneously riveting is that, unlike her literary peers, Lahiri is more concerned with substance than style. Her stories are about real people rather than quirky characters or odd situations. . . people we know, people we love and hate. The stories are about those we care about most letting us down because they are incapable of having healthy relationships— like Rahul in “Only Goodness” and Farouk in “Nobody’s Business.” And they are about parents who return to us or finally abandon us like the father in “Year’s End.” tThere are no gimmicks in Lahiri’s prose, no writing with a capital W, the kind that so annoyingly draws more attention to itself than its characters. This is simply straightforward storytelling about issues to which we all can relate. And, in that way, every one of the eight stories in Unaccustomed Earth does exactly what Stephen King said great stories do when he was hawking the 2008 edition of Best American Short Stories in The New York Times Book Review last fall: they grab us and make us hold on tight, they come at us “full-bore, like a big, hot meteor screaming down from the Kansas sky.”tBut it’s not only that Lahiri pulls us in emotionally, it’s that she makes us reconsider our choices and reflect on them by making connections between her fictional characters and our own experiences. She navigates the personal and the political, and the stories touch on a variety of issues we care about: marriage, divorce, death, disease, dislocation. As in her first collection, the stories in Unaccustomed Earth take on the contemporary question of liminality and hyphenation: Who are we when we are not one person, but not another? When we are both at the same time? What does it mean to be from a place but not of it? Why do we resist the unknown? In “Going Ashore,” she demonstrates how it is that one might find oneself without a cultural home, nomadic not by choice but by circumstance. In some ways, the difference between this collection and The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies—which both seem, in some ways, to wax nostalgic about immigration—is that Lahiri is more antagonistic about issues of diaspora, not only bringing them out of the closet and wearing them in public, but also getting them dirty, ripping the seams out, and showing us how they’re constructed.tAn inherent criticism of those who resist assimilation is an underlying premise of the book. Unlike one of the most moving stories in her first collection, “The Third and Final Continent”—which, in some ways, reads like a love letter to arranged marriage—several of Lahiri’s stories in this book take aim at the practice: “Heaven-Hell” tells the story of a woman who tries to burn herself alive after falling in love with her husband’s young protégé, a man closer to her in age than her own spouse. And in the title story, the father of the protagonist falls in love with another woman after his wife’s death—the first time he has ever truly been in love—an emotional shift that allows him to connect more fully with his daughter. This theme reappears in the three outstanding stories that make up Part Two: “Hema and Kaushik.” In these connected stories, Lahiri gives the reader not one, but two marriages based on convenience rather than love.tBut Lahiri never hits us over the head with these messages, and sometimes they are so subtle that we have to be on the lookout in order to see the meaning that lies under each story’s surface. Nancy Zafris, former fiction editor of The Kenyon Review, said once that great stories “must always be telling two or more stories in a way that disguises for a while the real story,” and Lahiri has learned this lesson well, layering every story with numerous complexities. tIn “Nobody’s Business,” an American graduate student discovers that his Indian housemate’s boyfriend, an Egyptian, has been cheating on her for years. When the American inserts himself into this drama, he finds his help is unwanted. Even though it is the philandering boyfriend who tells him, “I didn’t invite you here,” the reader still feels violated by the American’s unwanted presence. On the one hand, we hope the American can help his Indian housemate, but at the same time, we want to tell him to get lost, raising the question of whether it is better to turn a blind eye to the problems of others or try to help them out of the messes in which they find themselves. There are other implicit criticisms of the U.S. in the book as well. According to the narrator of “Once in a Lifetime,” America is known first as a place where class “differences were irrelevant,” but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that under the surface, the petty jealousies and judgments that affect relationships between people from different social strata still fester, a theme also echoed in “A Choice of Accommodations” earlier in the book. tThe stories similarly criticize human selfishness—showing parents who put their own needs first, children who are hung up on petty resentments, partners who feel little for their spouses, individuals who use each other for their own gain. And like people who are honest about their vulnerability, their fallibility, the reader cares for these flawed characters even more deeply as a result, grieving when they grieve, loving when they love. This unyielding sense of empathy is accomplished most powerfully in the stories about Hema and Kaushik. After uncovering a row of tombstones in the woods behind young Hema’s suburban home, a sixteen-year-old Kaushik tells her that he wishes that his family wasn’t Hindu so that his mother could be buried somewhere, a place where presumably they could—like the family he has uncovered under snow and fallen leaves—all be together again. It is this scene that stays with me long after I have finished the book, calling to mind again and again the metaphor uniting the collection—earth that is not accustomed—and raising the question of how we push this world, and those who inhabit it, to accommodate our all-too human whims and desires.This review first appeared in Cairn 43: The St. Andrews Review.
What do You think about Unaccustomed Earth (2008)?
It's been so long since I have read Jhumpa Lahiri and I've had this book since it was published in 2008. And just as I remember, her writing is exquisite, particularly when she writes short stories. I think it takes a very special writer to be able to write short stories well; they have a very limited amount of pages in which to get their readers 'hooked' into the story. Mission accomplished here!I am going to do synopsis reviews of some of the stories as I read them.#1 - Unaccustomed Earth - This story was an emotional one for me. It is the story of Ruma, a young woman who has moved to Seattle from the East Coast for her successful husband's career. Ruma's own career as an attorney is put on hold as they begin a family. They have one young son, Akash, and another child on the way. The story is very touching as Ruma's father (he is widowed) comes to spend a week with her and Akash (Ruma's husband is out of town on business). There are many emotions as Ruma remembers back to when her mother was alive and her father remembers back to when Ruma was a child; and how children once grown and some of their widowed parents go on to have lives of their own. A mature and bond is solidified between Ruma and her father and a very loving one between Ruma's father and his grandson, Akash. #5 Nobody's Business - A very troubling story of a wronged young woman, Sang. When a friend trys to help her see things as they are, the friendship is severed as Sang refuses to believe the possibilities. What was very fun for me, however, is the story was set in Boston, some parts in the Back Bay and the South End, both of which are near and dear to my heart. And there is scene that was set in Dunkin' Donuts as well! Otherwise, not an uplifting story, but beautifully written as always by the author.Undoubtedly my favorite stories in this collection are the final 3 which are inter-related stories. It is Part Two of the book entitled "Hema and Kaushik". The first of the stories "Once in a Lifetime" we meet Hema (the girl) and Kaushik (the boy) when they are young children, as their parents are friends. Again this story was really fun for me as it too is set in the Boston area and in fact, mentions my home town of Malden and talks about people taking the T from Malden or Medford to attend a party at Hema's parents' house in Harvard/MIT area. This story is told in the remembering voice of Hema and set in 1974 when she is 6 and Kaushik is 9.Fast forward to the second story "Year's End" which is told in the remembering voice of Kaushik who is now in college. This story is all about Kaushik and how he comes to terms with changing familial circumstances as he enters his adult life. Kaushik has a very special bond with his mother which is pivotal to all 3 stories.The third and final story, "Going Ashore", is told in a narrative voice of neither Kaushik nor Hema. Yet the two meet for the first time since they were teenagers, both now in their 30's and in Rome for different professional reasons. While I enjoyed the entire book, these stories of Kaushik and Hema left me not even being able to pick up another book right away, I was so drawn to their story. The writing is exquisite, personal, moving, wrenching, beautiful.....for me these 3 stories surpassed anything previous that I have read by the author and I have now read all of her books. I'm so glad I own this book so that I can revisit it over and over again.Oh and once you read the book, you will know exactly which story the cover picture belongs to. It's not what you think :)
—Diane D.
After weeks of waiting anxiously, of reading about how good the book is, I finally got my hands on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.The beauty of Lahiri’s writing is in the ordinariness of it. She has an elegant style but does nothing to draw undue attention to the writing itself; she employs no tricks that distract from her narrative. The stories are also about ordinary topics, about regular people. It is in the simplicity of the scenarios that universal truths resound.“Unaccustomed Earth,” the first story in the collection, is exactly why Lahiri is such an acclaimed writer. In the story, a widowed father visits his married daughter in Seattle. Ruma debates over inviting her father to move in with her and her family. It is a simple scenario, but I’ve found myself considering the situation for days. What would I do if my mother died? Would I ask my father to move in with me? Could he be happy living with me? Could I be happy living with him?Although the main characters are all Bengali, these are not stories about or for a specific audience. I can see myself, place myself into these narratives: the struggle with a loved one’s substance abuse, the pain of unrequited love.As with any collection of short stories, I was drawn to some more than others. The book is split into two sections. The first contains four stories; the second three connected stories. I have mixed feelings about the second section: Hema and Kaushik. These stories veer a bit from Lahiri’s formula. The first two are written in first person, and the third does not rely on ordinary, everyday events. Instead, it turns on a major world event, losing its sense of universality.I spent several days reading this collection; I could not simply speed through it as I thought I would. The stories have a weightiness of real life that I found was best taken in small doses.
—Leanna
Having just finished Unaccustomed Earth, I have to say I thought it was fantastic how Lahiri manages to catch the edge of human interactions--all that we don't say to each other throughout our lives. I really was close to tears at the end of the final story. This is my first experience with her writing other than reading one story. That previous story gave me a glimpse of her skill but now I have the full blown view of a writer who appears to be at a peak of ability.This has broadened my view of the short story itself in terms of what to expect of it--and of me as I read and experience it. So much richness can be there. I will continue seeking this experience more often in this format. And I will definitely read all of Lahiri.
—Sue
