Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Torch Song Trilogy (1988), watched at home last weekend, is a film adaptation of the Tony-winning Boradway play by Harvey Fierstein. In the film Fierstein reprises his role as Arnold Beckoff, a gay man looking for love in 1970's New York City. He is really the heart of the show, funny, witty and poignant, though Anne Bancroft is a scream too as his domineering mother, and Matthew Broderick throws himself bravely into the part of Arnold's young, modelling lover. Arnold's drag performances, with a cast of other queens, reminded me of the recently watched Magic Mike , but the latter was a skinny latte compared to the frothy blend of humor, psychology and melodrama in Torch Song . I wanted to like The Namesake the movie, just as I wanted to like The Namesake the book, but both were ultimately disappointing. The book has more going for it. If it does not have enough plot, it does at least have the pristine prose of Jhumpa Lahiri. The movie tries to be epic by covering th...

I knew before reading The Namesake that the novel is deeply concerned with migration, but I did not know that it is also deeply concerned with chance. It is by chance that Ashoke is rescued alive from the train wreck, a page from the Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol falling from his clutch and so attracting the attention of rescuers. This miracle turns his mind to living abroad. It is by chance that the letter from grandmother is lost in the mail and so Ashoke and Ashima give their newborn the same of Ashoke's favorite author as a temporary measure that becomes a permanent part of him. By chance too, Gogol Ganguli recovers the book of Gogol's short stories, Ashoke's long-ago birthday present for him, before the contents of his childhood home on Pemberton Road are sold or given away. The striking coincidences of an immigrant life become, in this novel, a comment on the role of chance in everyone's lives. When we move, even if the move is to the next neighborhood, we open...

Another reading weekend, but this one combined with a vacation. The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies organized the reading at the conference of the American Literature Association, a coalition of author societies. Chaired by Nicky Schildkraut (University of Southern California), Meena Alexander and I read for a small but attentive audience. It was a pleasure to meet Meena and hear her read. She has an alluring voice, riverine. Born in Allahabad, India, she traveled extensively as a child and an adult, and has finally settled down in New York City, and become an American citizen. I hear in her poetry the unceasing question of what to adopt and what to let go. This metamorphic self-making was nicely captured by two different papers on her poetry, presented in the panel before our reading. Stephanie Han (City University of Hong Kong) wanted to define her as American. The other paper, by Trevor Lee (City University of New York--The Graduate Center) whose thesis advisor is A...

The Asian American Writers' Workshop expanded its annual awards ceremony into a literary festival. The one-day event took place yesterday at the Powerhouse Arena, in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Two separate readings took place at every hour from 11 AM to 6 PM. I attended the 4 PM session "Sex and the Cities: Stories of Love & the Metropolis" with readings by Hari Kunzru, Monique Truong and Mort Baharloo. From where we sat we could hear the other reading, and so it was hard to concentrate, especially during the mic-wrecked question-and-answer that followed. The day ended with a reading by Jhumpa Lahiri, the main reason why six students, who studied her work last year, came with me. This was my third time hearing her read, and she continued to wow me with her thoughtful poise. When someone from the audience asked an obnoxious question, she declined firmly but gracefully to give an answer. In her replies to her interviewer, she did not try to say more than she meant. One answer s...

Raising the Volume Quietly In Lahiri's Pulitzer-winning debut collection,  Interpreter of Maladies, the stories   take place in a deliberately limited period of time: an electricity blackout ("A Temporary Matter"); a guided tour ("Interpreter of Maladies"); an academic season ("When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine"); a baby-sitting job ("Mrs. Sen"); the beginning and end of an extra-marital affair ("Sexy"). This strategy gives a natural and aesthetic shape to Lahiri's material--the experiences of immigrant Bengalis in America--and the shape can impress the mind deeply, like an archetype, as in the poignant anthology-worthy piece "A Temporary Matter."  In Unaccustomed Earth , her second collection, two stories follow the same strategy. The title story takes place during a father's visit at his married daughter's home. The occasion for "A Choice of Accommodations" is a high school reunion. The other three sto...

She read from one of the linked stories from her newest collection of short stories Unaccustomed Earth for about half an hour. Interestingly, it was written in the first person to another character in the story. The prose was limpid and yet layered. For the next half an hour, she fielded questions from the audience, questions which ranged from her narrative techniques to her access to expatriate experience to her relations with her editor. Her answers did not follow any template, fortunately, but she felt her way to an answer to each question, sometimes admitting it was all a matter of instinct rather than any conscious process. As I had expected, about half of the audience looked Indian, and among them more women than men. She was, after all, writing them into being. She grew up on Rhodes Island, and then shuttered between Boston and New York. She was shorter than I had imagined from the glamorous photo in her book.