Some Thoughts about Jhumpa Lahiri and One Book, One Community

I was fortunate to attend the discussion and question/answer session with Jhumpa Lahiri this week. For those of you who may not be informed, Jhumpa Lahiri, the best-selling author of collections of short stories such as Unaccustomed Earth and The Interpreter of Maladies and the author of the acclaimed novel The Namesake, was invited to come to WestConn as part of the One Book/One Community Project. As I understand it, the Danbury Library and several other community organizations, including WestConn, created this project with the goal of producing a common reading for the Danbury community. The idea was that everyone in Danbury (or at least everyone interested in this project) would be able to access a copy of The Namesake and read it. As part of this project, WestConn made The Namesake a common read for our university and made efforts to require incoming first year students to read it.

I think these are all wonderful developments. The idea of a common read for an entire community is both ambitious and interesting.

Nevertheless, I have some reservations about how well this project was executed, particularly when it comes the Lahiri discussion, one of the purported high points of this project.

First, it seems that not many freshmen actually read the book, and that many of them only had a vague realization of this requirement. They received a letter or email about it, apparently, but very little follow-up. Of course, it may well be unfair to blame this on an administrative failure, since it may just be that our freshmen are not paying attention. But there is additional evidence of the failure of the university in this regard. For example, there appears to have been only small attempts to integrate this requirement into the curriculum. It does not appear to have been discussed in first-year seminars, for example, or in many relevant classes. This may be the reason why first year students appear not to have been the main audience at Lahiri's talk in Ives Concert Hall on Wednesday. Instead, the audience appears to have consisted of South Asian-American students, WestConn faculty, and members of the community--arguably, the people whom this project least needed to reach.

The other comment that I have concerns the talk itself, which seems to not have served the purpose for which it was designed. It appears, from the conclusory words of President Schmotter among others, that one of the purposes of choosing The Namesake as the common read was to highlight questions of immigration and cultural identity. The problem with that choice is that both The Namesake and Lahiri herself tend ultimately to eschew such questions. In The Namesake, Gogol ultimately realizes that both his search for "Indian" or "American" identity are futile; that searching for such identities by dating ideal-typical white girls to fit in as an American or an ideal-typical Bengali woman to fit in as an Indian are beside the point of a universal struggle for identity.

My point is that it seems like an interesting paradox that a book written in part to reject the blind celebration of otherness or of a universal "immigrant experience" was chosen as an archetype from which to celebrate such an experience.

That being said, I was disappointed in both Lahiri and the way that the discussion went. Lahiri, by her own admission, is not a distinguished orator, though she may make up for that with her apparent thoughtfulness. Still, the disconnect between the writer and the audience was sort of disconcerting and seemed to be underscored by Lahiri's disturbing elitism. The discussion between Lahiri and WestConn's own Professor John Briggs tended far too much toward the quoting of literary luminaries and discussions of "the craft." Lahiri and Briggs did more than simply push the audience into different directions--they brazenly ignored their concerns. Many audience members came up to the microphone during the question and answer session. They poured their hearts out about how The Namesake had helped them work through their own identity conflicts and asked for Ms. Lahiri's help in the questions that were pressing to them.

In response, Lahiri and Briggs made it clear that their purpose was not to provide "pop psychology" and made jokes about charging "hourly rates" (to uncomfortable laughter in the audience) and engaged in discussions about the preoccupations of writing, the drawing of compelling characters and the creation of riveting dialogue, questions that transcended identity politics. I suppose it is well and good to talk about universal themes (in Lahiri's words, how to narrate the repeating story of being born, loving, losing, and dying), but in this case the tack of Lahiri and Briggs seemed openly disrespectful to the passions and concerns of their own audience.

Lahiri can write about whatever she wants, and can interpret her work as she wishes. But as a person, rather than as a writer, it seems mean-spirited to dismiss out of hand the claims of people that you have inspired. And it does suggest to me that the One Book/One Community project, while certainly worthwhile, may not have lived up to all its aims.