So after reading the blogs from the English 110 class it sounds like quite a few people have said that they think nothing really happens in Lahiri's stories. While the stories do seem relatively simple, they do have a lot more depth to them than I first expected, and I must say I really liked them. Short stories in general have to leave information out, and I think Lahiri did a great job of deciding what we could infer ourselves and what needed to be spelled out.
To me, some of the best stories are the ones that make me think and have ideas you have to dig for underneath the fairly straight-forward main plot. Katie mentioned in her blog that Lahiri's stories focus greatly on character development and not as much on plot, and I'd have to agree, but I don't agree with her that it means the reader can't be affected emotionally. I can say just going by the discussion we had in class that some people really got into "A Temporary Matter" when the characters have to deal with the knowledge of Shukumar admitting to holding their child at the end. Given how short the stories are I think Lahiri showed a great amount of character depth which allowed for emotional attachment that couldn't have been done by just forwarding the plot.
Hannah also mentioned her thoughts on how Lahiri's stories analyze how Indian culture views American culture, and I'd agree that the stories take that view. The thing that surprised me was looking at the back of the book and finding out Lahiri never even lived in India, and was born in England and moved to the United States. This raised some questions for me. Can we still look at these stories as if they were from an Indian point of view, or is it what an American thinks an Indian point of view would be? Are these stories accurate representations of Indian culture if the author doesn't know any more about it than what she has possibly studied in other books? This could also be why so many of her stories take place in the United States or involve American characters in them.
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I have never been a fan of the stories that leave you hanging, or the movies that end during random weird times such as Burn after Reading or No Country for Old Men and i think that is what we were left with in Interpreter of Malodies. Did they mend the relationship and move on or what? or did they go back to business as usual and ignoring each other? i leaned towards the Pullman ideology.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't even realized that Lahiri had never lived in India. I think you are right and that puts kind of a twist on things. I agree with you that maybe the stories instead of reflecting what Indian culture thinks of Americans it is more of the perspective of how Americans think that Indians portray America. That can bring up the question of is how we portray other nations attitude towards us really how they feel or are we just given ideas from Hollywood and accept it as how other countries think? I also really liked these stories and agree that the author had a great mix of taking the ideas in the stories that need to be straight up explained to the reader as well as leaving things for us to try and figure out on our own. I also agree that one of the major points in the book that kept readers interesting and still wondering was when Shukumar told his wife about getting to hold their child.
ReplyDeletegood post, good comments
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