LITERATURE: The Namesake – Finale

It’s funny, I’m mimicking Jhumpa Lahiri here in using the final post–in her case, final chapter–as a summary and wrap-up of the story.

To be fair, I believe that yes, The Namesake likely (obviously) earned its place on the New York Times Bestseller List at the time. My failure to recognize and accept what that means may have made me a bit harsh on the author. Danielle Steel has been on the List numerous times. It’s more an homage to marketing and the tastes of a large reading audience than a testament to writing, the writer, the story, or anything truly literary. The fact that Lahiri’s first book, a collection of short stories called The Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize helped sell The Namesake, I’m sure. I’m more at home with a book that asks more of me as a reader, and delights me with skill and finesse as a writer.

In the closing chapter, there are some (not) clever references back to the supposed thread (which I still think involves Indian cuisine) of Gogol’s overcoat, books, and trains:

He slips the book he will give her for Christmas into the pocket of his coat, making sure it’s well concealed, and calls the elevator to take him upstairs.  (p. 173)

He’d slept most of the journey to Boston, the conductor poking him awake once they’d reached South Station, and he was the only person left in the compartment, the last to get off. He had slept soundly, curled up on two seats, his book unread, using his overcoat as a blanket, pulled up to his chin. (p. 280)

The prose is simple, no frills, and I do appreciate that to a certain degree. But a few adjectives, similes, metaphors, something to indicate vibrancy rather than the flat image of colors of clothing and what’s on the plate would have been nice. I like eloquence, playing with language, interesting images projected through words; there is none of that here. The best line of the book, even though it is subjected to Lahiri’s love of writing about food, was this:

It’s a pleasant change of pace, something finite in contrast to her current, overwhelming, ongoing task: to prepare for her departure, picking the bones of the house clean.  (p. 277)

What Lahiri does in two pages of this final chapter, is sums up the traumatic change that comes with immigrating to a new country, the integration into a new culture while holding onto the traditions of what one knows (for Ashima, pages 278-279). And something I hadn’t realized, even as only a second generation born American, the melding of two cultures, one that comes along with rites and traditions that may be brought out only on holidays, that school friends do not share, that is intimate to family and friends of the same culture, that Gogol goes through. (p. 281)

We finally do get a quick peek at how Gogol’s marriage has ended and it’s done in typical reporting, this-is-what-happened style and Moushumi is kicked out of the book cleanly and quickly.

The last scene is at Ashima’s home, celebrating Christmas with a big party, the final one as Ashima will be moving to Calcutta to live for six months, then back for six months to stay with Sonia, her daughter, or Gogol. Ashima sends Gogol upstairs to find a camera to take pictures and rooms and things bring memories that are both pleasant and sad. But the killer, the thing I couldn’t believe a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer would even think of doing, is this:

And then another book, never read, long forgotten, catches his eye. The jacket is missing, the title on the spine practically faded. It’s a clothbound volume topped with decades-old dust. The ivory pages are heavy, slightly sour* silken to the touch. The spine cracks faintly when he opens it to the title page. The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. “For Gogol Ganguli,” it says on the front endpaper in his father’s tranquil hand, in red ballpoint ink, the letters rising gradually, optimistically, on the diagonal toward the upper right-hand corner of the page. “The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name.” (p. 288)

*Lots of things in this book are described as sour; Maxine’s lips, the part in Moushumi’s hair. Weird.

Yes, folks, there it is. the book Ashoke gave Gogol on his fourteenth birthday. Never opened, never read. Now, at the end of this tale, he’s going to avoid the celebration, the people, his family, one more time, to read “The Overcoat.”

Was this a “bad” book? No. Was it stellar? No. To me, I’d see it as a good airplane trip, or beach vacation book to take along. I will be reading more of Lahiri, most likely getting a copy of Interpreter of Maladies to see what the fuss is all about.