Not Exactly An FF - Page 4

Actually I was wondering why you are praising her so high. Your post does explain a few things. Namesake is a good read but just that. Given a choice to reread something, I would any day prefer Dwiju-Vandana dialogues over Namesake. Realism or no realism, melodrama or no Melodrama. That novel has not been able to motivate me to read her further. Your post does and I would reserve an opinion on her till I read Interpreter and Unaccustomed Earth.

Koolji, your last Para on Saratji reflects my own feelings about his writing. That so many works of arts in other forms are inspired by or directly adopted from his work, even after so many decades, is a proof of his lasting legacy. And many a times even a reasonably ok copy is falling quite short of the original. Recent example is movie Pareenita-The end has simply left me cold when I remembered the playful concluding dialogues of mother and son in the original (as many other scenes).

And there may be an interesting parallel here. The movie Namesake is reported to be better then the novel (I have not seen the movie).

samarth

Must appreciate you really for your excellent writing skills .I can vouch for it being an English teacher.

Reminded me of Mills and Boon romances!!
Good Work

Must appreciate you really, for your excellent writing skills . I can vouch for it being an English teacher.

Reminded me of Mills and Boon romances!!
Good Work

@ Koolsadhu

Excellent article. You must have been literary critic with some newspaper or journal at some point of your career. You are convincingly voicing many misgivings of a common reader as well as a literary critic.

In Namesake,The two way stupefaction of characters had given me the same feeling.

First a neighbour is shown bringing broccoli quiche only to find a few pages later that Gangulys were not exactly vegetarian. Then Ashima is shown being stupefied with Buddhism of the same neighbous.

A snobbish effort of author under the pretext of showing the distance in two cultures.

"Also Austen stayed true to her experiences .....marraige as the ladder of social hierarchy for women . But their characters were alive and the books..."

Exactly. The way Austen or Saratji or K.M.Munshi or for that matter Cornelia Flunke or Arthur C Clarke are coming beck to us again and again years after years, may not happen with Lahiri.

😊 C you party gal , good that u said it at least to shut us up. And since you are in a happy mood on Friday nite , no more Lahiri talk for u .


but yes ........there is something for samarth . samarth my first reaction upon reading THE NAMESAKe was one of utter disbelief . I was horrified and saddened to see such a blatantly snobbish book praised by the literati of New York as the voice of Indian immigrants in this phase of diasporic writing . Her dislike of anything and everything INdian comes across so blatantly in the book , but guess what ?

The critical acclaim was of course given to her by the New Yorker literati.......a bunch of intellectual Americans who were extremely pleased with her opinion that we have to stand up now and face it that we can never really fit in with them . All our attempts to fit in , in this land of immigrants , were going to appear ridiculous. The Indians back in Calcutta were of another ridiculous type . There is a line in the book where she describes the quality of paper passed around in a sunday school trying to teach Bengali alphabet ......... that she could but not help notice that the quality of the paper was the type Americans wud use in their bathrooms to wipe their bottoms

It hit me , that vicious snobbery . The rich family in New York that she painted as something to hope for , was a rich one , in a different class structure even for an average American . Most of the average Americans don't get beyond highschools and end up doing mediocre jobs till sense sets in and they return to universities at 40 to get their degrees. The Indian couple was highly cultured , educated , at peace with each other , and extremely happy bcoz of their realistic expectations or non exectations from life . In her criticism of them , she in fact painted a positive picture of them coz frankly she didn't know what she was doing .

I got the impression of an uppity nose , a snobbish mind and even more snobbish opinions compiled together , cloaked with painstaking descriptive detail , and presented to American intellectuals in exactly the way it would please them . In a later interview she categorically emphasized she preferred to be known as an American , not an Indian .

samarth .......Sarat painted the poverty of Bengal and gave us some very interesting women . They were so complex and intelligent , that what stunned me was how a man's mind ould know woman so well . So did Tagore .........especially his Binodini. Unparalleled she is , Binodini in Chokher Bali . Aishwarya Rai cud just not do justice to her .........and the movie adaptation was really bad . Chokher Bali has to be READ , not seen !

C........ 😊 this is for samarth , not you . It is simply a rambling between two laymen . 😊

The notes secured in between square parenthesis below are not for the eyes of a certain scholar C.😊

All others( if any one has lingered so far ) are free to exercise their rights in an open forum.

😊Start of Parentheses [ @ Koolsadhu,

The discontent is brewing in the 'gang'-

This is not 'a rambling between two laymen'. It is a wonderful insight of an expert being generously shared with a layman.

Why should the gang 'shuts up'until an appropriate answer is given to the scholar's question?

7) Will this argument cease if I agree, immodestly and insincerely, that I am as good as she is???...

No .Until you agree to the following two.

1. You are better then Her. Because on PR ,PRians are the best.😉

2. That a divinely tasty pure Ratnagiri Alphonso ( not an 'imported' apple ) was erroneously compared with a simple berry (no matter that it was cultivated in the artificial environs Rhodes Ile or Boston) ] end of parenthesis.😃

Koolji today again you were at your brilliant best. Being unaware of all those racial/diasporic politics in the matter of Name sake I have read it with unpolluted mind and yet it left me only mildly interested. I do remember wincing at the reading of 'Bengali culture classes' and author's blatant condescension there. But if C is telling then Interpreter.. and U. Earth must be worth a try.

This has forcefully reminded me of a childhood listening to the conversation between two aunts. They were profusely wondering at the ability of a male writer to depict inner struggles of a woman in all his tales with such deftness.

Sati-Vandana sisters duo in 'Vipradas' is somewhat resembling to Archana-Varsha duo. Sati is silent but never weak. And she was mainstay of Dwiju.

Any way I stop here and thank you both for enriching me here so unexpectedly.👏

@ Kool: