What's In A Dame

Rarely do I care to tackle a bestseller - the unworthy don't deserve my attention; the worthy get enough attention on their own.

Rare still do I dare tackle a dame, either physically (note the dateline), literally (I know too little), or metaphorically (it is usually they who tackle me). But Jhumpa Lahiri is one of those very rare best-selling dames who can command attention from even the most reluctant recalcitrant.

In other words: she's the kinda dame a con scribe could flip over.

And has. Which might explain why every time I sat down to plug the dear woman I came off sounding like some over-oxygenated fan boy on the stalk at the local book market. There was the aural fixation: "Slide your mouth into a soft 'j' and leave the resonant 'h' to caress an eminently addressable 'u', then end where all things begin, on 'ah,' the very first sound uttered by the very first soul." Creepy. And presumptuous. There was the laudatory accolladation: "Seldom is heard a discouraging word she risks suffering under the weight of general consensus this is the dame by which all good dames must be measured." Hype tripe. And hyperbole. Then, when all else was failing miserably, I tried just plain apologia: "Let's get one thing straight - I dig dames." Which, of course, is nothing more or less than preemptive clap-trap, and, come to think of it, a bit phobic.

But there must be more to an admirer than swoon and stutter, just as there must be more to a rare best-selling dame than chart position and applause. There must be a name. Names contain legend and mystery, myth and history. They can precede us, and they can reverberate in our wake. And it is by name that we are known to the world.

The NamesakeIn The Namesake (Houghton Mifflin $24) the scrumptiously-monikered Jhumpa Lahiri goes to great good lengths to get at what's in a name, through exile and innuendo, insight and expectation, and she does so with an eye as knowing and known as, well, any great good name.

The great good name of The Namesake is Gogol Ganguli, a cat in the lap of countless awkward christenings. Lahiri tells us that "Bengali nomenclature grants, to every person, two names" - pet names and good names. The pet name (daknam) "mean[s], literally, the name by which one is called, by friends, family, and other intimates, at home and in other private, unguarded moments." Further, "[p]et names are a persistent remnant from childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people."

Good names (bhalonam), on the other hand, are used "for identification in the outside world." They "appear on envelopes, on diplomas, in telephone directories, and in other public places." Good names are official, and they "tend to represent dignified or enlightened qualities."

That Gogol's good name is forever lost in the mail, and his pet name, however reverent, is borne of disaster, would seem to point to a certain pending identity crisis. It might also mean Jhumpa digs duplicity.

As a first generation Indian growing up in Wonder Years—era New England, Gogol is already assured of a readymade novelty, his name a spicy side dish to growing up absurd. Like any namesake, Gogol doesn't want to have to live up to nor live down anything, or anyone, let alone the name of an elusive Russian master he's yet even to read. Like all kids, he just wants to be like everybody else. That Gogol eventually grows outta his go-go only to claim a de facto good name that is an almost exact Bengali replication of his 19th century namesake is indicative of the limits he won't go to in order to get away from himself.

Or can't. In Lahiri land we're all burdened by the weight of our namings, mere echoes of a past set before us. We are inescapable.

Of course it takes a lot of life to find out how we're living and Lahiri's lives are rendered in full even when they're not fully lived. From the Faulknerian tragedy that propels Ashoke ("he who transcends grief") to flee all that he knows in the world, to the arrangement which sends mommy Ashima ("she who is limitless, without borders") in his wake to the good son Gogol, now Nikhil ("he who is entire, encompassing all") and the better sister Sonia, nee Sonali ("she who is golden"), there's a quartet of complimentary trajectories more than occasionally at odds with each other. The parents want what's best in the new world without relinquishing their old world ways; the kids just want what's best.

As you might expect the vicious circle gets the square in this far-flung family affair. The Gangulis can't shake history, tradition, those persistent echoes; Gogol can't shake the Gangulis. The ties that bind are elastic - they can give you enough leeway either to hang yourself or to swing free and breathe. The key is to mind that tell-tale snap; it might just crack your neck.

Cleanly, keenly, leanly Lahiri lets slack the elastic around Gogol's scrawny neck, allowing him at once albatross and eagle. Suburban nest begets Ivy League hammock, urban crash pad bemoans urbane brownstone, and Gogol flies to and from each with vigorous hesitancy. Even when he falls head over heels the crash is cushioned by an uncommon reticence. It's almost like going for the gusto in measured steps, being all you can be within reason. But there's more to that thar Gogol than mere reticence and reason, and it's Lahiri's great gift that she can show us what Gogol himself might never see, touch us as he might never feel, take us where he may never go.

I believe the proper term is insight.

You've heard all the talk of exile and immigration vis-a-vis Jhumpa Lahiri, so I'll not add to that chorus except to say that The Namesake is more Immigrant Opera than Immigrant Song, a stage-worthy sequel to the hit collection Interpreter of Maladies. But as boldly epic as is this stroke, it is still made with a pointillist's attention to nuance and detail, and to humanity. Like Maladies, Namesake is poignance personified, the touch of intimate history, the taste of memory, the color of a life revealed, the simple charm of the matter of fact. By which I mean it is human, which is about as good as it gets.

Note: This article was first published online in the now defunct Bully Magazine. Supplied with immense thanks to Ken Wohlrob.

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