Did you read “Opal Mehta”? Would love to hear your thoughts.

P.

haha – awesome gotta love teen angst

Not to belabour the point (well, maybe we’re way past that), but that’s really not my reason whatsoever. In fact, I generally shy away from expecting anything in particular (either excellence or otherwise) from brown people simply based on the fact that they are brown – what an extraordinary expectation that would be!

But, when Lahiri has a Pulitzer to her name I certainly can point out that – hm, she really doesn’t live up to the expectations that come along w/ winning a Pulitzer. Now, that naturally leads to the Q what a Pulitzer award stands for these days , but that’s a whole separate argument we don’t need to get into.

Now, if you want to argue that, as a general rule, we should be as accepting of our mediocre authors (brown or otherwise) as our exceptional ones, then, at the end of the day, you and I should agree to disagree.

Woah! The metaphor that crashed to earth…

-yes, i agree that Lahiri has been bashed WAY too much. I mean her success does come from timing but anyone who’s read ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ cannot help but bow down to her. That kind of writing is pure talent distilled.

-Although I said ‘The Namesake’ is unremarkable, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t good. I read it and studied it and most people I know who’ve read it liked it. It just wasn’t out of this world. And v true about Opal Mehta et al look at ‘the spices speak to me’ post for more debate about turning complex cultural issues into a pg-rated movie where everyone gets to laugh at the weird ethnic families and their crazy ways

-Read (although I know these names are a bit obvious)

-early Rushdie fiction and later non-fiction (so stay away from late fiction) -anything by Rohinton Mistry -Hari Kunzru esp. ‘Transmission’ -Amitav Ghosh – ‘The Hungry Tide’ and others -Bharati Mukherjee -Annamarie Jagose (but she might be hard to find as she is an Indian-NZer) -Vikram Seth (but not ‘Golden Gate’, its a novel in verse and if those cutesy rhymes at the beginning of ‘A Suitable Boy’ kinda amused you, wait till you try to chug through hundreds of them) -Monica Ali – ‘Brick Lane’

-ps maybe a reason Lahiri is bashed so much is that we often expect amazing things from ‘our own’? There are many, many worse writers out there churnin out shite but because Lahiri writes within a western market its almost as if we want to shine our shoes and put on our best dress every time we publish something because non-indians are going to read it as well. it’s like the chick who’s afraid of getting a zit before she goes the prom ‘cos otherwise she won’t get laid.

-even though i’m not a big fan of ‘opal mehta’ type indian chick lit myself, in a strange way its nice to see us being a bit easier on ourselves. i don’t really care if ‘The Namesake’ wasn’t the best book ever by an Indian, the fact that so many people recognised its opening passage shows that Lahiri is a compelling writer. And her quiet, mellow style is a refreshing balance to the much-loved elaborate literary acrobatics of others.

Desi-readers: what Indian writers, writing in English ’cause I’m illiterate in everything else, would you suggest? That is vivid, brutal, suffocating, living, alive, dead, prose?

Why y’all got to hate on Lahiri so much?

(to paraphrase) “Why do white people only care about kama-sutra-yoga-bindi?” “What about our real lives?” “Lahiri is boring- she writes what any of us could have written!” “She’s capitalizing on what white people want!!”

Bahh.. will nothing please you?

See here and further down the thread for my defence.

If y’all really want to hate, pick on a better target, yeah? Can we talk about that ‘How Opal Mehta Got A Life’ Harvard, half-a-mil, chick-lit desi girl yet??

Well, maybe. But none of us did. So she gets the credit and the cash Life’s unfair, no?

On a logical level, I do see what the Jhumpa critics are trying to say. However, the book appealed to me so strongly on an emotional and personal level (there were so many moments when I’d read something about some thought that a character had and go ‘That’s me!’) that any literary criticism that I could possible make seemed contrived.

You might take lessons in painting and produce work following all the rules of design, but it is not ‘art’ without that extra ‘soul’. Sometimes something just works for an audience; that is the ultimate judgement of a piece of art, and no armies of wise critics can hope to contest that.

My god, that’s funny