Jupa Lahiri
(Jhumpa Lahiri)
A famous contemporary American writer, he made his debut debut and set the record for the youngest winner in the history of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, which has been maintained to this day. He is the author of two short story collections, The Man Who Explains Disease (1999) and Place of Discomfort (2008), two novels, The Same Celebrity (2003) and Lowlands (2013), and two essay collections, Another Man (2015) and The Cloak of Books (2016). Lahiri has demonstrated great skill in the field of short stories, and has been selected three times in the Yearbook of America's Best Short Stories, and her collection of novels topped the New York Times bestseller list.
"Same Celebrity"
Author: [Beauty] Jopa Lahiri
Translators: Wu Bingqing, Lu Xiaohui
Edition: Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, May 2019
"Lowlands"
Translator: Wu Bingqing
Edition: Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, August 2019
Stills from the novel-based film The Same Celebrity (2006).
Born in 1967 in Kolkata, India, Jhumpa Lahiri immigrated to Rhode Island with her parents at the age of 3, a librarian and a master's degree in fine arts from her mother. Born into such an intellectual family, Lahiri showed outstanding literary talent from an early age. As an adult, she studied English literature at Bernard College in New York, then earned multiple degrees at Boston University, and even obtained a doctorate in Renaissance studies. Novelists with such an intellectual background write novels without a stereotypical academic atmosphere. Her novels are detail-oriented and adept at capturing the emotional fluctuations and cultural symptoms of her characters in everyday life.
From the perspective of "immigrant literature" and "minority literature", it is easy to group Jupa Lahiri and Kiran Desai, the "three British literary immigrants" (Salman Russidi, Naipaul, And Ishiguro) and others into the same camp. However, no matter what label we use to bring Jupa Lahili under her wing, we will inevitably make essentialist mistakes. Jopa Lahiri is a novelist with a clear understanding of literature, she constantly "crosses the border", while narrating the "lowlands", but also constructing a literary "highland".
Strangers, naming and reinventing themselves
"The Same Celebrity" is the first novel of Jopa Lahili, in which Jopa Lahili recounts the thirty-year-long immigrant life of two generations of an Indian family, and through the clue of name, outlines the loneliness and love, search and miss of two generations in daily life. The novel has a vast social space: Boston, Manhattan, Calcutta, Cleveland, the use of the third person, the switching of different perspectives, the skillful use of "intertextuality", and the ambitions buried in the story, all fully show that this is a mature writer. The novel collection Interpreter of Maladies (2000 Pulitzer Prize for Literature) deals with cultural overhangs, "the conflict between alienation and assimilation", and "The American Dream", and grows into a thriving plant in "The Same Person".
Interestingly, "Same Name" also tells a story of "inheritance," but unlike Kier desai's The Inheritance of Loss (2006 Booker Prize), which deals with how India "inherited" the history and culture of its colonies after independence, focusing on the cultural tension between the suzerainty and the colonies. The Same Name is clearly different, its narrative is central to the question of the succession of the name "Gogol", which is also the origin of the title of the novel (The Namesake). This "intertextuality" forms the driving force behind the novel's narrative.
Gogol has an extraordinary meaning for Eschuk: he loves the novels of the 19th-century Russian writer Gogol, who nearly kills him in a train derailment, and as he is dying, he raises the Coat in his hand. It was this position that allowed him to be discovered by search and rescue personnel and thus to escape. After the accident, Ashuk decided to leave India and go to the United States to study, one and the other, according to Bengali custom, everyone has a "small name" and a "big name". Nicknames are private and are "the names of friends, family, and other close relatives when they are at home and in private," while "daimyo" appears in "envelopes, diplomas, telephone books, and all public places." However, when a letter from Asima's (Ashuk's wife) grandmother (which contains her nickname for the newborn) is lost, the story leads to an irreparable "mistake": in order to temporarily fill in the birth certificate, Ashok has the opportunity to give "Gogol" to his newborn son. This naming act, with Esschuk's nostalgia for his grandfather (he gave Ashuk Gogol's collection of novels and brought him into the world of Russian literature), is also full of Eschuk's love for his son, and "naming" means a new beginning, a ritual. However, Ashuk, who adhered to Bengali customs, broke this line by accident (the loss of letters). From then on, errors and misalignments befell the Son.
The misplaced name implies the dislocation of identity. The young Gogol is confused by his distinctive name, and in the novel Gogol undergoes three acts of "naming". The first time is at birth and the second time is at the time of enrollment. His parents took pains to give him Nikhil (meaning "full and inclusive of all men"). But Gogol didn't like the name, and eventually he called Gogol back (this time, Gogol became the "Daimyo"), and the third name change occurred before college admission. As he grew older, Gogol became more and more assimilated into American culture, and he felt that his name was "out of place", and he became more and more confused and disgusted. When Ashok quotes Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and others as saying, "We all came out of Gogol's Coats," Gogol still couldn't agree: "He hated his name for being strange and incomprehensible, and had nothing to do with himself, neither Indian nor American, but Russian." Eventually, he filed an application with the court to formally change his name to Nikir in the legal sense. It also meant the beginning of Gogol's search for his cultural identity alone, and an important step away from Indian culture.
But the expectations and demands his parents placed on Gogol have kept him oscillating between the two cultures. To indians living in the United States, "Gogol felt that these people were particularly bored, and always talked about 'marginality', as if it were a pathology." After learning that Gogol had experienced a train delay, Ashuk revealed his heart for the first time, explaining to his son the secret he had kept for many years. This was the first reconciliation between Gogol and his father, and the second time, after his father died of a sudden heart attack, Gogol went alone to Cleveland, Ohio, to collect his father's belongings, and it was only then that he truly understood the pain of his parents living away from their homeland.
Thus, as Jupa Lahiri put it, the tension between "alienation" and "assimilation" constitutes the "double helix" of the novel. When Gogol fell in love with McKoheen, he fell in love with the middle-class Lifestyle and mood of the American middle class represented by the McKosin family. The novel describes Gogol moving into McKoshing's house, both in the logical and symbolic sense of the story, such an act means a kind of "alienation", or "betrayal", but in fact, everything is just an illusion, Gogol can not finally integrate into The McKoxin's family, he is only attached to a set of American values and attitudes to life, is an "appendage".
In this regard, "same celebrity- intertextuality - identity" constitutes a clear narrative logic chain, and the focus of "Same Celebrity" has always anchored the core events of "name", and all plots (Gogol's love, marriage, divorce, reconciliation with his father, etc.) revolve around "Gogol", which reflects the eternal proposition of "freedom" and "confinement".
Born and raised in Boston, Gogol's cultural genes are American, but his deep-seated Indian culture imprisons him, leaving him in a deep state of confusion as he tries to break free. After leaving Michelsin and meeting Mauschumi, Gogol's confusion about himself was more or less solved. Born in England and immigrated to the United States since childhood, Maushumi is more rebellious than Gogol, and similar experiences and backgrounds have brought them together, but Maushumi knows well: "We all belong to that big Bengal family, and they pulled us up in this illusion." Mausumy's view is a sharp arrow fired at Gogol, leading him to understand that the so-called ethnic, national, cultural identity, etc., is both physical and at the same time a construction of discourse ("illusion"), a person's inner self ("Where did I come from and who am I?"). Is it all that these external concepts can encompass? In this sense, Mausumy is Gogol's "counterpart", a mirror image of him, and she is more courageous than Gogol to rebel against what she does not like: when she was studying, she went against her parents' long-cherished wish to study chemistry and turned to French literature. She indulged in the Third Chinese, the Third Culture, which became her "refuge."
Rather than writing about the confusion and choices of "strangers" in cultural differences, "The Same Celebrity" tells the story of how individuals adjust their relationship with the outside world. Faced with the contingencies and uncertainties of fate (such as his father's decision to stay away from his homeland because of the derailment of the train; his parents lost the name his grandmother, accidentally named his son Gogol, etc.), Gogol struggled, and he tried to correct the accidents and mistakes of life and reshape himself, but the name was always like the "Sword of Damocles" hanging high above his head. At this point, "the same person" has a metaphysical symbolic meaning, which points both to an irresistible fate and to all the troubled individuals.
"Lowlands" and "The Second Day of the Revolution"
The narrative of "The Same Celebrity" begins in 1968 (the reader who wishes to think of "Global 1968"), when China, Cuba, Vietnam, and even Europe (France's May storm of 1968) set off a whirlwind of revolution, opposing class differentiation and the gap between rich and poor, and pursuing equality... All of this makes this particular year a bellwether for a shift in the global political climate. Coincidentally, in "The Lowlands", the time that was originally only the background came to the foreground of the story: "The Nassar Bari Movement", "The United Front Government", revolution, violence, equality, democracy... The vast history that is not covered in "The Same Celebrity" is watched and watched by the eyes of Jupa Lahiri.
In the whirlpool of history, the brothers Subash and Udaan have lived in the poor, dirty "lowlands" since childhood, and in the face of the revolution, the two brothers have adopted very different attitudes: the younger brother Udaan yearns for revolution and hates the Tory Club (a building left over from the British colonial period). His yearning for revolution, his ideal of rebelling against the system of exploitation, overthrowing the ruling class, and building an equal and just society, can only be explained in the turbulent social environment after the revolutionary wave of 1960 and the partition of India and Pakistan; in contrast, Subash is more like Ashuk in "The Same Celebrity", who is conservative and pragmatic, full of confusion about all the revolutionary acts carried out by Udayan, and finally he takes charge of the United States and is far away from the "LowLands".
During a period of escalation of riots and violence, Udayan's "counter-culture" tendencies intensified, inspired by the Naxalite movement, a peasant armed struggle waged by The Indian Communists in 1967 and defeated by the Indian government in 1971. For him, it doesn't matter whether he can get a degree, what matters is to change the inequality and backwardness of the country, whatever means are used— "to resist oppression with revolutionary violence." It is a liberating force, it is humane. "He fell in love with Goryeo and, infected by extremist ideas, used Goryeo to spy on the police for him, and eventually killed a policeman in secret.
This also led to Udayan being arrested by the police and falling prey to this "misguided revolution". Uda'an's father, mother, and newly married wife, Goryeo, witnessed the bullets piercing Uda'an's body. Upon learning of his brother's murder, his older brother Subash, who was already studying in the United States, had to return to Calcutta, and finally protected Goryeo by marriage and brought her pregnant to the United States. In a short space, Jopa Lahiri has sketched a broad picture of society. The brothers' opposing life choices and Goryeo's independence laid the groundwork for the narrative that followed.
Compared with the large number of complicated and meticulous "intertextualities" of "Same Celebrity", "Lowland" is more restrained, and the latter has made great strides in both narrative language and the description of scenes and details than "Same Celebrity". This time, there is no psychological presentation of the huge details, and there is no detailed description of the environment in which the characters are located. All of this is explained in a relatively calm, objective tone.
The novel really kicks off when Goryeo arrives in the United States with Subash to begin a new life. That is to say, what is important is not the revolution, but the monstrous wave that follows, the so-called "second day of the revolution" (or translated as "the day after the revolution") as Daniel Bell put it in The Contradictions of Capitalist Culture: the idea of revolution still gives some people hypnosis.
But the real problem arises 'the day after the revolution'. At that time, the secular world will once again break into the realm of consciousness, confronted with uncontrollable desires caused by material stimuli and desires to pass on power to future generations, and morality is only abstract ideas. Thus one finds that a revolutionary society itself becomes increasingly bureaucratic or constantly mired in the upheaval of a protracted revolution. After the revolution, how do individuals cope with the shocks and traumas it brings? That's the problem that Lowlands focuses on.
In The Lowlands, whether it is Goryeo or Subash, or Goryeo's daughter Bella, their relationship is in a state of kinky and misalignment from the beginning: although Udaan is dead, his ghost is everywhere; Subash is eager to reorganize the family with Goryeo, but he knows that he is only a "substitute" for Udaan; and Goryeo has been unable to accept a new marriage after the death of her husband, confined to mental and spiritual trauma. A part of her heart remained forever in 1971, when Udayan died (the year the Nasar bari movement was suppressed). After Udayan's death, Goryeo realizes that she is his "complicity", while Udayan protects her in his own way and saves her from disaster. Times have changed, and even if the new environment is changed, Goryeo still can't let go. Her love of philosophy and her desire for an independent life eventually led her to abandon her family and, after completing her doctorate, to live alone in California, never to be heard from again—leaving her daughter Bella irreparable mental damage.
Bella grew up in the absence of her mother, her life pursuits had nothing to do with family or marriage, and after graduating from college, she wandered around, working in different ranches and communities, and lived a nomadic life. She has lived her whole life in a cruel "lie", and in order to protect Bella, Subash and Goryeo cover up the truth that Udayan is her biological father. The lies they create are the product of revolution, history, family, brotherhood and helpless love, and when Bella accidentally becomes pregnant and decides to give birth to a baby, Subash realizes that if the lie is not punctured, the harm will be passed on to the next generation, but for Bella, who lives in a lie, "this lie refuses to contain the truth", which is why she has never been able to forgive her mother.
The Labyrinth of Time and the Novel's "Odyssey"
It can be said that the reincarnation and repetition of fate is an implicit clue that spreads in Jopa Lahiri's novels, and it is also the consistent theme of "Same Celebrity" and "Lowlands". This theme, especially in Goryeo, gives the novel a more fascinating aura, as does her obsession with exploring time and her quest to reinvent herself.
Goryeo was fascinated by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's cycle time, "In English, the past is one-sided; in Bengali, the word corresponding to yesterday, kal, is also used for tomorrow." In Bengali, you need an adjective, or rely on verb gaffes, to distinguish between what has happened and what is about to happen," and "in Indian philosophy, three tenses—past, present, and future—are said to exist simultaneously in God." God is eternal, but time is personified as the god of death. For Goryeo, all her choices are an effort to reset time, to forget the past, "With children, time will reset." We forgot about the previous ones. ”
Unfortunately, time is moving forward and what happens can never be changed. This also makes "Lowlands" have a deeper philosophical thinking while discussing fate and family relations.
Time weaves a "giant web" for this novel: the narrative of the eight chapters of "Lowlands" relies on the transformation of different character perspectives, and the narrator uses the restrictive perspective of the novel characters to promote the plot, rather than the perspective of the all-knowing and all-powerful God. Therefore, different times, story segments, and character-to-character relationships constitute a giant time labyrinth, and only by reading to the end can we learn the truth of the story. This is the more mature point of "Lowlands", not as clear as the narrative direction of "Same Celebrity", and the "labyrinth" and suspense it creates attract readers to chase all the way and eventually reach the core of the story.
For Jupa Lahiri, the "Lowlands" in the novel are not only the places where revolutionary violence takes place, but also where Udayan was arrested. When the rainy season comes, the rain will flow from the high to the low, which is the meaning of the lowland as a surface geographical space, and by extension, the lowland is also a narrative device, in the process of reading "The Lowland", you will find an interesting phenomenon, all the narratives finally flow like water to the lowlands, no matter what the fate of the characters finally goes, they will eventually return here, such as Goryeo, the end of the story, she finally returned to Calcutta, back to the lowlands, trying to find the past.
Almost everyone in The Lowlands starts from here, and the narrative of the novel, no matter how it is forked, will eventually return to the "Lowlands". Thus, in this novel, the "lowlands" have at least three functions: a narrative installation, a geopolitical space, a symbol of a historical revolution. Jupa Lahiri is far from India, but she is always concerned about her homeland. Through the search and reconstruction of time, with the help of the novels "The Same Celebrity" and "Lowlands", Jopa Rahili completed a great Odyssey journey.
□ Lin Peiyuan