September Meeting

The book was The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. The place was Mary Dowe's, the treat was sticky rice and plums (?). Well, anyway, something exotic that Mary picked up in a local Indian restaurant. Last month we had gone to an Indian restaurant for pre-discussion dinner, so this time four of us ate at Houston's Restaurant. I had a hamburger. Not exotic. But most of the novel takes place in in the U.S., so I guess it fits.

Everyone at the meeting enjoyed the book--unlike "Pi", the were no extreme opionions. Some people felt disappointed by the ending of the book, which had no definite conclusion for the main character, Gogol. I enjoyed this about the book; I don't feel tidy endings represent life as we live it. For once, a book didn't have that "the publisher wants the draft now" rushed ending.

Jody brought a copy of Kafka's The Overcoat, which is an important theme in the book. The main character in that story, a lonely and overworked clerk, saves his rubles and buys a elegant overcoat. It is stolen, and when he dies, he haunts the streets of St. Petersburg, stealing overcoats from those who wronged him.

However, we tried and failed to find a connection between Gogol's story and The Namesake. A comment in The Wikipedia aticle on Jhumpa Lahiri suggests, "Gogol's unusual name serves as a symbol of his own unclear cultural identity. . ."

There were also a lot of trains in the story. Gogol's father almost dies on a train in India, Gogol meets his college girlfriend on a train, etc. We couldn't quite decide on the meaning of all these trains. (Afterthought: moving between one culture and another.)

I liked the story's discription of the life of a second generation Indian-American (and, more generally, of all children of immigrants). Gogol may be more American than Indian, but he is pulled back into Indian culture by his parents and by the family's regular trips to Kolkata. I sensed that he was hoping to find the answer to this dilemma in his marriage to Moushumi, another Indian-American. However, in spite of their common backgrounds, they find that they are very American; each has his/her own interests and lacks the traditional Indian committment to marriage and family personal desires.

Next meeting: We'll discuss Wicked byGregory Maguire.