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The Namesake (2003) is the second book by author Jhumpa Lahiri. It was originally a novella published in The New Yorker and was later expanded to a full length novel. It explores many of the same emotional and cultural themes as her Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. Moving between events in Calcutta, Boston, and New York City, the novel examines the nuances involved with being caught between two conflicting cultures with their highly distinct religious, social, and ideological differences.
SummaryAs The Namesake opens, Ashima Ganguli is a young bride who is about to deliver her first child in a hospital in Massachusetts. Her husband, Ashoke, is an engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As she prepares to give birth, she realizes how isolated she has become. If she were still in Calcutta, she would have her baby at home, surrounded by all the women in her family who would administer all the proper Bengali ceremonies and would tell her what to expect. In the United States, Ashima struggles through language and cultural barriers as well as her own fears as she delivers her first child.
The baby boy is healthy and the new parents are prepared to take their son home. But Ashima and Ashoke are stunned to learn that they cannot leave the hospital before they give their son a legal name. The traditional naming process in their families is to have an elder give the new baby a name. They have chosen Ashima's grandmother for this honor. They have written the grandmother to ask her to give the baby a name. But the letter never arrives and soon after, the grandmother dies. In the meantime, Ashoke suggests the name of Gogol. He chooses this name for two reasons. First, it is the name of his favorite author, the famous Russian author. The second reason is that Ashoke, before he was married, had been in a very serious accident. The train he was riding in had derailed. Many people died. Ashoke had broken his back and could not move. He had been reading Gogol just before the accident. He had a page of that book clutched in his hand. The paper caught the attention of the medics who had come to rescue him. If it had not been for that page, acting as a flag in the darkness, Ashoke could have died.
While he insists on being called Gogol in elementary school, by the time he turns 14 he starts to hate the name. His father tries once to explain the significance of it, but he senses that Gogol is not old enough to understand. His parents decide to give him a more public name, which is part of the Bengali tradition—having a private name that only family and friends use and a public name for everything else. They chose Nikhil. Shortly before leaving for college, he travels to the courthouse and has his name legally changed to Nikhil Gogol Ganguli. When Gogol goes off to college, he uses his public name.
This change in name and Gogol's going to Yale, rather than following his father’s footsteps to MIT, sets up the barriers between Gogol and his family. The distance, both geographically and emotionally, between Gogol and his parents continues to increase. He wants to be American, not Bengali. He goes home less frequently, dates American girls, and becomes angry when anyone calls him Gogol. During his college years, he smokes cigarettes and marijuana, goes to many parties, and loses his virginity to a girl he cannot remember.
When he goes home for the summer, Gogol's train is suddenly stopped and temporarily loses electricity. A man had jumped in front of the train and committed suicide, and the wait for the authorities causes a long delay. Ashoke, who is waiting at the train station for Gogol, becomes very concerned when he calls the train company and hears of this incident. When they pull into the Ganguli's driveway, Ashoke turns off the car and finally explains the true significance of Gogol's name. Gogol is deeply troubled by this news, asking his father why he didn't tell him this earlier. He starts to regret changing his name and changing his identity.
He lives in a very small apartment in New York City, where he has landed a job in an established architectural office after graduating from Columbia. He is rather stiff personality-wise, perpetually angry or else always on the lookout for someone to make a stereotypical comment about his background.
At a party, Gogol meets a very attractive and rather socially aggressive Barnard girl named Maxine. Gogol becomes completely wrapped up in her and her family. Maxine's parents are financially well off and live in a four-story house in New York City. Maxine has one floor to herself and invites Gogol to move in. Gogol becomes a member of the family, helping with the cooking and shopping. Maxine's parents appear to have accepted him as a son. When Maxine's parents leave the city for the summer, they invite Maxine and Gogol to join them for a couple of weeks. They are staying in the mountains in New Hampshire, where Maxine's grandparents live. For a while, Gogol is fixed on this very American family.
Gogol introduces Maxine to his parents. Ashima dismisses Maxine as something that Gogol will eventually get over. Shortly after this meeting, Gogol's father dies of a heart attack while he is working on a temporary project in Ohio. Gogol travels to Ohio to gather his father's belongings and his father's ashes. Something inside of Gogol changes. He slowly withdraws from Maxine as he tries to sort out his emotions. Maxine tries to pressure him to open up to her. Gogol breaks off the relationship and begins to spend more time with his mother and sister, Sonia.
Ashima, after some time has gone by, suggests that Gogol contact the daughter of one of her friends. Gogol knows of the woman from his own childhood. Her name is Moushumi, and she has had the unfortunate experience of having planned a wedding only to have her intended groom change his mind at the last minute. Gogol is reluctant to meet with Moushumi for two reasons. She is Bengali, and she is recovering from having been shamed. But he meets her anyway, to please his mother.
Moushumi and Gogol are attracted to one another and eventually are married. However, by the end of their first year of marriage, Moushumi becomes restless. She feels tied down by marriage and begins to regret what she has done. Gogol suspects something is wrong and often feels like a poor substitute for Moushumi's ex-fiance, Graham, who abandoned her. One day, Moushumi comes across the name of a man she knew when she was a senior in high school. She contacts him, and they begin an affair. Gogol finds out. Moushumi and Gogol divorce.
The story ends with Ashima selling the family home so she can live in India with her siblings for half of the year. Sonia is preparing to marry to an American man named Ben. Gogol is once again alone. But he feels comforted by one thing: before his father died, he finally told his son why he had chosen that name for him. By the end of the novel, Gogol has come to accept his name and picks up a collection of the Russian author's stories that his father had given him as a birthday present many years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Namesake
Plot
The Namesake depicts the struggles of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli (Irrfan Khan and Tabu), two first-generation immigrants from West Bengal, India to the United States, and their American-born children Gogol (Kal Penn) and Sonia (Sahira Nair). The film takes place primarily in Kolkata, India; New York City; and various New York state suburbs.
The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima leave Calcutta and settle in New York City. Through a series of miscues, their son's nickname, Gogol (named after Ukrainian author Nikolai Gogol), becomes his official birth name, an event which will shape many aspects of his life. The film chronicles Gogol's cross-cultural experiences and his exploration of his Indian heritage, as the story shifts between the United States and India. Gogol eventually meets and falls in love with two women, Maxine (Jacinda Barrett) and Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson), while his parents struggle to understand his modern, American perspectives on dating, marriage and love.
As much as Gogol/Nikhil's experiences, the film tenderly describes the courtship and marriage of Ashima and Ashoke, and the effect of Ashoke's early death of a massive heart attack. Ashima's decision to move on with her life, selling the suburban family home and returning to Calcutta, unifies and ends the film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Namesake_(film)
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Russian: Николай Васильевич Гоголь; Ukrainian: Микола Васильович Гоголь; 31 March 1809[4] – 4 March 1852O.S.; 19 March 1809 – 21 February 1852 N.S.) was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.[4]
Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque ("The Nose", "Viy", "The Overcoat," "Nevsky Prospekt"). His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture andfolklore.[5][6] His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls), leading to his eventual exile. The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman", "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait" and "The Carriage", round out the tally of his best-known works.
Literary development
In 1831, he brought out the first volume of his Ukrainian stories (Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka), which met with immediate success. He followed it in 1832 with a second volume, and in 1835 by two volumes of stories entitled Mirgorod, as well as by two volumes of miscellaneous prose entitled Arabesques. At this time Russian editors and critics such as Nikolai Polevoy and Nikolai Nadezhdin saw in Gogol the emergence of a Ukrainian, rather than Russian, writer, using his works to illustrate supposed differences between Russian and Ukrainian national characters, a fact that has been overlooked in later Russian literary history.[8] At this time, Gogol developed a passion for Ukrainian history and tried to obtain an appointment to the history department at Kiev University. Despite the support of Pushkin and Sergey Uvarov, the Russian minister of education, his appointment was blocked by a Kievan bureaucrat on the grounds that he was unqualified.[9] His fictional story Taras Bulba, based on the history of Ukrainian cossacks, was the result of this phase in his interests. During this time he also developed a close and life-long friendship with another Ukrainian, the historian and naturalistMykhaylo Maksymovych.[10]
In 1834 Gogol was made Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg, a job for which he had no qualifications. He turned in a performance ludicrous enough to warrant satiric treatment in one of his own stories. After an introductory lecture made up of brilliant generalizations which the 'historian' had prudently prepared and memorized, he gave up all pretense at erudition and teaching, missed two lectures out of three, and when he did appear, muttered unintelligibly through his teeth. At the final examination, he sat in utter silence with a black handkerchief wrapped around his head, simulating a toothache, while another professor interrogated the students."[11] This academic venture proved a failure and he resigned his chair in 1835.
Between 1832 and 1836 Gogol worked with great energy, and though almost all his work has in one way or another its sources in these four years of contact with Pushkin, he had not yet decided that his ambitions were to be fulfilled by success in literature. During this time, the Russian critics Stepan Shevyrev and Vissarion Belinsky, contradicting earlier critics, reclassified Gogol from a Ukrainian to a Russian writer.[8] It was only after the presentation, on 19 April 1836, of his comedy The Government Inspector (Revizor) that he finally came to believe in his literary vocation. The comedy, a violent satire of Russian provincial bureaucracy, was staged thanks only to the intervention of the emperor, Nicholas I.
From 1836 to 1848 Gogol lived abroad, travelling through Germany and Switzerland. Gogol spent the winter of 1836–1837 in Paris, among Russian expatriates and Polish exiles, frequently meeting the Polish poets Adam Mickiewicz and Bohdan Zaleski. He eventually settled in Rome. For much of the twelve years from 1836 Gogol was in Italy. He studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera. He mingled with Russian and other visitors, and in 1838 met Count Ioseph Vielhorskiy, the 23-year-old son of the official who had brought Gogol's Government Inspector to the attention of the emperor. Vielhorsky was travelling in hopes of curing his tuberculosis. Gogol became deeply attached to the young man and attended him in his illness, but in 1839 Vielhorsky died. Gogol left an account of this time in his Nights at the Villa.
Pushkin's death produced a strong impression on Gogol. His principal work during years following Pushkin's death was the satirical epic Dead Souls. Concurrently, he worked at other tasks – recast Taras Bulba and The Portrait, completed his second comedy, Marriage (Zhenitba), wrote the fragment Rome and his most famous short story, The Overcoat.
In 1841 the first part of Dead Souls was ready, and Gogol took it to Russia to supervise its printing. It appeared in Moscow in 1842, under the title, imposed by thecensorship, of The Adventures of Chichikov. The book instantly established his reputation as the greatest prose writer in the language.
Creative decline and death
After the triumph of Dead Souls, Gogol came to be regarded by his contemporaries as a great satirist who lampooned the unseemly sides of Imperial Russia. Little did they know that Dead Souls was but the first part of a planned modern-day counterpart to The Divine Comedy. The first part represented the Inferno; the second part was to depict the gradual purification and transformation of the rogue Chichikov under the influence of virtuous publicans and governors — Purgatory.[12]
From Palestine Gogol returned to Russia, and passed his last years in restless movement throughout the country. While visiting the capitals, he stayed with friends such as Mikhail Pogodin and Sergei Aksakov. During this period he also spent much time with his old Ukrainian friends, Maksymovych and Osyp Bodiansky. More importantly, he intensified his relationship with a starets or spiritual elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, whom he had known for several years. Konstantinovsky seems to have strengthened in Gogol the fear of perdition by insisting on the sinfulness of all his imaginative work. His health was undermined by exaggerated ascetic practices and he fell into a state of deep depression. On the night of 24 February 1852, he burned some of his manuscripts, which contained most of the second part of Dead Souls. He explained this as a mistake, a practical joke played on him by the Devil. Soon thereafter he took to bed, refused all food, and died in great pain nine days later.
Gogol was mourned in the Saint Tatiana church at the Moscow University before his burial and then buried at the Danilov Monastery, close to his fellow Slavophile Aleksey Khomyakov. In 1931 Moscow authorities decided to demolish the monastery and had his remains transferred to theNovodevichy Cemetery.
His body was discovered lying face down; which gave rise to the story that Gogol had been buried alive. A Soviet critic even cut a part of his jacket to use as a binding for his copy of Dead Souls. A piece of rock which used to stand on his grave at the Danilov was reused for the tomb of Gogol's admirer Mikhail Bulgakov.
The first Gogol monument in Moscow was a Symbolist statue on Arbat Square, which represented the sculptor Nikolay Andreyev's idea of Gogol, rather than the real man.[13]Unveiled in 1909, the statue was praised by Ilya Repin and Leo Tolstoy as an outstanding projection of Gogol's tortured personality. Joseph Stalin did not like it, however; and the statue was replaced by a more orthodox Socialist Realism monument in 1952. It took enormous efforts to save Andreyev's original work from destruction; it now stands in front of the house where Gogol died.[14]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gogol
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Jhumpa Lahiri (Bengali: ঝুম্পা লাহিড়ী; born on July 11, 1967) is a Bengali American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name.[2] She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna, which she says are both "good names", but goes by her nickname Jhumpa.[3] Lahiri is a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama.[4]
Biography
Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Bengali Indian immigrants. Her family moved to the United States when she was three; Lahiri considers herself an American, stating, "I wasn't born here, but I might as well have been."[3] Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father Amar Lahiri works as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island;[3] he is the basis for the protagonist in "The Third and Final Continent," the closing story from Interpreter of Maladies.[5] Lahiri's mother wanted her children to grow up knowing their Bengali heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta (now Kolkata).[6]
When she began kindergarten in Kingston, Rhode Island, Lahiri's teacher decided to call her by her pet name, Jhumpa, because it was easier to pronounce than her "proper names".[3] Lahiri recalled,"I always felt so embarrassed by my name.... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are."[7] Lahiri's ambivalence over her identity was the inspiration for the ambivalence of Gogol, the protagonist of her novel The Namesake, over his unusual name.[3] Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989.[8]
Lahiri then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, M.F.A. in Creative Writing, M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997–1998). Lahiri has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
In 2001, Lahiri married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of TIME Latin America, and who is now Senior Editor of Fox News Latino. Lahiri lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn with her husband and their two children, Octavio (b. 2002) and Noor (b. 2005).[7]
Literary focus
Lahiri's writing is characterized by her "plain" language and her characters, often Indian immigrants to America who must navigate between the cultural values of their homeland and their adopted home.[2][10] Lahiri's fiction is autobiographical and frequently draws upon her own experiences as well as those of her parents, friends, acquaintances, and others in the Bengali communities with which she is familiar. Lahiri examines her characters' struggles, anxieties, and biases to chronicle the nuances and details of immigrant psychology and behavior.
Until Unaccustomed Earth, she focused mostly on first-generation Indian American immigrants and their struggle to raise a family in a country very different from theirs. Her stories describe their efforts to keep their children acquainted with Indian culture and traditions and to keep them close even after they have grown up in order to hang on to the Indian tradition of a joint family, in which the parents, their children and the children's families live under the same roof.
Unaccustomed Earth departs from this earlier original ethos as Lahiri's characters embark on new stages of development. These stories scrutinize the fate of the second and third generations. As succeeding generations become increasingly assimilated into American culture and are comfortable in constructing perspectives outside of their country of origin, Lahiri's fiction shifts to the needs of the individual. She shows how later generations depart from the constraints of their immigrant parents, who are often devoted to their community and their responsibility to other immigrants.[14]
Bibliography
Short story collections
- Interpreter of Maladies (1999)
- Unaccustomed Earth (2008)
Novels
- The Namesake (2003)
Unpublished Material (Academic)
- A Real Durwan and Other Stories (1993, Boston University M.A. thesis)
- Only an Address: Six Stories by Ashapurna Devi introduced, translated and with critical commentary by Lahiri (1995, Boston University M.A. thesis)
- Accursed Palace: The Italian Palazzo on the Jacobean Stage (1603-1625) (1997, Boston University Ph.D. thesis)
Uncollected Non-fiction
- "Cooking Lessons: The Long Way Home" (6 September 2004, The New Yorker)
- "Improvisations: Rice" (23 November 2009, The New Yorker)
- "Reflections: Notes from a Literary Apprenticeship" (13 June 2011, The New Yorker)
Contributions
- (Introduction) The Magic Barrel: Stories by Bernard Malamud, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 2003.
- (Introduction) Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan, Penguin Classics, August 2006.
- "Rhode Island" (essay), State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, Ecco, September 16, 2008
- Essay, The Suspension of Time: Reflections on Simon Dinnerstein and The Fulbright Tryptich edited by Daniel Slager, Milkweed Editions, June 14, 2011.
Awards
- 1993 – TransAtlantic Award from the Henfield Foundation
- 1999 – O. Henry Award for short story "Interpreter of Maladies"
- 1999 – PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for "Interpreter of Maladies"
- 1999 – "Interpreter of Maladies" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
- 2000 – Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 2000 – "The Third and Final Continent" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
- 2000 – The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for "Interpreter of Maladies"
- 2000 – Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut "Interpreter of Maladies"
- 2000 – James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for "Indian Takeout" in Food & Wine Magazine
- 2002 – Guggenheim Fellowship
- 2002 – "Nobody's Business" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
- 2008 – Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for "Unaccustomed Earth"
- 2009 – Asian American Literary Award for "Unaccustomed Earth"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhumpa_Lahiri
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