Friday, March 31
at 1:38 a.m.
Just some random thoughts I'm going to throw out there...
But before I begin. Please ignore the fact that Michael Bublé is at the top of my last.fm list. He makes some good music - his version of the Spider-man theme is especially inspired - but I really don't like 'im that much.
My sister likes to listen to him when she uses my desktop machine, and voila. The fact that he's made it to the top even after I've deleted his name from the list twice is testament to the spell he's cast on her.
Alright. Now that we've dispensed with that, we advance.
Way back when, I said that I'd write something about my dislike for Ms. Lahiri's fiction. I think I also mentioned that she has won a Pulitzer, and apparently, was also named one of the top 20 American writers under 40 by The New Yorker.
Now, I'm not saying that she's not a good writer or that her stories aren't entertaining. Some of them are actually quite nice. But that's it: they're only nice. They're not the kind of stories that truly move you or leave you feeling as if you've read something that will last.
Add to this the fact that all her stories of the hyphen (The "American-Indian" question) are so... Middle-class, I suppose. Her characters don't really struggle. Or maybe I just have a different definition of "struggle."
Regardless of how you may wish to term the problems an immigrant faces, speaking from the point-of-view of the South Asian Diaspora, I can honestly say that my family's experience was very different from that of the characters in Interpreter of Maladies.
As for the prize, I almost get the impression that the committee was looking to hand it off to an 'ethnic' writer and she just happened to be around at the time. But I suppose I'm being needlessly harsh.
I admit I did enjoy some of the stories. But, again, I didn't put her book down feeling very different or with any new views on the immigrant experience.
I actually do have more things to write about. This post, however, is probably too long as it is. In a bit.
But before I begin. Please ignore the fact that Michael Bublé is at the top of my last.fm list. He makes some good music - his version of the Spider-man theme is especially inspired - but I really don't like 'im that much.
My sister likes to listen to him when she uses my desktop machine, and voila. The fact that he's made it to the top even after I've deleted his name from the list twice is testament to the spell he's cast on her.
Alright. Now that we've dispensed with that, we advance.
Way back when, I said that I'd write something about my dislike for Ms. Lahiri's fiction. I think I also mentioned that she has won a Pulitzer, and apparently, was also named one of the top 20 American writers under 40 by The New Yorker.
Now, I'm not saying that she's not a good writer or that her stories aren't entertaining. Some of them are actually quite nice. But that's it: they're only nice. They're not the kind of stories that truly move you or leave you feeling as if you've read something that will last.
Add to this the fact that all her stories of the hyphen (The "American-Indian" question) are so... Middle-class, I suppose. Her characters don't really struggle. Or maybe I just have a different definition of "struggle."
Regardless of how you may wish to term the problems an immigrant faces, speaking from the point-of-view of the South Asian Diaspora, I can honestly say that my family's experience was very different from that of the characters in Interpreter of Maladies.
As for the prize, I almost get the impression that the committee was looking to hand it off to an 'ethnic' writer and she just happened to be around at the time. But I suppose I'm being needlessly harsh.
I admit I did enjoy some of the stories. But, again, I didn't put her book down feeling very different or with any new views on the immigrant experience.
I actually do have more things to write about. This post, however, is probably too long as it is. In a bit.
