In the beginning I think it was mainly curiosity. I have no brothers, and growing up, men generally seemed like mysterious creatures to me. Except for an early story I wrote in college, the first thing I wrote from the male point of view was the story "This Blessed House," in Interpreter of Maladies. It was an exhilarating and liberating thing to do, so much so that I wrote three stories in a row, all from the male perspective. It's a challenge, as well. I always have to ask myself, would a man think this? do this? I always knew that the protagonist of The Namesake would by a boy. The original spark of the book was the fact that a friend of my cousin in India had the pet name Gogol. I had wanted to write about the pet name–good name distinction for a long time, and I knew I needed the space of a novel to explore the idea. It's almost too perfect a metaphor for the experience of growing up as the child of immigrants, having a divided identity, divided loyalties, etc.Do you think her male protagonist was convincing? Did you ever feel the author failed to capture that voice?
Friday, October 12, 2007
Male point of view
Although Ashima is the story's focus in the beginning, the main protagonist in "The Namesake" is Gogol. Here's what Lahiri said about writing from a male point of view:
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4 comments:
I enjoyed the book and the general story, although I think the name theme was a little overbearing at times. Regarding gender, I kept wondering why this Indian-American woman with this fascinating life experience would choose to write from a male point of view when her own point of view must be so fascinating and rich and intimately known to her. Maybe she saw it as a challenge, as she said, and maybe the name theme has more layers from the male perspective (although from the female, there's not only the question of the divided identity between pet name and good name but between the name you grew up with and the name you are expected to replace it with upon marriage).
Some books you read and you are certain of the author's gender. You can tell by the way they write about the sexes or about sex itself or the things they focus on or the tone they use. In other books, the author's gender isn't really obvious. I think Lahiri's falls into the second category.
I would agree with that. The only time I felt like she might have revealed herself was a passage where Gogol was feeling a desire for a woman he had just met. (Maybe it was Moushumi, I don't remember.) And it said something like "He hadn't made love in a long time." Perhaps I'm too cynical, but I doubt that if this guy was just feeling horny, he would be thinking, "Gosh, I haven't made love in a long time."
I agree also that a female point of view would've been as interesting to explore. Lahiri seems fairly fascinated with this Indian-American thematic material, so perhaps that's something she'll do in the future.
That's funny about the phrasing. Some things like that caught my attention, too, and I didn't know how to think of them. Part of it could be a woman writing from a man's point of view, but part of it could also be a concern with good taste. It was very deeply ingrained in Gogol as a cultural matter that displays of affection were verboten, that all sex was to take place in the "sanctity" and privacy of the marital bed. Gogol didn't buy that crap, of course, but he still may have used a "nobler" vocabulary when talking and thinking about sex. Maybe the author just thought of him as someone who would express a desire, even internally, "to make love" rather than something cruder, even if the feeling underlying the desire was utterly profane.
There was a general passivity with regard to sex throughout, I thought. There's a mention of Ashima in her young married life thinking her husband might want to lay with her (I think after the phone call about her dad). I forget how it's worded, but it was sort of archaic and sexist, and I had this image of her just being a "vessel" for her husband's desire when the mood struck HIM, but that she would never initiate an encounter or think of herself as someone who had her own sexual identity and desires. It was sad, but I don't think SHE thought of it as sad because she apparently didn't know any different.
Yeah, there was passivity about the sex. There wasn't a lot of passion on display here, even between Gogol and his girlfriends, who wouldn't have the arranged relationship and cultural restraint thing. But maybe you're right, that those notions were really ingrained in him through his parents.
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