Oh, You Still Got It

Seven preachers, seven sermons: that’s either a celebration or an endurance test. Inevitably, it’s a competition.

-The best moment of Kelefa Sanneh’s first New Yorker article. Speaking of writers I’m obsessed with, Jhumpa Lahiri’s new book is coming out soon. Her promo puff piece in New York Magazine was effective, at least for me:

“ ‘Is that all you’ve got in there?’ I get asked the question all the time,” says Lahiri. “It baffles me. Does John Updike get asked this question? Does Alice Munro? It’s the ethnic thing, that’s what it is. And my answer is always, yes, I will continue to write about this world, because it inspires me to write, and there’s nothing more important than that.“

Jhumpa Lahiri succeeds because she doesn’t turn her narrative into a white male story. Her writing is unabashedly about her and her family’s experience. But she is still able to make those experiences universal. My dad, for examples, relates to the The Third And Final Continent because for him, Westchester is the Third And Final Metropolitan Area. I probably won’t be able to wait for the soft cover edition and I hate hardbacks; not just because they’re more expensive, but because they’re unwieldy. But whatever, Lahiri is worth it.