“Casting Shadows”
by Jhumpa Lahiri
translated from the Italian by the author
from the February 15 & 22, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies (which I loved), and continued to establish herself as a critically acclaimed author. In 2011, she moved to Rome and started to not only translate from the Italian but also to writer her own fiction in Italian. Indeed, she published her first novel in Italian, Dove mi trovo, in 2018. Whereabouts, the English translation of that novel — her own translation — is coming to us in April. “Casting Shadows” is an excerpt.
My favorite thing I’ve ever read by Lahiri remains the first thing I ever read from Lahiri: the first story in Interpreter of Maladies, “A Temporary Matter.” I haven’t read everything she’s written since, but I still consider myself a fan and get excited whenever something new arrives. I think her efforts to push boundaries and definitions is important and well done. That said, I am still always drawn in by her writing, which pulls me in with seeming simplicity that explores great depths. Here is how “Casting Shadows” starts:
Now and then on the streets of my neighborhood I bump into a man I might have been involved with, maybe shared a life with. He always looks happy to see me. He lives with a friend of mine, and they have two children. Our relationship never goes beyond a longish chat on the sidewalks, a quick coffee together, perhaps a brief stroll in the same direction. He talks excitedly about his projects, he gesticulates, and at times as we’re walking our synchronized bodies, already quite close, discreetly overlap.
There is so much going on there that I want the story to unpack. I hope that this excerpt satisfies at the same time it points us forward to Lahiri’s novel.
Let me know your thoughts below!
I too discovered Jhumpa Lahiri through her first work The Interpreter of the Maladies. I’ve probably bought 4 copies now as SOME people (who will be (so far) nameless here) don’t return books they borrow.
I don’t have a favourite short story from that book – well not a permanent favourite but I do read everything she writes. Sometimes I regret it – she tends to publish long excerpts from books about to be published – like this one. They can be read as stand-alone but when I come upon them in the new book I feel annoyed – as if I’ve already read a critical part of the longer story and know how the chapter will end And yet, I read them anyway and am always entranced and amazed that somehow she’s been seen a part of my life and writes about it knowingly.
You’re right the seeming simplicity hides the irony, the paring down of unimportant arguable details to a seemingly simple and yet intricate retelling of a moment is what draws us in. I can’t wait to read the new novel – though I will still be annoyed when I come to this section – Jhumpa Lahiri never disappoints.
Susan Elliot
Wellington New Zealand
My goodness this was so dry and mundane that I only kept reading to see if a spark of life would somehow be struck or even if anything would happen. I haven’t enjoyed any of her fiction after Maladies for pretty much this same reason. Timid, wistful, old-before-their-time characters as protagonists really handicap a story from the get-go.
What if “timid, wistful, old-before-their-time characters” are conveyed with beautiful language and flow and a wonderful attention to little details? I would agree this is certainly bourgeois writing. We never ponder social class, economics and live in a sort of charmed Europeland of piazzas and coffees etc. I found, though, that her rather effortless style really carried this along.
“I’m content with a firm embrace even though I don’t share my life with anyone.” This is my favorite line from Jhumpa Lahiri’s recent New Yorker short story, “Casting Shadows.” So what is this all about? Some readers might think it is a random story filled with random details from a woman looking back on her life. Not much of a plot some might say. But everyday life be it for a woman or a man, seldom has much of a plot or much of an interesting plot connected with it. That’s why some of us read Ken Follett’s “Eye of the Needle,” or Lee Child’s “Killing Floor.” And sometimes there are readers, some of them possibly men, who are never much interested in a “woman’s story.”
Two sentences describing the thoughts of a fictional old man who is slowly dying, a spymaster named K. D. from Vikram Chandra’s “Sacred Games,” unlocked for me what “Casting Shadows” is really all about. Possibly, it is what some readers might not like reading or thinking about.
“He has asked himself sometimes if solitude is preferable to boredom or betrayal, which seemed to be the inevitable end of all happy love affairs, of all happy marriages. People clung to one another out of fear.”
I don’t want to give away too much of the story but Lahiri seems to me a master, like John Cheever, at describing the boredom that a middle class life can and probably too often inflicts on one person or a couple having hoped for so much more. There’s a kind of fragility to life that the title of this story alludes to. The plot seems to involve a woman, who reflects on her life and possibly realizes something she’d never quite fully realized before. The bit of business with two pieces of an object at the end of the story offers a compelling metaphor about life and living.
Lahiri brilliantly illuminates life and human situations in common objects. The flame of life or the joy de vivre of her Bengali born protagonist, Ashoke, in the film of her first novel, “The Namesake,” is symbolized by the shoes he wore while dating his future wife. They are a hybrid pair of staid oxfords crossed with playful saddle shoes, white yet dappled with brilliant splotches of brown like the coat of an unlikely racehorse.
I understand why some readers object to short stories being excerpts from soon to be published novels feeling a little short changed because the condensed plot, tension and conclusion of a great short story might seem lacking or muted or slackened because the short story is just a developmental chapter in a much larger novel.
Lahiri’s novel from which this short story is taken is written in Italian though luckily for us, she has translated it into English. English translations of foreign language novels no matter how well-written, often lose money for publishers who already lose money on their English language underselling novels. So Lahiri is wisely promoting her new novel with a short story excerpt.
I noticed that on the half page advertising cover sheet on the front of newsstand-displayed copies of this New Yorker issue, “Casting Shadows” is not promoted or listed. Which means that some readers who might have wanted to read it might miss it.
Shining a flashlight on life and not missing any of the blemishes can be disheartening but ultimately uplifting if not given too much importance. Which is a pretty good take away than from most such stories that leave one in a little miasma pool of despair.
Dry. Dry. Dry.
You think something will happen but.
Maybe that was her point, that everyday life can be dry, dry, dry when we are looking for something more and . . .
I think that’s the point – everyday life is dry dry dry filled with moments where each second has the potential to be more – or less; until/if something happens to magnify our lives – and as we all learned last year – that next moment is often what we least expect. I think this is what Lahiri captures best.
Terrible short story. I always expect writers to get dull and uninteresting as they get older, and they can’t repeat the successes of their youth, when they hit a goldmine early on. This was a very random and disjointed story. If she wasn’t already a famous author and professor, she’d get terrible reviews for this, and it wouldn’t get anywhere. If this were “workshopped,” her classmates would be rightly critical of this and suggest much-needed improvements. She just shows how elitist, petty, and small-minded she is, too. Why is the ex-boyfriend a “poser” sort of “writer” who goes to a bookstore with her and pretentiously asks about an award-winning book? He sounds like he has ADHD, too. How did she even come up with a character like that? At her level, I don’t suppose she knows any wannabe “writers,” so I don’t know how she’d even come up with that. She jumps from one weird and uninteresting guy to the next. Seems very conservative and fey, too. I got bored and skimmed it. If she wasn’t already an acclaimed author, I wouldn’t have even bothered reading this. All authors are elite and upper/upper middle class, so we shouldn’t be blasting her just because she’s Asian American/Indian American, which has a reputation for being rich and privileged.
Yikes, Goldmine. While I don’t care if you like this story or not, I can’t respect where you seem to be coming from. Your final sentence . . . To me, what you’ve written makes it look like you went into this expecting to hate it because it was written by Lahiri.
Let me respond in good faith, though, by saying this is such a wonderful story to me, and I think Whereabouts, from which this is an excerpt, is amazing. I guess I’m glad that if she had to use clout to get this published that it worked out that way. I find her writing delicate as it packs so much in about a woman who is rather miserable, and knows it, and isn’t sure quite how to go about things, and isn’t sure if she should even care, whose life is disjointed and marked by locations and times of day. Getting into that headspace must be exceptionally difficult. To render something as insightful as this piece you skimmed is why I think she’s a master.
I hope you don’t think I’m just saying that because I’ve been groomed to presume it’s great writing or feel I have to like it because of her ethnicity.
Sorry, I wasn’t that clear. I meant that I’ve heard Lahiri being derided for being a rich, privileged Indian American, but I felt that was singled out towards her because writers/artists of all ethnicities around the world often come from rich, privileged families, too. Asian Americans tend to be stereotyped as rich and privileged (e.g. Crazy Rich Asians), when many are poor, disadvantaged, and lacking in privilege.
I didn’t like how Lahiri made that character a “poser” sort of writer. It seemed petty and disdainful on her part. She didn’t seem that warm or generous-minded. I didn’t know that short story was from Whereabouts. Maybe this would make more sense among a collection of other stories in a book. I actually read her other books and liked them very much, so I wasn’t going into it expecting to hate her.
I also know that she has very fine promo photos of her, and that helps writers rise up, too. I was surprised to see her on Charlie Rose back in the day, and she seemed so plain, shy, and unnoticeable in that video. Excellent photos really help writers and others rise up as celebrities. Even now, she’s 54, and her latest pic is very flattering, and she looks very striking and youthful for her age.
Thanks for coming back and clarifying, Goldmine.
I still am not sure I’m comfortable with the presumption that her success is based on her looks or ethnicity. And that certainly wasn’t my experience. My first time with Jhumpa Lahiri was when a professor I had sat down and read “A Temporary Matter” to my class. I’m not even sure if he told us who wrote it at the time. I just know that I walked away a different person.
It is very unfair to suggest a woman writer is published only for her looks because it seems to ignore the person, the personality, the singular spiritual presence dwelling within the body. If there is an objection to a poser boyfriend character I don’t understand the objection because such objectional boyfriends do exist as many women can attest. And as far as rich Asians are concerned when in film, you need to remember you are possibly looking at stereotypes. You would have to personally meet and interact with a large number of rich South Asians if you are open to the suggestion that you could believe the stereotypes are the rule and not the exception. If you watch enough Hindi language films you might see the rich Indian people in them seem to remind one of how American rich act. A lot of money always seems to have the same effect no matter what ethnicity. But if you see the film of Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake” you’ll see she very sensitive in the area of family and relationships. Also Western culture regards writers as rock stars only notable for rich style or lifestyle. The singular person is missed or ignored. Anyway I am happy to read her writing.