“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.