Episode · Conversations with Tyler · 2017-01-11
Books mentioned on Jhumpa Lahiri on Writing, Translation, and Crossing Between Cultures (Live at Mason)
Author, teacher, and translator Jhumpa Lahiri joins Tyler for a conversation on identity, Rhode Island, writing as problem solving, reading across languages, the badness of book covers, Elena Ferrante
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
-
State by state
Discussed“and you know you mentioned the the essay in state by state um one of these books that have been kindly uh assembled here such a lovely display really I'm so touched um but I was asked to to write about Rhode Island um in this anthology called state by state which um invited a number of authors to write”
Where to get it
-
The Lowland
Discussed“I mean you know I I remember even with the lowland um you know I and I I don't think my editor would mind if I share this with you but at one point she said um well it's just really Grim sometimes you know what goes on”
Where to get it
-
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F.
Discussed“well so I was in 10th grade in when I was 15 um I read The Great Gatsby um that year um and then the following year I was introduced to Hardy who has become so important to me as well”
Where to get it
-
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy is a tragic Victorian masterpiece that follows the heartbreaking struggles of Tess Durbeyfield as she navigates harsh social moralities, poverty, and the devastating consequences of men in rural England.
Discussed“even a lot of Hardy especially Tess favorite of yours you can read as a kind of immigrant novel sure coming from the countryside moving somewhere quite strange and to use that as a lens for interpreting what otherwise might seem like strange character behaviors”
Where to get it
-
The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a classic American novel set in 17th-century Puritan Boston that explores intense themes of sin, guilt, public shaming, and societal judgment.
Discussed“one of the things I've liked about just comments you've dropped is the way you read say Scarlet Letter is actually a novel of immigrants that maybe the characters wouldn't have behaved that way in a quote unquote Home Country even a lot of Hardy especially Tess favorite of yours you can read as a kind of immigrant novel sure”
Where to get it
-
Unaccustomed Earth
Discussed“you know you can try but you can't really you know like when i read accustomed Earth and if i try to think of it as a kind of song cycle i try to put the cover out of my mind because i know have the covers are done and assigned and i figure well the cover will mislead me”
Where to get it
-
The Namesake
Discussed“I think um the the sort of Bittersweet quality of of of say a novel like the namesake you bring up Loland”
Where to get it
-
The Home and the World, by Rabindranath Tagore. Translated
Discussed“and what's your literary or maybe even also emotional relationship with the works of tagor so he's a towering Giant in Bengali intellectual history in your stories every now and then someone's reading his poems uh there's a lot of themes from him that that are in your work like home in the world this odd mix of tensions between”
Where to get it
-
The Home and the World
Discussed“and what's your literary or maybe even also emotional relationship with the works of tagor so he's a towering Giant in Bengali intellectual history in your stories every now and then someone's reading his poems uh there's a lot of themes from him that that are in your work like home in the world this odd mix of tensions between”
Where to get it
-
MOBY-DICK; or, THE WHALE
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville is a classic American epic novel that follows Captain Ahab's obsessive, destructive quest to hunt down the giant white whale that maimed him.
Discussed“well um paves is huge you know he translated Moby Dick and um my we were in Sicily a couple of years ago and the um we were sailing around the aolian islands and we had this long conversation one day with our Skipper um about how according to him Pav's translation of M dick surpasses the work of and”
Where to get it
-
The Clothing of Books
Discussed“and you were fascinated with Italy way back when right for a long time yeah I mean in a growing way yeah yeah now your most recent book the clothing of books it's about book covers”
Where to get it
-
Howl
Discussed“um i mean there's certain presses here that that have that aesthetic philosophy um you know city lights books makes those beautiful little books of like my copy of alan ginsburg's howl and etc”
Where to get it
