0:04
thank you for coming now you've written a great deal about in some ways not having a native country not having a language of your own that's clearly yours or even a culture having read or reread all of your work and surrounding works and if I
Search this video
0:20
think you know how do I frame you I would say I think of you as a road Islander because that's where you grew up you were born in England but came here when you were three grew up in Rhode Island How would you react to that uncomfortably I mean no with all due respect
0:39
um no I mean it's it's true it's um well first of all thank you all very much for coming and for your warm welcome um uh it it is true that I lived there well let's see how long did I live there from the age of 3 to 18 right so 15 years and you went to Barnard at 18 right I did
1:03
yes and so then I um I think I lived as for as long in New York as I did in Rhode Island but of course one's childhood is is one's childhood and is formative um and in a way that later experiences are not um so uh uh yes I mean it is a part of who I am
1:34
absolutely but I I I don't feel um I mean I've always had a very uneasy relationship with the place and 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
1:52
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 about um their home state or a state with with you know that they had some sort of
2:11
connection to in any case um and so I I chose Rhode Island um uh I mean I was asked to write about Rhode Island I said yes and but partly it was to get over this sense of discomfort about your very opening did it work well I mean I think what what was
2:33
helpful about it is that um it opened up the um the setting of the lowland which um is set you know in part in in in Rhode Island but it's the first of my books in which I can actually mention Rhode Island by its name whereas the other books the preceding books um
2:59
are set in these sort of you know fake Rhode Island SL Massachusetts kind of you know this area this terrain that that it really is Rhode Island you know to you know just to boil it down um but I couldn't mention it I couldn't name it
3:19
as such and I think it that was that's telling it was saying something the fact that in the earlier books I was you know I was writing about the ocean I was writing about this kind of you know small campus little town and describing these settings that I knew very well the
3:37
settings I had grown up in um but I couldn't come out and say that it was Rhode Island and I kept calling it some suburb of Boston um and you know so I I think the writing of that piece uh unlocked something and then in the lowland
3:55
they're in Rhode Island and I don't pretend anymore we we'll get to your most recent work but one of the things I I like the most about everything you've done is I always get the sense you're trying to work out some problem for yourself and also for us but I'd like to
4:10
sort of survey your your whole writing life and just start with a question when you were young when you were say 15 years old what was your favorite novel and why um well I think I had started reading Russian literature around that age um I had some friends some my family
4:31
had friends um with some you know one of the daugh they had three daughters one of them was a little bit older um she was already in college and so when I would visit them I would see these big volumes of doovi and Tolstoy on her desk
4:46
these Norton critical editions and they were really appealing to me um and so I think I I I I tried to kind of you know um rise to another you know another level of of reading and and um so that's my that's probably what I was you know
5:12
reading a lot of um I loved Hawthorne even then um when well so I was in 10th grade in when I was 15 um I read The Great Gatsby uh that year uh and then the following year I was introduced to Hardy who has become so important to me as well so it was in high school that I
5:34
encountered uh fortunately um certain authors who have stayed with me uh for for all of this time and and who continue to inspire me what 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
5:51
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 coming from the countryside
6:03
moving somewhere quite strange and to use that as a lens for interpreting what otherwise might seem like strange character behaviors but reading them through you is actually very rewarding so Through Your Eyes through your fiction does that make sense to you at
6:20
all yes I mean I I think what I'm responding to is the sense of displacement in in those authors in in almost any author I mean even you know will cther you can read this way Homer you can read this way so many authors you can read this way which is why I
6:35
think some years ago I was asked this question um by the New York Times book review about you know what was my problem with immigrant literature and I made a kind of maybe cheeky remark about how I didn't believe in it but this is it wasn't being cheeky it was just being
6:51
it was just saying what I felt was true which is that this is something I've responded to in literature from the very beginning and if I didn't have this response to literature then you know these writers wouldn't have fed and inspired me the way they did because
7:07
there would have been a quote unquote barrier between their experiences and their times um and and mine and that that shouldn't be the case right that's not what literature does literature does the opposite and it allows us to cross
7:20
over those boundaries in a beautiful way in a magical way now if I can trust the internet you have three master's degrees in creative writing comparative literature and English and for one of your degrees you translated six Bengali short stories by Asha porad Devi who's a
7:38
Bengali writer maybe the most famous woman writer or even writer in Bengal for much of the 20th century what connects you to her and so what problem were you trying to solve by engaging in her work well um I knew about her through my
7:55
through my mother who is a a devoted reader uh of as shapa dei's work and talked about her a lot um I mean it's interesting you know I mean my mother um read a lot but she didn't really read in English uh very much at all I mean but she read in Bengali and I remember the
8:15
the effort of you know going to Kolkata um ordering the books uh my mother the list she would give my uncle uh who had the connections with all the book sellers in uh on College Street in Kolkata which is like the book kind of District um and the drama of this you
8:34
know going and um ordering all the books from the Publishers and waiting and bringing them back you know in the brick shop piling them the whole thing and then bringing them back to the United States um you know I saw what it meant
8:47
to her uh you know and I and I saw I mean as with everything with trying to get the right ingredients what have you but the literature was you know I could see that that those books simply weren't available here um and they were in some
9:03
sense you know um her Lifeline um anyway so she would talk about these uh she would talk about the work of this particular author among o others and um and I was struck uh by the thing she described you know a very prolific author of short stories and novels um of
9:25
some very um incisive short stories about um kind of domestic life um and uh sort of classified unfairly I think as a you know a a writer for women which I don't think she is at all I think she has a much you know more Universal Power um
9:46
and and vision anyway um in graduate school I was taking this translation workshop and um so the the the assignment at some point I I was asked to translate something um and I thought well what can I do here um and um you know I had studied Latin and ancient Greek a little
10:12
bit and I had some French um and and then I had Bengali as my you know first language uh but you didn't read Bali I couldn't read it and I still really can't um and I couldn't and write in it either um and I still really can't um and and yet I uh I worked around this
10:39
obvious obstacle um and I asked my mother to read uh a number of these stories out loud and I taped her and then I listened to them and you know kept playing them back playing them back and I translated in this way um and I and I can read
11:01
enough um I mean painful painstakingly slowly but I can I I have you know it's not completely incomprehensible to me um so that I could then also go back in addition to the tapes that you know the um I could also look at the text and sort of see how things were structured
11:20
um where the breakes were um etc etc and I even caught my mother a couple of times she kind of skipped you know up here and there and I would call her up and say what about this part where she's describing you know um so it was a really interesting
11:37
project and I um but that's how it that's how it um how it started there's something about how she sets her stories in architectural space yes always that reminds me of your writings when you when you have a scene you you describe a home very often or the place
11:55
in advance and that's imposing a structure on the scene and that's in her you get that from her um well I think I wrote the in the commentary I wrote to the thesis if I've not mistaken I this was a lifetime ago but um I think that was part of the the
12:13
lens I brought to my reading to my critical reading of the stories was that she was a writer very attuned to space to physical space um and uh and so I must have been affected by this in some sense and then my doctoral dissertation
12:32
kind of built on this in that um I wrote about um jackban English drama and where it was set uh specifically often in a corrupt Italian Palazo and so what that meant so so I think as a as a reader of of literature when I was a student of literature I was very attuned to um
12:56
where things were set and why um um and what it meant um you know to have that you know that that literal architecture uh being an element of of narrative now we're at George Mason University and George Mason the man he lived in a place called Gunston Hall and
13:15
that's one of the best known examples of palladian architecture in Virginia even the whole Atlantic Seaboard so you did a PhD dissertation on Renaissance studies and what is it about palladianism and padio that that Drew your attention what
13:29
what what's the magnet there for you well I mean some things just you know now that you asked me um I'm thinking okay so what led me to this um one of the classes again that I was taking as a graduate student was um uh a class um a seminar um it was sort of a broad seminar with
13:57
lots of different professors anyway so there was this one Professor um named Roger scrutin who writes a lot about architecture I had a debate with him once nature friendship yes he he's very I won congratulations um yeah I mean he's a very well spoken
14:17
man um and with a broad range of interests um Aesthetics philosophy um architecture anyway and he um he taught part of of this class and talked about the language of architecture uh Italian architecture in particular um and I was I just was
14:39
really struck by the class the the idea of it um looking at space so carefully um these beautiful spaces what they meant the vocabulary implicit in architecture um so that was sort of step one and then um and then I went to Florence in this time I went to Italy
14:59
for the first time I went to Florence with the you know and not only did it lead to this whole other sort of phase of my life Italian writing in Italian but um it was I I went with a a special eye toward the architecture um looking
15:15
at the places that I was seeing in slides you know as a grad student in Boston and um connecting to them for the first time really experiencing them those spaces for the first time um and then when I came you know then when I was reading these plays um me I was
15:33
always interested in um where Shakespeare said his plays I was interested in his use of of Italy as a setting and then that just sort of got me started thinking about what was the relationship of um you know in Renaissance England you know what what
15:49
what was it all about and what did what did Italy represent to those to that to to England and to English artists dramatists and what why what was this voice all about um why were they setting clearly kind of English political drama in in on foreign soil and and what that
16:07
meant um and they're also afraid of Italy right it's a symbol of corruption it's a sort of horror love horror kind of LoveHate you know attraction repulsion right um contradictory you know um uh attitude uh which I tried to unpack a little bit in the in the
16:28
course of the dissertation so it's still working through some set of related problems in a way yeah and I think one thing that's always sort of in there is this idea of translation and bringing back and crossing over you know um I
16:43
mean one thing certainly that was happening in the Renaissance was that these you know people were literally traveling to Venice to Florence to Rome and seeing this architecture which is sort of you know born from that place and then bringing those ideas back
17:03
translating The Works of you know Vitruvius or Alberti or whomever um and then using those ideas to build literally to build buildings in England and then from there we have things here um in the United States so that also interested me to continue the Whirlwind
17:23
tour of your career in preparing for this I reread interpreter of maladies and this was the sense I had this time around that one of your characters Mr kapasi who is The Interpreter of maladies so if people come to the doctor and they only speak Gujarati he's able
17:41
to translate that for the doctor and explain what the symptoms are that in a sense in the book you view yourself the author as The Interpreter of maladies so people who are disconnected in different ways and you're the one doing the
17:55
interpreting and he's at the center of the book and he's a standin for you is that just my imagination probably not but I don't think I was aware of it at the time you know I mean I think um just yesterday I was um I was talking
18:13
in in Princeton to um at a place called D's house which is sort of dedicated to Italian American culture so on any we were talking about um the most recent book and um and talking about uh at one point I was talking about this idea of um you know in in in in in
18:36
Antiquity um in Latin uh the word for translator is interpreter and I teach translation now and you know I I talk a lot to my students about translation being the most intimate form of reading and how there was a there was you know
18:55
there was the time when translating and interpreting and analyzing sort of were all one one thing and now there are translators and then there are people who look at books and analyze them and our Scholars and Etc and there's not it's not necessarily you know the same
19:11
activity um and it strikes me because now many years mean so I wrote interpreter of maladies that was my first book I called it that I heard the title in this strange you know flash um and and now years later years have have gone by and I have I I'm now just
19:32
setting out on a new phase of my creative Life as a translator um and so I think it's all one Continuum but I just wasn't one can't see one can't realize these things in the moment you know you have to it's only looking back that you kind of see certain patterns
19:51
another thing that struck me about this book was how much it had in common with Elena fante in some ways and of course this is at a time when you wouldn't have read her yet but this notion of both feeling and need to set everything right
20:05
for so many different people and being unable to and that carrying a kind of sadness and then interjected into the story always are books so books both have this immense power like everyone's reading them everyone's looking to them for answers and yet at the same time
20:22
books are somehow impotent because they don't actually allow anyone to actually set everything right for a parents or other sets of people and she has a bit of that and you have a bit of that and of course it's completely independent uh
20:36
but your later fascination with her seems already to be an interpreter of maladies in some ways does that make sense to you well I certainly recognized that in her work when I read her um and I wrote to her I wrote some letters um I I wrote two letters to her that were
20:54
sort of public letters that I read uh in Rome some years ago um uh in public um and maybe she was there or maybe she wasn't um in any case she did write back to me um and uh and I talked precisely about this I talked about um you know how she uses how she how she
21:19
how books are characters in her work um and the the the you know I think her work in some sense is about um about reading and about language and and literature and what it means um you know on a very deep level a very sophisticated level I don't think my
21:37
work is doing that at all but um but but I I think about it a lot um and um you know so I I I was very struck by by by that element of her of her work and you know this focus on uh characters who write um characters become writers um
22:01
you know how books shape and form us and and and on the one hand and how they you know betray us on the other hand and can't really contain what life is um this sort of contradiction um at heart now if you compare interpreter of maladies to your other short Story
22:21
collection unaccustomed Earth do you think of the latter more recent work as being more about reconciliation and this a greater role for children or families in at least some of the stories or do you think overall your Fiction with time
22:37
is moving in the direction of Hardy and becoming darker I think it's becoming darker and I think that's usually the the case the case as we get older right um uh so I think that and I I that's my sense and I I feel that um you know though I really try not
23:05
to uh read a lot about what people say about my work um I also don't live in a vacuum in outer space and so I I sense you know reactions to to certain things right and I I think um you know as as the years have gone by and and the books have you know evolved um um you know uh
23:31
the vision has has become a little less forgiving less tolerant um um a little less Bittersweet and more just maybe bitter um and uh you know and that's fine I mean you know I I remember even with the lowland um you know I and I I don't think my
24:00
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 and I and and we had you know we we share a love of Hardy and I just said would you really have said that to
24:18
Hardy and uh and she didn't say anything else you know um but and and so I published the book I wanted to publish but lot of people have said to me I just couldn't read the book you know um it was just too heavy too dark too whatever whatever and they miss they miss I think
24:39
um the the sort of Bittersweet quality of of of say a novel like the namesake you bring up Loland I'd like to ask you a few questions about Bengal if someone's visiting India and they ask me for advice I say you simply absolutely must go to
24:56
Kolkata uh if you to the extent you feel the same way how would you articulate why it is people ought to go visit Kolkata because it's one of the most fascinating places on Earth that is um you know I I mean it's just a city that uh is like no other um with a with a
25:20
with um you know um a life a cultural life a history uh utterly its own and hard uh and beautiful um I mean its beauty is not what one you know sort of conventional you know people say oh well is it a beautiful city well well no I mean yes
25:43
parts of it can be yes of course um but but not in that conventional sense um and it's it's it's it's challenging on the whole host of levels and I I of course you know I don't know it as a Forest right because my family is from there and I've never known it in any
26:03
other way other than when I was very young where my grandparents lived and then my auns and uncles my cousins and so forth um so I have my own relationship to it um but um you know it's it's it it has its it's it's like it's like not knowing New York
26:25
City uh in the American context I mean it just it's it's it's just its own thing and it's so strong in its flavor and its power um and its energy um so you know um it it has to be reckoned with you know um I think and uh if I think of Indian economists the two
26:49
of the best known would be amaren and Abit banery and they're both Bengali of course why does it seem that so much of the Indian intelligencia comes from Kolkata or Bengal what is it in the water so to speak I don't know I mean um I just I know that they're I mean I
27:13
hate to make these kind of sweeping General generalized comments I don't believe in them but um but but you know uh it's a city that believes in its poets um that that is uh believes in its politics uh believes in its believes in
27:34
humanity in some sense um and uh and and and life is so extreme there uh in so many ways um people are put to the test and and you see life being put to the test constantly around you and and there's nothing you can really accept you know easily or take
27:57
for granted about about yourself or about the universe if you've been there you know I mean it just it's a jolt um to to your Consciousness and uh but but but a fundamental one an essential one you know to to shake us out of this whatever takes over if you protect
28:17
yourself now if I were to take a a superficial reading of Indian history earlier Kolkata is the central capital for the British Empire in India and you could argue that it's the British left India since World War II Kolkata has
28:32
become significantly less Central in some ways Delhi and Mumbai seem to become more important a do you think that's true and B if it is true do you think that actually in part accounts for why Kolkata has stayed so interesting that loss of centrality or existing on
28:48
the margins you even have a nice Italian word for this well um I think it's it's it's retained a certain character that um uh the other big cities um you know have have have a more kind of Western overlay at this point you know um I mean Kolkata
29:12
is not far behind and it's changed radically from you know the city I knew when I was a young girl um and now I think with you know development globalization what have you um you know you have lots of development and all the five store hotels you could ever want
29:35
and all the companies and Banks and things and fancy roads and you know all of that stuff that back in the 70s you know Kolkata didn't have those things and then the airport was you know distinctly not glamorous and any all of these things you know so you you felt
29:52
you know okay this is a different kind of experience um not um not designed for the tourist not designed for the important person you know um shall we say um but and so now so that has already changed and that that distance is smaller um significantly smaller but in
30:14
in some sense you know yes I think it still retains its own particular flavor and energy uh because of this maybe and how emotionally tied do you feel to the earlier history so in 1905 keron partitions what is now West Bengal Bengal from what is now
30:34
Bangladesh and you can easily imagine some alternate history where that hadn't happened and the way the national borders would have been divvied up would be quite different from what we see is that just abstract history to you the way you know I might read about the
30:50
English Renaissance or is that something that has emotional oomph in your mind in your heart and you you you feel somehow torn as a Bengali that you've been separated from other bengalis in some way or is it just not part of your connection to West
31:09
Bengal well um I mean it's interesting and my my relationship with Indian history is kind of in these two two categories in some I mean in some sense you know I didn't study any of it because I was raised here right and so India just wasn't on any map
31:30
anywhere ever um and um so there was that you know there was a sort of formal separation um as as as a as a child growing up in this country when I was growing up um on the other hand you know I come from my family and I because we would go back to Kolkata quite often and
31:54
because um my family and their friends um you know talked a lot about um their country their City history events um so I was always aware at the same time of um these incredibly traumatic events um in in Indian history and and the the
32:17
partition uh uh most of all uh what that meant um particularly for my father's family um the neighborhood that my father grew up which I describe uh in the lowland um a little bit um I uh you know I was I I I asked my parents when I was a young girl you know we this
32:43
one of the stories in interpretive Melodies called when Mr pada comes to dine comes from a kind of vague memory of a man from Bangladesh a scholar who was living in in Rhode Island in the 1970s during that that Civil War and and
32:59
my curiosity about who he was and why he was there and then stories my parents told me um and and then As I Grew Older as I as I became more of a conscious you know person teenage or wondering about things I going back to India you know I I I was slowly starting to fill in sort
33:20
of pieces like okay so this is what happened and it happened this it happened at this time and then this and this is what you know this meant this wave of people came and all of these people um you know lived this thing um but but on top of that there's the
33:36
there's the residue there's the emotional residue of what it's meant for certain people um either in my family or people that my family knows um who remain um deeply scarred by those events and not only deeply scarred but actively hostile
33:58
resentful um uh toward uh you know for the case of my family uh toward toward East Bengal and Muslims for example um and and so this was something that I you know I took in um and I still take in um and and that uneasy relationship between Hindus and Muslims uh in in
34:23
Bengali culture right um is still very alive uh today and um you know my my daughter uh her name is n uh which is a Persian name um but you know um there were there were people in my family who commented on that choice of name um thinking well you know what does she
34:50
think she's doing because it's Parish because it's It's associated with Muslims and etc etc and this kind of hatred intolerance prejudice this you know um that is what I'm saying is it's still it's something that's still very much in my in my family's Kitchen in
35:04
their in their their dinner table I mean my parents are are not like that at all right and they they taught me to have you know to be free of these kinds of um attitudes but you know perhaps that's easier for me to say because I didn't
35:23
experience the trauma of losing my family losing Los their ancestral property for example you know which some some of their friends experienced and therefore even now in 2016 they're still you know saying Oh but you know this horrible thing happened and you know
35:42
we're still upset about it so and what 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
35:58
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 the Cosmopolitan and the particular he was even interested in book design he was a kind of polymath he studied many things worked in different
36:14
forms is that just parallel or an influence or well I mean I think if you're Bengali you just he's like a member of your family in some sense you know um I mean he's a god he's you know in this Pantheon like place right um he's not a
36:35
god he's person um but but you know for for for people I mean my my parents again they they aren't religious people so they didn't give us a religious education but they they certainly taught us to respect the great the great minds and the great Visionaries and so so tor
36:57
is one of those right um and the fact that he happens to be Bengali and won the Nobel Prize well you know details um but you know I mean I my um my grandfather was a painter my uncle was a painter um I grew up with portraits of tagor all over our house I have a
37:19
portrait of him um in my uh in my house uh painted by a watercolor by my uncle I have a beautiful photograph my mother dug up recently of um so my my grandfather's brother was a press photographer and he um took the last he took the p a picture of tagore and his
37:41
at his last public um you know the last time he spoke in public and so I have this Photograph that's just next to me when I'm writing um so I feel this kind of you know this constant presence uh shall we say um again my limitation in
38:01
not really being a flu fluent reader of of Bengali is you know it is it creates a situation it does I mean I've read him in mostly in Translation I've read fiction I've read poetry I grew up hearing all of the songs like 24 hours a day in my house um so you know
38:21
um but I don't I'm not aware of any kind of conscious influence if that's that you're asking but again what's conscious what's unconscious now let's move to maybe what's my favorite book of yours in other words which I take to be your
38:36
Memoir of learning to engage with both reading Italian dealing with Italian culture and most of all writing in Italian a remarkably Brave thing to do and it it comes off extremely well I'm just going to toss out the names of a few Italian writers the the Lesser known
38:53
ones and if you have a connection to them tell us why you think they're interesting or how they've shaped you in some way uh feel free to pass on anyone of course Lala Romano okay um well I had never heard of her until I was living in Rome and I
39:12
just was reading the paper one day um and read an article about her uh and it was interesting uh I took a note I took note of it I took note of the name um and I went to the Bookshop and I said I'd like to read this author and they said oh yeah she's sort of hard to
39:36
find you know kind of not that well distributed um anyway so I ordered some books and um and uh and in fact what I did uh because it was so hard to find the books um you know I I went through the person who wrote this is Italy right everybody
39:59
knows everybody so I the person who wrote the article I knew so I said you know how do I get these books and he said well what you need to do is you need to write to her husband who has all the books you know he has like a warehouse in his in their house um I said okay so
40:18
I wrote the husband um and so there were some back and forth and then he sent me um a pack packet of books from from Milano from Milan and they never made it to Rome you know happens they're still on a train somewhere yes so I waited I waited
40:38
for these books and they weren't coming and then I said listen these books I know you kindly sent them but um and then one thing led to another and I was I found myself in Milan and again I kind of reignited this um uh interest and he said well why
41:01
don't you come over um and then I went to her house um and I saw her house where she used to live and we had a you know very interesting conversation um I saw her desk I saw her things I saw her paintings um and he gave me all of her
41:22
books like you know like a cart full of her books um and that was really exciting um but no so I and anyway so I started reading her um with great interest um she's an incredibly sort of modernist writer in some sense her language is um incredible uh essential
41:43
in its quality um she wrote um uh an extraordinarily powerful book uh that I you know if if there's you know life is long enough uh and there's time I would like to translate um called nari EST and it's um it's a sort of two-part um uh um Memoir um of her of
42:09
losing her husband and and you know there's so many books now about grief and the loss of a loved one and what that means and um but this was something she that was written a long time ago before all these books became kind of part of our culture culture um so so
42:26
that's an amazing book of her she wrote a lot of interesting very interesting novels she um she wrote about homecomings to places that don't exist anymore also she she did um and then one of the things that uh also really struck me um was at the end of her life she was
42:43
almost blind um and uh and still the drive to write was so intense and constant and um so her husband her second husband you know the one who survives her um was you know was explaining that when when she was in the Final Phase of her life um
43:05
and could barely see she would you know she had these enormous pieces of paper basically and and would just sort of write a couple of words a sentence or two a day like this and these very kind of kind of the words were just burning
43:22
with with life and and with her need to express herself um in spite of the the the the disability and um and these these writings were collected in um in a book called the last Diary um which I read and there's a one of her they're almost like little um you know fragments
43:44
um epigrams some of these little entries and one of them says um in Italian it says which means my blindness is a point of view and um and I was really um I really marveled at that because I felt like it kind of explained at least to me um the the
44:09
purpose of writing in Italian because of course she wasn't totally blind she was partially blind and and I'm not totally blind in Italian either but I feel kind of partially blind now I don't want to compare myself to her because she had
44:25
actually a physical you know uh issue with her eyesight and she would didn't choose that for herself um and she suffered for it whereas my project is something that comes from me and it's voluntary but it is this kind of voluntary blindness right but it's
44:43
richer for you to read in Italian and maybe even sometimes to write in Italian now because the partial blindness gives you a new lens on all these problems you've been trying to come to terms with well it makes you look harder yeah right another writer cesari
45:00
paves well um paves is huge you know he 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
45:22
Pav's translation of M dick surpasses the work of and does it well I you know I actually haven't read it yet I would like to I keep meaning to pick it up when I'm over there um but uh but he was he was you know a colossal colossal writer from um from
45:43
Turin uh that great literary City uh where you have um Primo Levi Natalia Ginsburg um analdi the the publishing house um you know all concentrated in this part of uh Italy in the north over toward France and um and pav wrote uh very much in the um autobiographical
46:08
vein um and did things that you know again I think now it's oh it's fashionable when the writer becomes a character and oh we all write about ourselves and there's a lot of memoir and things but these are PE things that he was doing you know in um after World
46:25
War II you know he had a tragic life he suffered deeply um he committed suicide um he left behind a incredible um sort of writer's notebook um uh that is an extraordinarily powerful uh work um you know very very dark very uh very true um and uh wrote
46:54
lots of short stories uh as well as um you know a series of kind of slim novels um and he worked really hard as a translator uh not only his own translations um of many American Authors um had a very rich relationship with the English language um uh but also sort of over
47:18
oversaw a lot of translation projects um he writes like an American writer in some ways well he was influenced I mean this is what's interesting he was influenced by reading and translating um Melville among others and and and and and his Italian has a
47:37
different energy as a result of that translation and I think those translations and and his relationship with English and I think um I think this is what's kind of missing in American literature right now in some sense I mean I I I feel like um with the
47:52
exception of of poets American poets who who have um um devoted time and energy to other literatures to translation whether it's Ezra pound or other poets um WS merman Mark strand I mean you have examples of people who who translate and make that part of their creative work
48:10
but um relatively very few fiction writers um stop to think about it um or or or engage with it you know um and so but but I think um my my you know knowledge now of of of Italian writers um um has opened up something because I I think you know for
48:37
me I mean I just finished translating my first novel from Italian and it has been such a formative experience for me and and um and and powerful and and just deepened my awareness of what of what words are in literature and language and
48:54
all of that it's just been I kind of can't believe it's taking me this long you know but I'm excited and um uh but I think someone like pav was like you know blazed the way uh in some sense one of my wishes is that you someday give us a book on Italian
49:11
fiction and here's a writer not Italian but writing in another language not the mother tongue agot Kristoff yes amazing it's important you have her book there um well she is and that's a Trilogy right um yeah she wrote this Trilogy and she wrote some other
49:30
books too um so she was Hungarian and left um during The Invasion to fled to Switzerland with her small kids her husband and her dictionaries um and writes about this in an amazing little book called the um the illiterate analfabeta I read it in
49:54
Italian it must be called something else in French um alet but um but she taught herself how to write in French um and um and all of her literary work is is in French uh in and I read her uh I I came to her in Italian so I came to her in Translation but not in an
50:15
English translation in Italian translation and my life was never the same after reading her I mean she's just one of those readers you just you you you remain forever altered um uh extraordinarily powerful deep uh uh profound profound writer
50:37
um uh dark and but very human um and the just the kind of stuff that you don't you know find very easily um uh anyway but she is you know inspiring to me um deeply because of her because of this incredible effort she made her whole life to try to express
51:02
herself in a learned language um now of course the difference between her um and and and myself uh is uh is that she I think she always had a sort of antagonistic relationship with French even though she went out of her way to
51:20
learn it and to express herself in it because she was living in Switzerland and she felt that she couldn't really function as a writer without expressing herself in French whereas I've sort of gone out of my way uh to do this crazy thing that everyone
51:33
discourages Me discourages me from doing which is writing in Italian 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 so I once had a
51:52
hypothesis about book covers and I thought I would go to bord bookstore when it still existed and look at everything on the front table and try to ignore all other information I had about the book and simply buy the one whose cover appealed to me the most and I
52:09
wanted to see whether the publishing trade actually would do a good job of Designing a cover so that it would match what I was looking for in a book and I ended up buying Kate christenson's the great man which I thought was quite a good novel okay and I only did that once
52:25
but I considered the EXP experiment to be a success so do you think based on your study of book covers your own books aside but our book covers assigned to books efficiently or is there something in the process that's gone wrong
52:47
well I mean I've never I've never tried this experiment I will maybe um it's hard to block out all the other information because you recognize name publishing houses where they put it on the table but still you can approximate it yeah I mean I I talk a little bit in
53:04
this little essay about being drawn to certain books just because there's some Allure appeal something I'm projecting something the book is projecting something I'm projecting onto the book some relationship I want to have with the book because it's I don't know some
53:20
landscape I want to find myself in someday or I don't know you know um I mean if you think of a book as a as a mirror right and if you just sort of think well that's how I would like to look if I were a tree or if I were a whatever you know some image
53:39
um um but I you know no the the essay is really about um the disconnect uh between what's on the outside and what's on the inside often and and what that feels like from a writer's point point of view um because it's both a disconnect and a source of
54:01
can be at least for me a source of real anguish because you can't really disconnect yourself from what you look like 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
54:18
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 because you didn't do it but I find I can't put it out of my mind even being aware of the entire process and there's something about you know the
54:34
floating Tiara or crown or whatever it is it leaves an imprint on my impression of the book even though I know it's not by you MH it's this it's that oh you have it on yeah yeah that's I think that's what they they literally designed
54:49
it after that yeah so it's a very pretty cover but maybe it's too pretty I think I'm not going to get any any trouble um any more trouble that I'm already in how do you feel about blurs well I I mean I say what I feel about blurbs in the in the essay um you
55:08
know some of my Publishers have been a little uncomfortable about publishing that sentence in my book actually um because I just say what I feel and I think this is what one of the things about writing an Italian that people aren't prepared for is that I actually
55:23
don't pretend anymore um and I try not to you know I'm not concerned about making everybody happy um but um but no I mean one of the things I say in the book in this essay is that I actually can't these books don't even I mean as much as I appreciate truly this this
55:45
lovely display that you made but I this isn't my book anymore you know this once the cover is on it it's not my book and again I mean having lived in in Italy and having Italian F writer friends um so many examples of novels there have
56:05
covers chosen by the author imagine that but you know but it but suddenly you you you have a whole you know you have the inside you have the words you have the pages that the author created and you actually you have an image that the author
56:22
felt that they wanted he or she wanted to represent visually what the book is saying I mean if I had that freedom if I had that ability I would be such a happy you know it would make making to going to museums even more exciting because I would always be thinking oh maybe you
56:40
know maybe this maybe that um you know who knows maybe an image could even inspire a book in that sense if I had if one had that ability to say oh you know what I I went to the show this Gallery the other day and I saw this image and
56:53
it was so beautiful and I I was thinking about it and and this whole novel grew out of it or this whole collection of stories or whatever these things can happen they just don't happen here um as much as I wish they did um I brought a copy of a German book it's by RKA the
57:08
publisher is ream the cover is plain it's just a color and if you go to German bookstores at least parts of them they're actually organized by Publishers you probably know other countries in in Italy too in France and the books more or less all look the same how do you
57:24
feel about this system I love them so you would opt into this system for well I mean I talk about that in the book I mean I the whole piece is a kind of you know meditation on the idea of wearing a uniform and and dressing yourself and
57:40
how this you know these contradictory uh approaches right to to to to presenting oneself what they mean um it's like you have to make a statement about where you've decided to rest in the on the identity question and a cover forces your hand in a way you'd
58:01
rather be hovering in this ambiguity yeah I mean I I prefer I prefer this kind of cover because to me there's a protective quality to the lack of specificity and and the and the belonging to the the you know the series which is what Europe you know I mean in
58:21
in the US you have certain series as well and um in in fact I was thinking I mean I wrote the essay when I was in Rome and I was far away from my American library and my books and things but now that I'm back here and I unpacked a lot
58:35
of my books 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 I mean these are beautiful books um American books that
58:52
all kind of looked the same similar dimensions have a kind of sober quality um a lot of emphasis on type um so I won't say that it doesn't happen here but I think for like the average writer and the average publisher it's a very different dialogue that's happening when
59:10
it comes to putting a book uh putting a cover onto a book and um and so I think if I had to choose I would choose that the safety of the uniform because of course I mean the the whole piece the whole little essay whatever begins with
59:27
a with the memory of being a child and being traumatized by having to dress myself um because it just churned up so many problems uh and and was a source of true anguish for me as a child to have to put on my to choose clothes and put them on and this has this has economic
59:47
ramifications this has um cultural ramifications this say all sorts of ramifications because clothes are you know things we buy in stores and etc etc um and I so I had this sort of crazy uh you know um Envy admiration Envy Obsession uh with my cousin's school
1:00:10
uniforms in Kolkata um because they were all the same and they just put on what they had to wear to school every day and it was the same thing and I and I dreamed about that I dreamed of being able to wake up in the United States and just putting on
1:00:25
my blue skirt and my white shirt and my black shoes and going to school and nobody um commenting on what I was wearing um because I was always so terrified because people were always commenting on what I was wearing and you know either teasing me or whatever um
1:00:43
and and and so in that sense you know I think there's this kind of you know where do you stand between wanting to express yourself and be free you know and and and being afraid of that freedom um and being being actually vulnerable
1:01:00
to that freedom um I mean I I think America represents freedom with a big capital F and it always has and we hope it always will for the good um but there's also the danger of that in that you know I mean even as a young girl in the 70s as a kid immigrant you know
1:01:20
child of immigrants I knew what it meant to shop in one store versus another store I saw what the girls in my class were wearing the kinds of shoes the kinds of purses I knew that my parents weren't taking me to those stores that they thought that was a waste of money
1:01:34
and that we're not going to pay all of this $40 for Nike sneakers or whatever it is because it's a waste and you're going to grow out of them in 6 months you know whereas my other schoolmates had these things and suddenly there was
1:01:45
the gap between me and them reinforced by these things and I think for a child at least for me these things were traumatizing um and I imagine for others as well two last questions before we get to Q&A I'll give them both to you together first what do you love most in
1:02:03
Indian classical music and second what are you working on next well um again from my mother I I inherited received um learned to appreciate uh Indian classical uh um music most of all sitar music um which she's always been passionate about and
1:02:26
my family my all my uncles my great uncles my cousins I mean I come from a broad extended family you know passionate enthusiasts of of um of of um Theo mostly the the instrument of uh Ali Akbar Khan and Amad Ali Khan and you know so I grew up my whole life um uh
1:02:50
listening to this very complex uh beautiful music um that is you know really has spoken to me uh and just the other day I was in the Princeton Art Museum there's a beautiful uh exhibit there right now um which it's not that far I really do
1:03:08
recommend uh a big collection of Miniatures two big rooms of extraordinary works and one of the one of the whole chambers of this exhibit is is dedicated to like Miniatures basically inspired by the the rag cycles and there was like some there were
1:03:26
headphones and I put them on and I was listening to one of them and you know it's just a part of that music is a part of me and um and I I really am very uh you know it's sort of part of my my formation I think it's extraordinary and your next work uh well um my next work so I have
1:03:48
two kind of things that are happening one is um uh so I just translated this novel uh called um ties in English it's Lai is the Italian Title by Dominico ston um who is my friend and whom I consider the finest Italian living author um and I just translated this
1:04:13
novel I'm just at the final stages and it will be out in March uh I think it's an amazing novel I read it two years ago when it was first published I'm so grateful for um the opportunity to have brought it into English um I'm really excited about it
1:04:31
and uh and um and then on the other side I am slowly quietly writing some short very short stories in Italian jimple leiri thank you very much four questions Q with the two mics please keep in mind these are questions not statements if you go on and on I
1:05:04
will cut you off and we will alternate mics Natasha um I was hoping you would ask about it but and I think everybody asks about it and maybe it's not such an interesting question anymore but it's interesting to me and I'm hoping you
1:05:21
would answer um you mentioned that you really like yena anante and we all do too at least most of us and I wanted to hear your take on all this anonymity situation and uh whether you think um right now is it considered in Italy that everybody really knows who
1:05:45
she is after all this U articles which came out or is it still a mystery and just what's your take on the whole situation well um I think the whole situation is you know completely blown out of proportion and and and ridiculous um
1:06:10
I I know personally the person who has been accused of being Elena fante um um or um she's actually the wife of Dominico Sone um who has also been you know accused whatever uh the word is I mean it is like a trial though I mean and this is the Absurd thing
1:06:33
because whoever wrote those books did nothing wrong uh and it's been treated almost as if it were a crime um and the nature of the article uh the very violent article inappropriate article that was published a couple of months ago um that the language of that was
1:06:51
very disturbing and offensive to me um whoever wrote those books uh the world is no better off knowing who the actual person is and I think you know we've all completely lost perspective in that you know so many beautiful things have been created by mankind that we still go to
1:07:13
look at and Marvel at or read or whatever the case may be and nobody's hung up on who exactly the person was and what their name was and when their what their birthday is or you know this whole Cult of the individual and the individual hand and signature behind
1:07:32
what's being done um these are kind of recent Concepts if you think about them um so I mean and again people in in Italy just they don't care about this you know I mean they have their own things they have other things to think about and worry about at
1:07:50
this point so this whole pante thing you know I mean it the article came out you know exchanged some messages with my friends saying you know this is just disgusting and why and so unnecessary and then everybody moved onwards I think here in America it's
1:08:07
become it's just going this it's just ongoing and it never it's it's just not dying it's not people aren't moving on and saying you know let's just either read the books or not read the books but you know if someone goes out of their way to say you know I would like to
1:08:24
write with anonymity why why that can't be respected in our culture is uh really kind of you know mystifying to me um and also distressing in terms of you know what what that means um and the projection people have uh onto the idea of of of you
1:08:49
know who the the writer might be and the reasons and you know all of this speculation which which it could be a very simple simple thing you know um but it's it's become it's become kind of contorted I feel like in this at least
1:09:05
in in the United States maybe in England I don't know um but it's not the same in in in Italy people aren't really talking about it in the same way next question um hello um Miss uh leiri I admire your writing I start with this so thank you for all your books um I grew
1:09:24
up in Poland actually my first degree is from G University I'm bilingual but I teach teach English here and I write in English I'm a fiction writer um when I think about being bilingual I feel like I'm inhabited inhabiting two different
1:09:41
types of personality when I am in Polish I'm a different person when I in English and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about being bilingual and writing in Italian now do you feel like you are one person who inhabits sort of two different worlds or you feel
1:09:58
yourself splitting apart and sort of feeling that you are depending on the language a totally different sort of person well I think anybody who is fortunate enough to have more than one language recognizes that you know I mean some people go so far as to say if you
1:10:18
know more than one language you have more than one Soul um and that's a very thoughtful way of thinking about it um but I I think you know language represents you know kind of a very specific but vast universe and and each language
1:10:38
represents that and I think you know even before I learned Italian I I always grew up with two languages side by side and maybe I didn't know them in exactly the right kind of the same level of proficiency but um but they were both incredibly
1:10:59
strong influences on who I was um so you know I always was was you know divided in that sense [Music] um so I think that's true and I and I I can say for the Italian project you know as I was saying you know this idea of a new point of view that comes from a new language um
1:11:26
and in addition the sense of Freedom that a learned language might provide you uh to just kind of you know set to the side certain a certain baggage that the long distance you you you you Traverse in in one in another language you know might be in
1:11:47
some sense holding you back um from saying what you really need to say so um so for example I would never have written under another words in in English I would never have written the clothing of books essay in English you know um so this is why the Italian is
1:12:05
valuable to me it's interesting next question hi Juma so um one thing I found really interesting about the namesake was how you describe Google as um kind of olive toned and sort of being able to pass as Mediterranean sometimes um and I think
1:12:23
that's really interesting especially given the obvious tension between um his kind of Indian identity and like assimilating into American culture and so um was this a conscious decision to make him able to P sort of pass as white and if so can you speak to how this
1:12:42
relates to your own experiences of colorism and passing um H well I I wasn't really thinking about those things um I think I think um I I I'm now recalling maybe there's a moment in the book where someone says to him oh you could be Spanish or something
1:13:11
um but I think that's more about projecting not about who he is but maybe how we project what we how we like to project kind of sameness onto other people right to make them more comfortable to us um and to dilute the sense of difference maybe that's what
1:13:33
it's really about um you know uh just to go back to this book covers piece um there's there's a certain part of the essay in which I talk about the intolerance of of of foreign my foreign Publishers uh for for the various book covers so you know I I
1:13:54
mean I remember showing my one of my Publishers I'm not going to make specify anybody here um but I remember I I I I I'll just say this I was in Rome and the Italian cover of of in other words in Al par it had come out and one of my other
1:14:11
Publishers was visiting and I showed it to this person and I just remember the expression on you I was like interesting you know and I think that is really what is that the heart of the matter it's just that refusal to recognize ourselves in the
1:14:35
other right so if you have someone who has a kind of you know features that can can be perceived as this or be perceived as that I mean you know I mean depending on where I go in the world I I'm mistaken for lots of things you know if I'm in Latin America
1:14:55
if I'm in India if I'm in you know maybe some other places and sometimes not and sometimes I'm immediately identified as as the other but I think it's sort of more based on the context and not on the person um but I I wasn't really thinking very deeply about it to be honest with
1:15:13
you um I think it was just one of those small details about other people's desire to to to render the same people who are who are actually different you know next question um excuse me one thing that I found I find so powerful about your work
1:15:34
is that you not only understand the Viewpoint of being a child of immigrants but also your parents um Viewpoint as well and if you feel comfortable sharing I'm wondering um to what extent have you spoken to your parents about the joys
1:15:47
and challeng challenges of the Immigrant experience or was that something that you more so inferred from your own observations so you're asking if I asked my parents what it was like to be an immigrant MH did you ever have those like deep meaningful conversations about that
1:16:07
experience or did you feel like it was more so something that you observed I was living that experience that was my whole experience that was my whole life I mean there was no moment where I wasn't aware that my parents came from a place place that was
1:16:25
very far away where people spoke a different language and ate different food and wore different clothes and thought about the world in different ways and that they were they were not there you know and that's that's my life um that's that's my whole life and
1:16:41
there's no part of my life that was any anything else you know I mean I and every every relationship I had uh that I made that I created that I forged outside of you know my my family kind of Base was was informed by that that awareness you know that this is these
1:17:03
were the parents that had brought me into the world and this is what their experience was um so no I never I never sat ever sat down and asked them what it was like because I was living it every single day and I saw the the effects of what it means to live your
1:17:23
life away from the your point of reference right um so and and this just goes so deep and and so vast and so specific and so minute by minute um and that constant back and forth you know in one's being to to kind of make sense and to be I mean it's like Again The Interpreter you
1:17:49
know it's like it's like being a simultaneous interpreter all the time um and and I think that of course it's not ironic that my book is called the interpretive Melodies and involves this character who is literally interpreting simultaneously
1:18:05
for for people because I feel like that's what but that's not what I was necessarily doing for my parents it was what I was doing for myself you know next question thank you um firstly my compliments to both of you for such wonderful conversation my
1:18:20
question is more related to the journey of an author um do you think think compared to when you uh be began writing do you feel more inhibited or UNH uninhibited as an author now and what brings that about while writing always scares me and
1:18:43
intimidates me um and I've always felt that and I think if I ever stop feeling that I I probably shouldn't write anymore um I think now there is a kind of formal challenge of writing in a in a language that I don't have full control of
1:19:05
um so that's intimidating and don't you know just very daunting um but I was talking to a group of students before this larger conversation about how even in English I started out with that same trepidation um and in some sense I don't want to lose
1:19:27
touch with that you know that unease because I think that's important um it's important to approach uh in that in that way at least for me um you know not to not feel totally comfortable and certainly not to feel uh confident because it's really more about
1:19:52
an an investigation and experiment um a challenge you know and so these things cannot be undertaken in the spirit of sure I can do that you know you have to question it at every step and you have to question what you're doing and how you're doing it and
1:20:11
why you're doing it um so I believe that that's very important next question hi um I just want to start off by thanking you for goal's character because there are very few authors that truly understand the indianamerican Immigrant narrative as well as you do um
1:20:31
and my question is of all the characters you've penned which one do you see yourself most in or is there one and why thank you well um you know I mean there there are pieces of me and some of of of various things I've written um aspects uh kind of concealed or jumbled
1:20:59
together rearranged um you know so so various characters you know if I if I had to say you know they they they shadings um that I feel close to literally um but uh but I think um as I say in the afterwards afterward to in other words um the most kind of explicitly
1:21:28
autobiographical story I've ever written is the first story I wrote in Italian which is called The Exchange which is a very weird abstract story um but that came literally from an experience I had and um and I I made I wrote the story very
1:21:49
quickly afterward based on that experience and it was just sort of lifted from something that had happened to me so in that sense I feel very close to that character needless to say because I I shared you know what happened though there are certain
1:22:04
invented details in that story as well and I'm not and because it's fiction you know it's not the truth um but agot kristo if you really want to talk about this stuff and think about it read agot kristo because she's just she's the she's a genius she's like the Oracle of
1:22:20
all of this stuff you know she really knows uh what it means to to to create out of life and that incredibly fluid mysterious boundary between real life and art um her her work investigates it just head on in a way that's um unforgettably
1:22:44
powerful last question we have three minutes total yes um I have a couple of quick nuts and bolts questions about writing and your process um your Pros is very much characterized by restraint and economy and I'm curious what kind of writer you are are you a
1:23:02
linear writer who gets it you know each sentence right before you move on to the next or are you do you overwrite and cut back mercilessly um and my other question is you write often of nostalgia and longing and I'm curious how you avoid sentimentality um
1:23:25
well that's nice to hear um I'm glad that that's the case uh in your opinion um you know I think I write about loss um I write less about Nostalgia I think uh I mean it's connected of course um but uh but that's really what the writing you know everything I've written
1:23:52
has that um at its core the idea of loss um and uh and as for how I write I just I mean I I don't know how I write but I certainly am I'm not you know I me I I go through you know a million drafts and I'm constantly reworking everything so
1:24:14
you know the idea of writing a sentence that's you know that's all set to go and then moving on to the next one is is it's the opposite whatever the opposite of that is that's that's how it work Juma thank you very much let's have a big round of applause [Applause]