Jhumpa Lahiri - "Non-Elt books" that have helped me revamp the way I've perceived language: “writing with your left hand, your weak hand" - reading In Other Words, by Jhumpa Lahiri.
“When I can’t remember words, I fear I’ve abandoned them.”
I dabbled in some writing earlier today and picked my brain on relevant yet non-palatable topics that may exceed the bounds of our English Language Teaching community. By no means do I intend to offer a dumbing down of widespread issues, but I thought of approaching problems without embellishing them in sumptuous style.
To begin with, I thought it would be a balm to us if I didn’t start my text with a lengthy, convoluted quotation on a hermeneutic topic from Immediacy or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism, by Anna Kornbluh. But I had a change of heart while writing and ended up opting to share an insightful quotation before getting into the nuts and bolts of my condensed, straightforward analysis—though I do derive a lot of fun from writing in a roundabout manner.
Were I to share my take on this snippet, I would encourage you to read it twice or even three times, savouring every combination of words, metaphorical arcs, and the collage of images crafted through language. Anna Kornbluh has a unique, idiomatic writing style that may defy our understanding and challenge our reading skills. Every now and then, I indulge myself in the sentences she composed in this masterpiece—and I feel I still have a long path to pave. Though she is not the central part of my text, I believe that striking up a dialogue between her writing and Jhumpa Lahiri’s would be very fruitful indeed:
”Immediacy rules art as well as economics, politics as much as intimacy. It's at the art of auction, in the boardroom, in the lingo, on the brain. Exacerbating this hegemony. immediacy, animates even contemporary critical theory that now sidles too close to its objects, embracing rather than disarticulating dominant logics […]. The colloquial connotation of immediacy as “urgency”underlines the temporal dimension of this style, a hurry-hurry that compresses time into a tingling present. Spatially, immediacy encloses while delivering everything close: the world at your fingertip; "Let's go places.”The flexible psychology surfing these urgencies and proximities is self-possessed and transparent: “Speak your truth!". “Live your life" “You do you!”- the auto-actualization of human capital
This passage sets the tone of the conversation: devastating events and their disorienting effects, deeply rooted in many of our ongoing crises. Political propaganda gains traction through commonplace ideas, and the result is a destination tucked away in a grim, rugged area of humanity - a homogenizing condition to which we have been constantly subjected.
Immediacy has become a massive hit among traders, advertising professionals, screenwriters, UX designers, and whatever else may spring from the fountains of marketing and the market itself. To some extent, it stands as the culprit behind many of our contemporary concerns, having become part of the regulative ideal for behaviour, the spirit of the age, and the ethos of a generation. I am not the one to unabashedly claim that things used to be better in my heyday.
The quotation perfectly captures one of our fractures as literate, educated readers: immediacy crushes writing. The immediate, per se, manifests this sinuous idea of a state of direct presence—always on, continuous, and indelible. By and large, this category gives shape to 21st-century cultural production, either by reshaping our rushed way of life or by reframing our understanding of a plethora of topics. What’s more, it is inextricably linked to another quote—this time from a book that still resonates with me, as my mind continues to wander through its alleys and springs of memory.
"Rereading the notebook, I notice certain words that I have to write more than once, that resist my memory”
This quotation embodies Jhumpa Lahiri's novel and its philosophical nucleus. “In other words” stems partly from her extenuating experience of finding her voice in languages as a writer - a leitmotif that sheds light on our vulnerability to language, akin to writing with a weaker hand.
Entranced by the challenges the Italian language poses to her, Jhumpa Lahiri, in a distinct style, excels in elevating the power of Literature by delving further into the intricate “layers” and “mechanisms” of another linguistic reality, resulting in a gripping yet condensed story that conveys a whirlwind of emotions in the metaphorical arc of writing.
Entertaining the radical thought of engaging with a foreign language, her decision to give up both writing or reading in English led her to encounter the most run-of-the-mill, universal struggles with learning a language: the closure of a text and individuals jammed in their own perfectionism.
“I notice certain words that I have to write more than once, that resist my memory - maybe they don't want to have any relationship with me.”
I have always dallied with the idea that writing might exceed the bounds of development and productivity. In fact, I have had a mare to battle the culture of results and outcome-orientated productivity, especially when it comes to learning. The desire grounded in results and consistency not only stylizes the intensification of production and its crises, but also potencializes the reconfiguration of cognition and immediatism.
The novel's pivotal revolution lies in the occlusion of the conflicted intersectionality between behaviour and words compressed into a process. Her diary, riddled with mistakes, mirrors her disorientation; but there is a light bulb moment in this battleship with language: it reflects a radical transition, a state of complete bewilderment:
“The notebook contains all my enthusiasm for the language. All the effort. A space where I can wander, learn, forget, fail. Where I can hope.”
In this sense, while resisting the tide that treats language as a final destination, she reminds us that, even in a world drowning in information and obsessed with results, language remains one of the few things that resists productivity and perfectionism:
"[…]make a list in the notebook. At first, the definitions were in English. Now they’re in Italian. That way I create a kind of personal dictionary, a private vocabulary that traces the route of my reading. Occasionally I page through the notebook and review the words.”
“When I can’t remember words, I fear I’ve abandoned them.”
“When I discover a different way to express something, I feel a kind of ecstasy. Unknown words present a dizzying yet fertile abyss. An abyss containing everything that escapes me, everything possible."
“This task of mine, which is both obsessive and relaxing, takes time. I don’t write the definitions in the margin[…]”
Unlike some entrenched models of learning that are foisted upon us, she defies the immediate, hands-on memorization, reinventing her relationship with a language :
"That Saturday, I do something strange, unexpected. I write in my Diary in Italian. I do it almost automatically, spontaneously. I do it because when I take the pen in my hand, I no longer hear English in my brain. During this period when everything confuses me, everything unsettles me, I change the language I write in. I begin to relate, in the most exacting way, everything that is testing me. "
The unexpected decision to jot down some ideas and pen her thoughts on paper, without any prior planning, is not a sign of callous indifference to the problem of writing and its immediate effects. She is actually on the other end of the spectrum: the hustle and bustle of a frenetic, all-night effort to craft something is replaced by spontaneity and experimentation
This reflects our attempts to defamiliarize and reconceptualize writing in order to rebuild its infra-strucutre and the backbone of our communication. Rather than merely a commodity, writing demands the slow, uncertain work of making sense. It does not flourish overnight, nor does it arrive as a neat technique that conveniently shapes ideas into form.
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Stay tuned. It’s an opportune moment to broaden your horizons and deepen your knowledge by joining Sarah’s book club. Our next discussion will revolve around this book and the sea of possibilities it opens up through her bold, investigative spirit. Check out her Instagram page:
A podcast recommendation: Catherine and Bruna have already explored Jhumpa Lahiri’s work — one of the texts referenced in this episode on the power of fiction. I couldn’t recommend it enough.
I also recommend the conversation I had with Catherine on literature and its interconnection with the sounds of English and the process of identity subjectivation.
Make sure to listen to her podcast, support her work, and leave a kind, encouraging comment on her Spotify page. It helps with engagement and supports her in creating content for her listeners.
