The Namesake

I read The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri for a book discussion group to take place in October. The writing was vivid and excellent. The story puzzled me a bit. It's the story of a Bengali family, transplanted to America. Their son is named Gogol and the name, which is originally only meant to be a family nickname, ends up sticking with him throughout his childhood and youth.

Gogol gets his name because his father was once in a terrible train wreck and was only saved alive because he was reading a book by Gogol at the time of the accident and one of the rescuers spotted him feebly waving a crumpled page of the book from the train window. So he gives his son Gogol as a pet name. But then there is a mixup: the child's great-grandmother has the honor of giving him his formal name, but for some reason this important letter never reaches the family. So Gogol ends up being the name on his birth certificate. Later, his parents try to rectify the problem by naming him Nikhil as his formal name, but he refuses to use it in kindergarten and thus Gogol follows him all through his early years.

Young Gogol despises his name and refuses to read anything by his namesake even when his father gives him a book by Gogol when he reaches adolescence. He is humiliated to learn that Gogol went mad, and considers it somehow a reflection on him. In the mix is his attempt to become an American, pretty much the classic struggle of the child of immigrant parents who are clinging to the customs of the old country.

His two relationships with American women don't work out, and then he marries his parents' choice, the daughter of their friends. He's known her all his life, and yet she used to read books at all the gatherings and barely spoke a word to him. Although he loves her, she doesn't return his affection enough, and the marriage fails. At the end, his mother is returning to India to live there six months of the year, and Gogol is at the last party that will be held at his childhood home. He retreats to his old bedroom, finds the book by his namesake that his father gave him, discovers an inscription from his father that he'd never noticed before, and begins to read.

It seems he's come to terms with his strange name (even though he has already legally changed it to Nikhil) and therefore with his identity and his unique place in the world.

I had several reactions to this book. First, I was rather glad that his marriage to "Miss Right" didn't work out. That would have been too pat. It would have smacked of the smug assumption that people should "stick to their own kind" and not try to assimilate and learn other ways.

Second, I didn't quite understand his hatred of his name. Sure, it's odd. But he could have viewed it as fascinatingly different instead of being embarrassed by it. We are all given names by other people and unless, as he advocates at some point in the book, people are to remain nameless until they choose their own names at 18 years of age, we're pretty much stuck with that. Of course, a legal name change is always an option. In Gogol's case, the fact that he's the child of immigrants makes the name issue more confusing. He's not only embarrassed by having a strange name, but he's embarrassed because it is the name of a man who went mad (he overlooks the fact that Gogol was a brilliant writer), and because it's neither an American nor a Bengali name. Instead it's Russian and has no obvious relationship to him at all.

We're all named for someone or something. I was named for an aunt who died in her forties, possibly of breast cancer. Strange that I got breast cancer in my early forties too. Other than that, I am named for her but don't know anything about her as a person. I used to think about what name I would choose if I were renaming myself, but now I don't remember what name I would have taken. And of course, online, I have a number of screen names and various identities. We all choose names that mean something to us here, and we are able to reinvent ourselves at least in terms of how we present ourselves in this virtual world. I wonder what Gogol would call himself here, and whether he would take any teasing because his name resembles Google?

As for the expected marriage, I was glad it didn't work out because my own experiences with blind dates or with expectations of that sort were anything but good. I know some people had happy arranged marriages or met their soulmates on a blind date, but I didn't, and my bias is against it. I felt sorry that Gogol was betrayed but also felt that maybe next time he would find a woman of his own choosing and things would go well.