The Beauty of Language

If my husband hadn't ordered the movie from Netflix I never would have watched it and been unimpressed. If I hadn't posted my disinterest in it Eva never would have encouraged me to read the book. And if I had never checked out the book on CD from the library I never would have been seduced by the exquisite linguistic abilities of Jhumpa Lahiri. I never would have known what I was missing out on. The Namesake is a book to own, a book to scale for its majestic horizons. Many thanks to both my dearest sweetheart and to the ever helpful Eva.

I've only just started the fourth disk out of 9 but I am so in love. I have developed such a respect for the Indian culture depicted within this story. Every little gesture they perform serves to demonstrate honor toward each other. I can't number the times I have blinked away tears while listening to the daily struggles of the main characters. Their loneliness and confusions and triumphs bleed through until you wish these were real people you could befriend and encourage. Having seen the gravely inferior movie I know what is to come but I now have a much much deeper understanding of the whys and whatfors. The beauty of this story lies entirely in the whys and whatfors.

Obviously I am receiving a great deal of pleasure from the language. It inspires in me a will to express beauty for myself. But The Namesake is not the only source of this proclivity. I am also reading Love in the Time of Cholera. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a gift for the illustrious paragraph. Even while his characters are very human (suffering from constipation or having a month long marital rift over whether or not she forgot to replace the soap in the bathroom for an entire week) they are stunning portrayals marked with grace and elegance. I hope to have this book completed by the time the movie is released on DVD but I am apprehensive about a movie that, judging only from a small preview, seems a bit too concerned with bringing together a Latin/American sweetheart cast than with finding the true heart of the story. (I have a hard time believing Benjamin Bratt can pull off a role like this but I would love to be proven wrong. And I am most definitely not a fan of Shakira.) But I really must put a halt to this habit I have of judging a book by its cover, or a movie by its preview, as the case may be.

For the record, I have nothing against Latin/American actors. It's the "trying too hard to make a statement that is out of place" that rubs me the wrong way. I think a drama makes more of an impact when subtlety is used. Benjamin Bratt makes a great Law and Order detective but if his acting abilities are not suited to a romantic drama then don't compromise the whole movie just because he has the right heritage. Ben Kingsley played Gandhi to perfection because he was the right caliber actor regardless of his nationality.

Boy, when I digress I really digress don't I?

So I have been wafting in a cloud of richness that I am glad to follow through to the end. And when it is all over and I must box it up and shelf it temporarily for the swashbuckling fun of The Princess Bride, saddened will I be. At least, until I am lost in the romantic tenacity of a stable boy named Wesley. =)