The Third And Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999
The magic trick:
Smooth, efficient prose
Our final entry from Jhumpa Lahiri’s sterling Interpreter Of Maladies.
It stands out from the rest of the collection as being by far the most direct story. It’s a first-person account of a man’s immigration story from India to London and then to Boston. Whereas the rest of the collection is mostly restrained in its themes and meanings, “The Third And Final Continent” is downright sentimental as our narrator returns to the memory of his first apartment in America and his 103-year-old landlord not once, not twice, but three times.
I’d say that marks it as slightly lesser than most of the other stories in the book. However, I think it works perfectly as a collection closer – tying up the overall themes in a clear way.
As for magic tricks, I’d be remiss if I did not salute Lahiri’s prose. She doesn’t get mentioned (at least that I see) in the same minimalist pantheon as Hemingway or Carver. But she is right there as the most efficient of efficient story writers. The sentences aren’t truly Hemingway. She describes things sometimes. She uses adjectives. But wow there just is no wasted time. “The Third And Final Continent” being an excellent example, the story is just told so smoothly.
Perhaps it’s not the minimalist language. It’s just the flow. She is so well-attuned to what the reader is thinking, wondering, and expecting sentence to sentence.
So let’s not call it minimalism. Let’s just celebrate as her in the great line of editorial empaths following Chekhov and Munro.
And that’s quite a trick on Lahiri’s part.
The selection:
“Good evening, madame.”
She asked me if I had checked the lock. I told her I had.
For a moment she was silent. Then suddenly she declared, with the equal measures of disbelief and delight as the night before, “There’s an American flag on the moon, boy!”
“Yes, madame.”
“A flag on the moon! Isn’t that splendid?”
I nodded, dreading what I knew was coming. “Yes, madame.”
“Say ‘splendid’!”
This time I paused, looking to either side in case anyone were there to overhear me, though I knew perfectly well that the house was empty. I felt like an idiot. But it was a small enough thing to ask. “Splendid!” I cried out.
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