The Universe Distracts Me.

I finished a killer book yesterday and watched a killer movie yesterday. It's like the universe wants to remind me--on this grand long weekend off from Bar/Bri--that there is so much awesome writing and film out there still to be inhaled.

The movie:

I watched Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Golly. Robert Downey, Jr. is like a puppy that poops on your carpet, but whom you can't help but forgive and love. His charm-o-meter is on ludicrous in this pulpy, fictiony, filmy, noiry type movie by Shane Black, who wrote Lethal Weapon, which, um, I haven't seen yet. KKBB is about this dude who's mistaken for an actor, who pretends to be a private eye, and kills a lot of people, which sounds terrible on paper, but works. There's too much good stuff in the script to have to choose one to quote, so I'll pick one instead from Val Kilmer in the gag reel:

"Can we get Russell Crowe, Sheryl Crow, the Counting Crows, and the Black Crows together with Jack Black, Shane Black, and Will Smith?"

The book:

I finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, the short story collection that won the Pulitzer a couple years back. I haven't been this obsessed with a book in a long, long time. After reading the first story, "A Temporary Matter," I had to remind myself to breathe, and then I instantly went on the internet (I'm such a dork!) to see what else Lahiri had written, and, yes, if there were any blogs or reviews of the book.

I usually don't like short stories, for no good reason really. Maybe because I don't understand the idea behind a collection? Like, is there supposed to be a reason certain stories are collected? It's sort of like the music album, which in this day of iPods and mp3s has really fallen out of vogue. But once upon a time, there was this idea that the songs on an album weren't just thrown together, but that there was a rhyme, a reason, and a story behind the collection. Some artists bemoaned the emphasis on a la carte music listening that Napster exemplified, but I suppose it was inevitable with music. Probably not so much with books.

But at least with Interpreter of Maladies, I get it. Or maybe I just want to get it, so I imputed my own cohesive theory on the book. Basically it goes like this: Minorities seem to always criticize and and every pop culture protrayal of someone representing that group, as if he or she has to be perfect, but not too perfect, and represent every victory and every defeat that minority group has ever faced. Right, an impossible task. But given the minority status, pop culture never has more than one or two such characters--and most definitely not from the same minority group--in any TV show, movie, or book. So critics bash, and audiences moan.

But then little miracles like this book come along... where each piece tells a complete story bursting with ideas and emotion, and where each character can be flawed and humane. The collection is ostensibly about Indians, Indian-Americans, and the dislocation of the first-generation/second-generation experience. But by offering a variety of vignettes, there's no need to tear down one character as being too self-centered and therefore a "negative" image, or ripping another one for being too goody-goody and therefore a token "positive" image. Instead, there's a more complete picture, where the main character is simply the idea of being Indian in America. Turns out the impossible task ain't so impossible.