Side 3 , Side 2 : The Beatles in Jhumpa Lahiri ’ s The Namesake
Ostensibly , the phrase “ side 3 of the White Album ” is direct ; thus , it is a reference . Yet , partially hidden behind this reference to the White Album ( 1968 ) is allusive material so rich with meaning that it breaches its “ local ” diachronic meaning . No less than a Beatles purist , a rhetorical purist could well argue too that the title “ White Album ” itself is less reference than allusion , since it alludes to the actual title of this recording�The Beatles . Furthermore , the referential phrase “ side 3 of the White Album ,” containing the referents “ 3 ” and “ White Album ,” simultaneously alludes to seven songs on that side ( of four sides ) �neither the number of songs nor the number of sides are specified�and each of these songs has lyrics that Gogol is poring over when his father interrupts him . These lyrics mean something to readers sufficiently “ learned ” to know what the words are without seeing them reproduced . To quote Machecek again , “[ a ] llusions may allow covert communication among a cognoscenti . They establish a special kind of rapport between author and reader ” ( 531 ). From such rapport , it is a short step to Kristeva ’ s synchronic intertextuality ( transposition ) and the proliferation of meaning that spreads beneath the textual surface .
In a novel so indebted to a single reference�it would collapse without Nikolai Gogol ’ s “ The Overcoat ” to bolster plot and character�it is little wonder that scholars have explicated The Namesake through that lens while examining the implications of this famous short story in Lahiri ’ s study of Indian-American cultural / identity conflict . A good example is Karen Cardozo , beginning her exploration of The Namesake with its epigraph from “ The Overcoat ” (“ The reader should realize himself that it could not have happened otherwise , and that to give him any other name was quite out of the question ”) and then assessing “ the impossibility of ethnic purity ” ( 13 ) in Gogol Ganguli ’ s divided life . In her reading of
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