Side 3 , Side 2 : The Beatles in Jhumpa Lahiri ’ s The Namesake
Lahiri ’ s narrator talked readers through those pivotal moments , there would have been no defamiliarizing lurch into awareness of her feat , no reason for the present essay .
Lahiri ’ s novel of Gogol Ganguli ’ s transformation into Nikhil Ganguli , with all of the protagonist ’ s attendant anxiety , self-consciousness , guilt , thrill , and , in the end , emergence into post-betrayal detachment , is enriched beyond measure when we understand the allusive and intertextual elements�primarily the music of the Beatles , and secondarily ( as well as more explicitly ) a major story by Nikolai Gogol� that mingle with an engrossing narrative . Lahiri paints a double portrait of the same man : one , an Indian-American individual raised by loving parents in a close-knit expatriate community ; and two , an “ everyman ” transcending that family and community ; both a specific human being wrestling with personal problems , and a fictional surrogate of the identity crises , many brought on by the alternating glories and miseries of love , with which many if not most human beings wrestle from their teen years until their deaths . For the past 50 years , the Beatles have been representing all of this�to wit , the highs and lows of love , the grief that so often follows the bliss , and the everyday effort made by human beings to function in a world where identity is as fluid as it is hard to define�in pop and rock music of the highest order imaginable , accessible to all , forever .
NOTES
1 . “ I quite like children ’ s things ; I like children ’ s minds and imagination . So it didn ’ t seem uncool to me to have a pretty surreal idea that was also a children ’ s idea ” ( McCartney in Beatles Anthology 208 ).
2 . McCartney ’ s inspiration for “ Hey Jude ” was John Lennon ’ s 25