Jhumpa Lahiri: preference

Transcript context

…How do you feel about blurbs? Well, I say what I feel about blurbs in the essay. Some of my publishers have been a little uncomfortable about publishing that sentence in my book, actually, because I just say what I feel. I think this is one of the things about writing in Italian that people aren’t prepared for: that I don’t pretend anymore. And I’m not concerned about making everybody happy. One of the things I say in the book, in this essay, is that these books don’t even — as much as I appreciate, truly, this lovely display that you made — but this isn’t my book anymore. Once the cover is on it, it’s not my book. And again, having lived in Italy, and having Italian writer friends, so many examples of novels there have covers chosen by the author. Imagine that. [laughter] But suddenly, you have a whole. You have the inside, you have the words, you have the pages that the author created, and you actually have an image that the author felt that they wanted, he or she wanted, to represent visually what the book is saying. If I had that freedom, if I had that ability, I would be such a happy — it would make going to museums even more exciting because I would always be thinking, “Oh well, maybe this, maybe that. ” Who knows? Maybe an image could even inspire a book, in that sense. If one had that ability to say, “Oh, you know what? I went to this show, this gallery the other day, and I saw this image and it was so beautiful, and I was thinking about it, and this whole novel grew out of it,” or this whole collection of stories, or whatever. These things can happen. They just don’t happen here as much as I wish they did. I brought a copy of a German book; it’s by Rilke. The publisher is Reclam. The cover is plain; it’s just a color. If you go to German bookstores, at least parts of them are actually organized by publishers. You probably know other countries in Europe sometimes . . .…

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