These are the thoughts that crossed my mind while reading Jhumpa Lahiri's latest book – her fifth, her non-fiction debut – In Other Words. How it siphons and miscarries meaning, and is occasionally without.
Those "complicated hybrid emotions," wrote Jeffrey Eugenides in his 2002 novel Middlesex: "The sadness inspired by failing restaurants," he notes, or "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I would add, "the cool precision required for page-turning piano music" or "the frustration of putting a duvet cover on," or "the tender joy of grandchildren helping their grandmother blow out her birthday candles." There should be, at the very least, one word that captures that – the way the English language falls short. There should be a word in English that communicates the letdown of realizing "There is no word for it in English." It being: those sentiments that are cut fine and impossible to value with a single word.
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