Jhumpa Lahiri, and Is "New Yorker" Fiction Promotional?

 What is one to make of New Yorker fiction? Much of what is presented as stories are excerpts from forthcoming novels, generally written by authors who are already well known.

An example is "Casting Shadows," by Jhumpa Lahiri in the Feb. 8, 2021 issue of the magazine. It's described as a story adapted from Lahiri's new novel "Whereabouts" that will be published in April. In that sense, one can view this a promotional piece akin to advertising. One wonders: did the New Yorker pay Lahiri for the piece, or did she (or her publisher) pay the New Yorker to run it? 

And with it, of course, was the usual New Yorker author interview replete with the usual softball questions -- basically promotional fodder masquerading as journalism.

I suppose the New Yorker might argue this approach is a service to readers: they can decide whether to buy a book by sampling it rather than on the basis of blurbs or reviews. But is this something one really wants to pay for?  

Turning to Lahiri's "story," by conventional standards, there isn't one.  Rather "Casting Shadows" is a child of the modernist movement where plot was greatly de-emphasized in favor of things such as character development.  

"Casting Shadows" has no plot.  Rather readers follow a presumably middle-aged woman who lives alone in comfortable but otherwise unremarkable circumstances as she meanders through her days, apparently having no need to work, but a continual need for a coffee. The story (originally written in Italian by Lahiri and then translated into English by Lahiri) is set somewhere in Italy so piazzas loom large.

Some of the work of Elena Ferrante comes to mind, but Lahiri's piece lacks Ferrante's psychological insights. 

Ok, it's character development, but for what purpose? Maybe one has to purchase the book from which "Casting Shadows" is adapted to find out.

But what about that author's interview?  In it, Lahiri offers the following explanation:

"In the case of 'Whereabouts,' I wanted to follow the days of a female character, more or less my age, who lived in a city alone, and who was sustained by her surroundings as much as by the various people in her life." 

Other material in the interview suggests the book was also an exercise in writing in Italian on Lahiri's part.

My sense is that she is living off her past successes in getting this book published. I enjoyed "The Interpreter of Maladies," which won a Pulitzer prize in 1999, and "The Namesake."  I suspect I won't read "Whereabouts."

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The New York Times reviewed "Whereabouts" in it's May 16, 2021 Sunday "Book Review" section and nothing in that article changes anything I have said above.

Described as "a loose narrative of an Italian woman at a crossroads in her life," the book was described as  consisting of a series of entries (as opposed to chapters, for instance), most only a few pages long and each standing on its own. "Any could be removed without leaving an absence," the NYT review said.