ABAW: Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

This book was a gift from my sister more than a year ago. I started and stopped reading it once last year because I wanted to give the book more attention and more thought than I had at the time. When I picked it up again this year, it was with the intention not only to finish reading it, but also to read or reread the major texts Nafisi discusses.

Azar Nafisi, a professor of Western literature, writes in this memoir about two years living in the Islamic Republic of Iran. After being expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil, Nafisi gathered a small group of trusted and dedicated students - mostly women - to meet once a week in her home and discuss literature. The events in her life are organized around four major works they discussed during that time: Nabokov’s Lolita, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Henry James’ Daisy Miller, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The danger of the group’s intellectual pursuit is palpable in the text. The fear that they experienced over a stray hair peeking from the veil gives me a shiver. Nafisi’s difficult decision to leave Iran, to leave her home and her students, unfolds like the narratives of the books the women read. By the time Nafisi’s choice is made, there is an inevitability all around her, a sense that the only freedoms for her are in her books and in flight.

Reading the book I felt like I was in a very good Great Books seminar in grad school. I haven’t scribbled so much in the margins of a book in years. I wished more than once to be able to hear a point and add my own ideas to the discussion. Besides finally reading several canonical books, here’s what I learned from Nafisi’s memoir:

—Education and the exchange of ideas finds a way to happen, even in the most repressive regimes, though not without danger.

—People seek to escape repression and injustice in any way they can, if not by literal escape, then sometimes by literary and intellectual escape.

—Empathy is essential for human beings. Nafisi repeatedly makes the point, about the novels and the regime, that without empathy there is only evil. Literature is about empathy. Reading a book is an opportunity to see the world from a different perspective. 

—The danger of literature is not always in the overt ideas portrayed in the pages. Literature is dangerous because it provides an opportunity to build empathy, to shift perspective, to make human connections, to build humanity rather than tearing it down.

—I am so spoiled, and even though I love books, I know that I often take for granted my very open access to books. 

Little did I know, as I wandered through Nafisi’s memoir alongside Gatsby, Daisy Miller, Elizabeth Bennett, and Humbert Humbert that the world would begin to tremor anew with agitation against dictatorships. I wondered as Tunisia exploded, then cheered as Egypt pulled down Mubarak, and I cringed and cried as people died in Bahrain and Nafisi’s own Iran, and I continue to worry about the people in Libya and elsewhere who have undertaken the dread feat of revolution against a bloody tyrant. Nafisi’s memoir expanded my understanding of these uprisings, expanded my fear for the people living them, and built my empathy for those who love their countries and hope to make them better places. I would love dearly to hear what she has to say about events in the Middle East and North Africa right now. 

ABAW: Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 

Signet Classic with Afterword by Joann Morse

I read this book the first time in college. I passed on an opportunity to read it in tenth grade, choosing instead The Catcher in the Rye.  Last year when I read Pride and Prejudice With Zombies, these were my reflections:

This book was just fun. I loved Pride and Prejudice when I read it in college, but with a kind of romantic distance. I appreciated Elizabeth’s wit and marveled at the restraint exercised in a society of manners. This zombie redaction heightened my appreciation of the original, particularly of the potential for reading humor between the lines.  Grahame-Smith elevates the innuendo even further. I lost count of the number of ‘ball’ jokes. He is able to infuse Austen’s work with something else besides zombies, a sense that the characters have actual bodies. In the novel of manners there is a sense that anything corporal or bodily is just not talked about as if it isn’t there. I don’t recall once thinking of Elizabeth’s body in any way beyond a holder for a gown or a hand proferred. There was no sense of her physically. Graham-Smith though, gives Elizabeth and her sisters bodies that fight and feel. Oh yes, and they sweat too, though the low word ‘sweat’ does not appear in the pages of the book. Elizabeth and Darcy at different points suffer from “exercise moisture.”  

Another word that appears rarely in this zombie book is ‘zombie.’ Epithets abound, but my favorite is “manky dreadfuls.” That should totally be the name of a punk band.  

Grahame-Smith’s rendition gives Elizabeth Bennett a body and some deliciously bawdy wordplay. But it strips away Austen’s brilliant emotional shifts. Grahame-Smith’s book turns much of the narrative into action, whereas Austen is able to make a plot that occurs to a great extent through the thoughts of the main character and give it the emotional and intellectual intensity of a story where “more stuff happens. Austen’s novel creates tension not with action, but with a juxtaposition of characters and a pointed lack of action at times. We feel suspense through what is not said, through what cannot be performed within the strict restraints of manner.

I suppose there is something to be said in a discussion about the nature of independence and self-realization in the book. Elizabeth is able to make choices on her own terms without completely thwarting polite convention (as her sister does), and in doing so is able to find an intellectual partner in a marriage that at least potentiates greater happiness than any of the models offered. I’m uncertain though, whether Austen really holds up any marriage as a positive outcome, starting with her jibe in the opening line. 

My real interest though, the part of the writing that just stunned me this time, was the illustration of shifts in thought and sympathy. Austen can take a character from one vehement position, and walks us step-by-step through various arguments, showing us how the emotions of the thinker begin to change, not completely, and not abruptly, but to the point that by the end of the chapter, a different sympathy exists. Think, for example, of the chapter when Elizabeth receives the letter from Darcy after his rejected proposal. In it he explains the truth behind some of her ill-conceived assumptions. The letter by itself does not convince Elizabeth of his worth, it is her own internal argument. At the beginning of the chapter she almost despises him and his insulting pride. At the end, she does not yet love him, but she does feel compassion for him and sorrow and shame for the pain she has caused him. A useful model for subtlety of description and unfolding thought and action.

ABAW: Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller by Henry James, New York Edition, 1909

I picked up Daisy Miller because it’s used to frame a section of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. FCC disclosure: Henry James did not pay me to write this response or provide me with a free copy of the text because he’s been dead for almost a hundred years.

Daisy Miller is the story of two Americans who encounter one another in Europe, first in Switzerland, then in Italy. Winterbourne, a sober and well-mannered young man, has been living in Geneva for some time, supposedly studying, but rumored to be in love with a “foreign woman.” Daisy, a vivacious girl in her late teens, is traveling with her mother and young brother, while her father continues to run his business in the United States.

My first reaction to Daisy Miller was not positive. Interesting girl doesn’t play by social rules, girl dies, guy who liked her goes back to his empty routine unchanged. I’m still uncertain that anything or anyone actually changed in the story. There is something trivial about Daisy—the flower that blooms freely in springtime but suffers under the heat of summer and dies at winter’s touch. Winterbourne (bourne, borne, burn; ie intermittent Winter stream or Winter-Carried or Winter-Burned) likes Daisy very much, but after his initial crush seems unable to overcome her violations of convention. He can’t get over the fact that she is an outgoing and outrageous flirt. He throws off his feelings for her at the same time she contracts the disease that will claim her life (Roman Fever, which is just as much Flirting-With-Foreign-Men-In-Dark-Places Fever as it is Malaria).

The chief spark that keeps me thinking about Daisy Miller is Daisy’s unwillingness to be swayed by the oppressions of convention. Unlike her oblivious mother, Daisy notices the social slights and admonitions and the direct caution of Winterbourne (the flush of her cheek, the note to Winterbourne in which she says, “she would have appreciated [his] esteem”) but still behaves exactly as she wishes. She knows that her actions are innocent, and that is all that counts for her. Even faced with the real (and fulfilled) risk of contracting a dangerous illness (which suddenly and surprisingly alarms her Italian companion, but seems obvious to Winterbourne), she laughs. Until her death, Daisy defines herself FOR herself and lives according to her own whims and an internal set of conventions.

Bonus Extraneous Pondering: In my mind, Daisy Miller is also ripe for supernatural parody. Imagine Daisy as a Buffy-like vampire hunter, slaying demons across Europe under the supervision of a disenchanted expatriot, Winterbourne as Angel-like watcher or vamp, then dying or succumbing to vampirism in the Roman Coliseum. No? Ah well, it was worth the ponder.  

ABAW: The Great Gatsby

The last time I read Gatsby was in a graduate seminar taught by a man with the most astonishing southern accent ever heard in a mid-Atlantic university. I don’t remember anything about the discussion except for information about the general dissolution of Fitzgerald’s life and the way the prof said “Daisy,” with a low rumbling drawl like a heavy bell.

The time before that, I read the book on my own. Sometime in college out in the New Mexico dust. I don’t remember anything about that reading either, except that I was unimpressed and uncertain that I understood the point of the book. Ah youth.

I decided to read Gatsby again on a whim. It’s not on my list of scheduled books, but it comes up in Azir Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and I decided on a lark while the internet was down and ice was on the ground that I’d read or reread the major novels Nafisi discusses as I go along in her book. This has the double effect of filling in Nafisi’s allusions, and allowing me to pause as I read to digest her experience and discussion. 

I had a difficult time not getting caught up in Fitzgerald’s words. I wrote down snatches of text every few pages. I’ve included my favorite lines at the end of this post. As I think about my overall impressions of the novel, I come back over and over to the closing lines. 

“He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night…. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

This is one of those lines that elevates the novel from a mere story about a handful of very wealthy people who mingle one summer, and connects it to something bigger. There is an inevitability in the novel that none of the characters are able to escape. There is a tension between the upper class and the upper-upper class, and the inability for anyone to penetrate too far into another strata of wealth before rebounding back to origins. The melancholy predestination of the story, of every character wanting and striving for something he or she can’t quite find or even identify is transformed into an inescapable aspect of humanity.

***

“He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.”

“I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.”

“He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths—so that he could ‘come over’ some afternoon to a stranger’s garden.”

“Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.”

“…perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone.”

“Her voice is full of money.”

“So we drove toward death through the cooling twilight.”

“The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them good-by.”

And my very favorite part:

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself in with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

Update on Monday, February 7, 2011 at 4:58PM by Eglentyne

An episode of Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson last fall which discusses The Great Gatsby at length, including the drawling voice of my professor, James West, and Azar Nafisi on teaching the book in Iran. Multi-media FTW.

ABAW: Reflections on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I recently finished reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to the Sonars. This is our second time reading the series out loud together, and I’m enjoying it more this time. All of the Sonars are, I think. We’re all noticing new things, understanding things in a different way. The stories are so rich and they really hold up well to re-reading.

Some observations about Goblet of Fire:  

—Harry and his friends experience danger in all of the books, of course, but in a way, Goblet feels like the last moments of real safety. At the close, there is a palpable sense that Harry’s world will never be the same, that the risk and danger is about to explode.

—The tension between rumor and reality is much more pronounced in this book, embodied in the role of reporter Rita Skeeter. Public perception versus private reality continues to roil around Harry. Harry’s actions will remain largely private and unseen, even as he is a constant subject of the public imagination. All that while he struggles to be a kid.

—This book was emotional and more difficult to read out loud. There have been teary moments in all of the books, but I read more pages in this one with tears streaming than any of the others up to this point. I know that the grief and pain only gets deeper and more complicated from here.

—Turning points abound: first crushes and first stirrings of jealousy, Voldemort’s embodiment, the first representations of very disturbing dark magic, first-hand murders, malicious publicity, an expansion to include more of the wizarding government and the international wizarding community, amplification of wizard hypocrisy and prejudice (especially regarding elves and giants, but continuing the pureblood versus muggle prejudices as well), cracks in the security of society with doubts about Azkaban and the dementors and disguises, layers of both “goodness” and “evilness” in the sense that trusted individuals are seen as corrupt and even Voldemort supporters are supportive of his evil to different degrees.

There are many opportunities for thought and discussion here.

We’re taking a break from Harry now by reading Rick Riordan’s The Red Pyramid, the first of the Kane Chronicles. This is an adventure with Sophie and Carter Kane, packed with Egyptian mythology, culture, and history. I suspect the series will progress much like Riordan’s very successful series featuring Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In fact, my favorite moment in the book so far is when Uncle Amos says he avoids Manhattan because it is a place for other gods, alluding to the modern location of Mount Olympus at the top of the Empire State Building from the Percy Jackson series.