Nafisi, Azar - Reading Lolita in Tehran
Wed, Mar. 10th, 2004 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI picked this one up after having several people request it in the bookstore and never being able to find it. It's a memoir, literary criticism, and a look at the Islamic Republic of Iran, and very fascinating.
The author had taught literature at an Iranian university and eventually formed a sort of reading group/class of young women. That's the barest of bare bones, but the book made me think about politics and US interference and when it's good and when it's bad, feminism and my shocked amazement at what the women there had to do, the facts of living under a regime that ruled through fear, and in the end, the threat and the importance of literature.
It's strange. The first chapter is on Nabokov's Lolita, and as I was reading the reading group and the author's thoughts on the book and how essentially the author thought Humbert was raping twelve-year-old Lolita, who had no other choices, and I thought to myself: I will probably never read Lolita now because it is morally squicky to me and I just have no desire to read about it.
And yet, the next chapter, some of the more conservative members of Nafisi's literature class in the university rebel against The Great Gatsby and condemn it as something glorifying adultery and immorality and American consumerism and as such, it was immoral. And I caught myself thinking, does it matter? Does the book have to be moral to be good? It's like watching people argue about Jossverse characters (or all characters), and arguing that a certain character is Good or another is Bad, and in the end, does it make us like the character more or less? Would it be more constructive to argue if the character was dynamic or static? And does art have to take a moral stance? It reminds me a little of the kerfuffle sometime last year about this, if an author had a moral responsibility to portray a certain type of thing (ex: to portray murder as bad). When I think about this, my answer is of course not. Literature doesn't have to be constrained to some sense of morality. In fact, a lot of the best literature is stuff that challenges conventional morality, it's the banned books and the obscene ones. And maybe that's what makes it literature? Maybe having a strong sense of morality takes away some of the terrible beauty in literature.
Pretty things are merely pretty, but I think beauty in some way is always terrible because it is not quite of our world.
So, do I get to say I won't read Lolita because I find the premise morally repugnant? I mean, obviously I do, because no one's going to force me to read the book, especially since it's not assigned for a class or anything. And yet, I'm the person I tend to scoff at in these arguments, the person who won't look past something to read something just a little beyond herself.
Nafisi makes the argument that great literature is in essence revolutionary and threatening, especially to a means of government like that in Iran, which is why they must censor it. It's funny. People, esp. people in the sciences, will deride the humanites and say it's just words. It's just pictures. Literary theory is just futzing around and mental masturbation and the like. But it must be important, or why would governments burn books? Why the Cultural Revolution in China? Why ban books? There must be some import to people having that imaginary room of their own, even, or especially, if it's only through words or moving pictures or brushstrokes.
Other things the book made me think about: how much of the oppression of women was oppression, how much was the author's anger? Not that I am saying it was not oppression, because I cannot imagine living in a place in which I could be caned for not wearing a veil because the sight of my hair might drive a man to unseemly lust and somehow it would be my fault. This makes me angry on a very, very basic level. But it was interesting having some of her other, religious students' views, espeically the women, and their ambivalence to the Islamic government. I don't know. I never know with these things. How much can outside countries interfere? Obviously this has very relevant parallels with Iraq and etc. Can the US be a world police force? Should it? Because just reading about it, it feels so wrong to me on so many levels that I want to yell out that it should be changed, that they should not force people, especially the women, to live like that, but who would change it?
And the government made me so angry, made me remember going to school and how strict the rules were and how stupid they seemed -- girl's hair must be so long. Skirts must be so long. Of course, boy's hair had to be so long as well. Of course, it is nothing like the situation there, but I remember how much those stupid arbitrary rules would piss us off, and I cannot imagine living like that every day. The boy will laugh at me and say I am American to the core, no matter how much I go around yelling that sometimes I do not like the nation (well, present leaders, you know, intl. policy and etc). And yet, is it only people exposed to America who would be angry? I doubt it. Most of all it reminded me of the Cultural Revolution, a completely secular but no less scary totalitarian government.
So. Not much of a book overview, but more of what the book provoked in me.
It is a good book, for those who are wondering ;).
Links:
-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tenemet's review
-keilexandra's review
The author had taught literature at an Iranian university and eventually formed a sort of reading group/class of young women. That's the barest of bare bones, but the book made me think about politics and US interference and when it's good and when it's bad, feminism and my shocked amazement at what the women there had to do, the facts of living under a regime that ruled through fear, and in the end, the threat and the importance of literature.
It's strange. The first chapter is on Nabokov's Lolita, and as I was reading the reading group and the author's thoughts on the book and how essentially the author thought Humbert was raping twelve-year-old Lolita, who had no other choices, and I thought to myself: I will probably never read Lolita now because it is morally squicky to me and I just have no desire to read about it.
And yet, the next chapter, some of the more conservative members of Nafisi's literature class in the university rebel against The Great Gatsby and condemn it as something glorifying adultery and immorality and American consumerism and as such, it was immoral. And I caught myself thinking, does it matter? Does the book have to be moral to be good? It's like watching people argue about Jossverse characters (or all characters), and arguing that a certain character is Good or another is Bad, and in the end, does it make us like the character more or less? Would it be more constructive to argue if the character was dynamic or static? And does art have to take a moral stance? It reminds me a little of the kerfuffle sometime last year about this, if an author had a moral responsibility to portray a certain type of thing (ex: to portray murder as bad). When I think about this, my answer is of course not. Literature doesn't have to be constrained to some sense of morality. In fact, a lot of the best literature is stuff that challenges conventional morality, it's the banned books and the obscene ones. And maybe that's what makes it literature? Maybe having a strong sense of morality takes away some of the terrible beauty in literature.
Pretty things are merely pretty, but I think beauty in some way is always terrible because it is not quite of our world.
So, do I get to say I won't read Lolita because I find the premise morally repugnant? I mean, obviously I do, because no one's going to force me to read the book, especially since it's not assigned for a class or anything. And yet, I'm the person I tend to scoff at in these arguments, the person who won't look past something to read something just a little beyond herself.
Nafisi makes the argument that great literature is in essence revolutionary and threatening, especially to a means of government like that in Iran, which is why they must censor it. It's funny. People, esp. people in the sciences, will deride the humanites and say it's just words. It's just pictures. Literary theory is just futzing around and mental masturbation and the like. But it must be important, or why would governments burn books? Why the Cultural Revolution in China? Why ban books? There must be some import to people having that imaginary room of their own, even, or especially, if it's only through words or moving pictures or brushstrokes.
Other things the book made me think about: how much of the oppression of women was oppression, how much was the author's anger? Not that I am saying it was not oppression, because I cannot imagine living in a place in which I could be caned for not wearing a veil because the sight of my hair might drive a man to unseemly lust and somehow it would be my fault. This makes me angry on a very, very basic level. But it was interesting having some of her other, religious students' views, espeically the women, and their ambivalence to the Islamic government. I don't know. I never know with these things. How much can outside countries interfere? Obviously this has very relevant parallels with Iraq and etc. Can the US be a world police force? Should it? Because just reading about it, it feels so wrong to me on so many levels that I want to yell out that it should be changed, that they should not force people, especially the women, to live like that, but who would change it?
And the government made me so angry, made me remember going to school and how strict the rules were and how stupid they seemed -- girl's hair must be so long. Skirts must be so long. Of course, boy's hair had to be so long as well. Of course, it is nothing like the situation there, but I remember how much those stupid arbitrary rules would piss us off, and I cannot imagine living like that every day. The boy will laugh at me and say I am American to the core, no matter how much I go around yelling that sometimes I do not like the nation (well, present leaders, you know, intl. policy and etc). And yet, is it only people exposed to America who would be angry? I doubt it. Most of all it reminded me of the Cultural Revolution, a completely secular but no less scary totalitarian government.
So. Not much of a book overview, but more of what the book provoked in me.
It is a good book, for those who are wondering ;).
Links:
-
tenemet's review-
keilexandra's review
(no subject)
Thu, Mar. 11th, 2004 03:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Mar. 11th, 2004 06:10 pm (UTC)I started out wanting to know more about Nafisi, how she ended up in Iran and why she didn't leave and what got her expelled, but in the end, I wanted to know more about the girls' stories (particularly Nassrin, to explain the curious comment in the beginning on Nassrin being the Judas of the group). I also wanted much more discussion on Austen than I got, seeing how she was the only one I really liked! Not that big of a Henry James or Great Gatsby fan...
(no subject)
Fri, Mar. 12th, 2004 04:54 am (UTC)*nods* After such a promising start, I felt very let down. The book turned away from the other women in the class and the focus changed to what Nafisi thought, what Nafisi did, Nafisi's interpretation and thoughts of the books. It was almost too much information about Nafisi. I just didn't care as much about her because, to my eyes, she had more options than the women in her class. We heard about the cousin (brother?) who appropriated the car of one of her students but that was about it. I wanted to see more about them relating the books to the students' lives and just their daily lives in general.
(no subject)
Fri, Mar. 12th, 2004 07:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Mar. 12th, 2004 07:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Mar. 12th, 2004 11:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Mar. 11th, 2004 11:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Mar. 11th, 2004 10:14 pm (UTC)