Reading Lolita in Tehran
Began: 1/05/07
End: 01/10/07
Quality: Six Out of Ten.
Reason: Unread.
Genre: Non-Fiction/Memoir.
Number: First.
Thoughts:
This book was definitely not at all what I was expecting. It threw me for a loop. Luckily, I love when books do that for me. It’s what I want from them. I think the subtitle sums up this book quite a lot more than the title: a memoir in books. The book club or class itself was not the primary focus here, nor were her girls. This is primarily about Nafisi and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The regime as well as Ayatollah Khomeini seems to me to be stronger characters than these girls, but I digress.

The main story here is of Nafisi’s experiences in Iran as first the revolution took place and then the Islamic Republic of Iran was formed. This is weaved inside Nafisi inviting seven of her most gifted female students to her house every Thursday to talk about forbidden western books. The story begins and ends with this girls but the bulk of the text deals with Iran under the Islamic Republic and Nafisi’s experiences.

I enjoyed quite a few aspects of this work. I loved her analysis of some of the heavies of the western literary canon (i.e. Fitzgerald, Austen , James, Nabokov) although I did not always see things exactly how she saw them. It made me want to dive back into a few of those works, especially Lolita. Nafisi seems to have a special love for Nabokov and a love which I share. It also made me want to try a few works that I have not been able to read just yet.

It also gave me a real desire to discover more about the Islamic Republic and the revolution which begin this regime which is being so reviled by the United States Government. She seems to make it the arch-villain of the story. And it makes me want to learn about it for a number of reasons. I am, first of all, quite obsessed with politics and Ayatollah Khomeini seems to me to be a political genius, an evil one but a genius none the less. In connection with the politics, I want to know more about this theocracy which seems to be causing quite a few panic attacks at the United Nations and at the White House. There is also the fact that this revolution took place when my mom was pregnant with me and when I was a toddler and that gives me a weird connection to it. And lastly, I want to check her facts. There are some rumors on the webs and the blogosphere that she is in bed with the neocons and this book is part of an effort to get Americans riled up against Iran.


Now, as much as I enjoyed it, I did have a few problems with this work as it stands. (I am not now going to get into whether it was a anti-Iranian propaganda piece. I am going to save that for a rainy day.)

First of all, I found the storyline as such to be rather jumbled. I am still having trouble organizing the chronology of the story in my head. She jumps around quite a bit, sometimes mid-paragraph. Perhaps, I am just being daft. Perhaps, the next time I read it; it will make more sense to me than it did on this initial reading.

I also had a hard time discerning her female students from each other for a few reasons. They all have foreign names and not to be an ignoramus or anything but it's just easier for me to remember and register familiar names. Also, she introduces them all in a relatively short period of time and she doesn’t spend that much time with them at all. As I said before, both the Islamic Republic and the Ayatollah are far stronger characters in this work than any of the students. I think I am going to try and make a character list for my next reading.

This is a book that I would not give a blanket recommendation. It has a target audience in my mind. I know a few people who I will pass it along to but I also know a number of other people who would never be able to get through it. It has some great strengths but I really feel that it could use some more work.

Quotes:

“Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth."
(3)

“I wrote on the board one of my favorite lines from the German thinker Theodor Adorno: “The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one’s own home.” I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.” (94)

“A novel is not an allegory, I said as the period was about to come to an end. It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empthaize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing. I just want you to remember this. That is all; class dismissed.” (??)

Character List:


Yassi: Our Comedian. “I’m like good old plastic. I won’t crack no matter what you do to me.” “Yassi was shy by nature, but certain things excited her and made her lose her inhibitions. She has a tone of voice that gently mocked and questioned her inhibitions.”
Mashid: My Lady. “Mashid was good at many things, but she had a certain daintiness about her…Mashid is very sensitive. She’s like porcelain.”
Mitra: The Calm One. “Like the pastel colors of her paintings, she seemed to recede and fade into a paler register. Her beauty was saved from predictability by a pair of miraculous dimples, which she could and did use to manipulate many an unsuspecting victim into being to her will.”
Nassrin: The Chesire Cat. “She was her own definition. One can only say that Nassrin was Nassrin.”
Sanaz: “pressured by family and society, vacillated between her desire for independence and her need for approval.”
Azin: The Wild One. “Azin’s smiles never looked like smiles; they appeared more like preludes to an irrepressible and nervous hilarity. She beamed in that perculiar fashion even when she was describing her latest troubles with her husband. Always outrageous and outspoken, Azin relished the shock value of her action and comments, and often clashed with Mashid and Manna.”
Manna: The Poet. “She makes poetry out of things most people cast aside. The photograph does not reflect the peculiar opacity of Manna’s dark eyes, a testament to her withdrawn and private nature.”