Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is a tale of an older man who takes a twelve-year-old girl captive for two years and rapes her. This is a demented idea, but, as Azar Nafisi draws out, it has something profound to say about humanity in general. Reading Lolita is a provocative idea in general, but the idea of reading it in Tehran is altogether outlandish! When I saw this book in one of the little free libraries in Fort Worth (anyone else love these little give-a-book-take-a-book stops?) I was instantly intrigued!
Before taking it home, I read the author's synopsis on the back cover: It detailed a weekly gathering of women who secretly studied literature in Tehran. Always having dreamt of participating in a book club, I knew a historical novel about a book club of rebellious women was right up my alley! (As an aside, does anyone want to join a book club with me?)
READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN | AZAR NAFISI
Nafisi begins by explaining that no novel can ever truly represent a reality. Instead, novels--good ones, anyway--reflect truths that apply much more broadly to the human condition. This book is made up of several parts, each named to reflect another book. Part I is entitled "Lolita." She notes that of any work of fiction, Lolita is the one that best encompasses life inside the Islamic Republic of Iran. This book, but more precisely the entire corpus of Nabokov's works, shape the first part of Nafisi's novel. She answers the question: Why Lolita in Tehran?
"I want to emphasize ... that we were not Lolita, the Ayatollah was not Humbert and this republic was not a critique of the Islamic Republic, but it went against the grain of all totalitarian perspectives." She goes on to say, "The desperate truth of Lolita's story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old girl by a dirty man but the confiscation of one individual's life by another."
The ideas Nafisi draws out of Nabokov's Lolita, among other works, relate to Nafisi's own struggle to cope with her situation in Tehran. Nafisi takes hold of Nabokov's Lolita and An Invitation to a Beheading and shows how what really happens in the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor is the loss of the individuality of the oppressed--this is what is being taken from women in Tehran, she argues. Her students struggle with a class between who they want to be, who they are in the "magical" living room the literature class meets in, and who they are forced to be in public, hidden under veils and robes.
"The only way to leave the circle, to stop dancing with the jailer, is to find a way to preserve one's individuality, that unique quality which evades description but differentiates one human being from the other."
The only way for the oppressed to escape becoming identified only as the oppressor sees her is to hold fast to the subtle idiosyncrasies that make her herself. As far as I can tell, this is the purpose of the literature class: it is an opportunity for the participants to remember what makes them who they are, even underneath the thick black robes of the totalitarian regime.
As someone who is not held under a totalitarian regime, I think my big take away from this section of the book is that in the mundane routine of life, which can at times seem particularly repetitive and deterministic as a stay at home mom, it is important to hang on to things that make you take hold of who you are. For me, that has been music, art, embroidery, reading, and writing! As simple as this blog is, it helps me maintain my grasp on what makes me me!
I spent a considerable amount of time on part one of the text, as Lolita is the book Nafisi says most describes the Islamic Republic of Iran; however, in hopes of this post being a readable length, I will be more brief in summarizing the remaining three sections.
Part two of the book takes us back in time and is perhaps even more fascinating than part one--it is about Nafisi's experience as a professor at the U of Tehran during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, told through the lens of The Great Gatsby. My husband and I are total nerds; we just watched a documentary about the change in power from the Shah to the Ayatollah, so it was exciting to read a first-hand account of it!
During a lecture series at the U of Tehran, Nafisi explains to her students that Gatsby is best described by the unifying theme of loss--specifically, the loss of a dream. She relates Gatsby's ultimate demise to the future she foresaw for Iran:
"He [Gatsby] wanted to fulfill his past dream by repeating the past, and in the end he discovered that the past was dead, the present a sham, and there was no future. Was this not similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name of a dream?"
The last two sections of the book, on James and Austen, struck me for a few reasons. Both emphasized the unique role of a heroine who is not what one might expect. Daisy Miller, for example, is James' heroine who possesses none of the desired qualities of a protagonist: she is unattractive, of less than average intelligence, and other unamiable qualities you may be imagining. At the same time, the antagonists had very attractive qualities. So, how did Daisy Miller manage to be the protagonist? Empathy. This is the trait that makes a good protagonist and, according to Nafisi, a good novel. I've never thought about this in such explicit terms before, but I tend to agree.
Nafisi also showed how James and Austen used quite mundane scenarios to set their novels; this is quite a turn from the racy Nabokov or the flamboyant Fitzgerald. The villains don't appear as boldly as Humbert in Lolita, but they create vile scenarios for the protagonist nonetheless.
Part three was one of the more interesting sections for me to read because Nafisi shared a lot about her experience living under the Islamic Republic's rule, the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Iran after his death. I feel like my understanding of Iran really grew through reading this book and did a lot to open my eyes to different opinions about the Islamic Republic from within Iran. Probably the most impactful way she did this was by talking about her students and the way they survived the changes and restrictions.
Conclusion:
Would read again. Everyone should read this and expand their perspectives on the Middle East and Islamic culture. 9/10.
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