Reading "Lolita" In Tehran

Boring and not interesting.

DID NOT FINISH — I will not rate a book that I shelf as “did not finish.” I don't believe it's fair to put a rating on books I didn't read from beginning to end.

A powerful book that everyone should read.

“When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jewish rabbi, teacher and theologian

Why are people afraid to think? Why do they want to suffocate their own free thinking, and that of others, with rigid ideologies? That's what I wondered as I read this memoir by a professor of English literature who experienced the frenzied descent of her country into pseudo-religious madness.

It's not a faraway happening. These days, ideology is everywhere, threatening to overwhelm our individual ability to connect to one another through a dynamic relationship to an evolving truth, which is too often replaced by a drive to protect our fixed ideas of what truth is at all costs. In the great literature of the past, may we still find a space to think more freely, to feel more flexibly and humanly, to develop the will to reject tyranny's hold over our minds, if not our bodies.

Found this in one of my neighborhood lending libraries, and am glad I did! I will say that it was profoundly uncomfortable, probably in a useful way, to read Nafisi's account of how living through the Islamic Revolution had both terrifying and mundane moments. Eighteen years after Nafisi wrote this and on another continent, American democracy is shuddering along the fault lines of our original sin of racism coupled with unbridled individualism, and it is both terrifying to feel those jolts and also terrifying how the mundane stuff of life carries on. Anyway, given that Nafisi is a professor, it was interesting to me that I enjoyed this memoir much more when she wrote as a memoirist concentrating on her own personal response to the events unfolding around her. The parts she devoted to imparting lessons from the literature she taught often feel clunkily didactic for my current mood (I appreciated the parts about Pride & Prejudice best, having just watched the most recent version before it left Netflix; this is a controversial opinion, but I prefer Matthew Macfayden to Colin Firth as Darcy!). Overall, however, she wrote a remarkable memoir about a remarkable era, and I am glad to have read it.

Lots and lots of description (and ice cream). Some of the description I felt was necessary, such as women's clothing.

The Islamic revolution in Iran through the eyes of a female Literature professor. When oppressive totalitarian regimes take away your freedom, your right to move in public, your right to feel the sun and wind on your skin, they usually also come to take away your art. Movie theatres close, foreign music is forbidden, and books like The Great Gatsby are put on trial for propagating questionable morals. Reading Lolita in Tehran shows us the cruel fate of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where one generation of women could walk and marry freely, while the next generation receives prison sentences for wearing nail-polish. Nafisi and the girls in her private class compare themselves to the heroins and victims in famous novels. Literature becomes a way for them to make sense of and to rebel against the Muslim customs and regime.

A fascinating and eye-opening read. Yet I found it a bit too long and unstructured for my taste. Sometimes I got lost in time. And some segments had a clearer connection between the discussed novel and the societal dynamics in Iran (Lolita), while others felt more random.

Reading Lolita in Tehran helped me to realize just how little I know about Iran. Azar Nafisi weaves together stories of her book group, her personal stories, the context of the country around her, and the lessons from the literature they read together. Powerful.

Azar Nafisi has put together an unusual narrative weaving personal memoir, literary criticism and social history into a strong commentary about living during the Iranian Revolution. Although a familiarity with the novels she examines would help readers connect with the book more, I came away wanting to add them all to my reading list. She has a flair for uncovering the similarities and themes in each novel that speak to the real problems and issue these women are facing in their everyday lives—lives being torn apart and destroyed by Islamic fundamentalist uprisings.

I was often amazed at her creative use of the novels to teach or explore life issues, and appreciated her ability to explain her inner thoughts as she discussed the book with the women. I would love to be able to read literature as close as she does and this book is like a case study of the way that kind of fluency might develop.

The book was interesting - to a point. I enjoyed the dynamic of the girls in their meetings, but my interest waned 100 pages or so in when it turned to the author's own experience.

When I signed up the bookring for Reading Lolita in Tehran,
I'd anticipated reading a book about a woman fighting for
human rights in an increasingly intolerant society.
Reading Lolita is this book, but it is much more.
Nafisi creates a safe place for women to gather
and explore what it means to be human,
what it means to be alive, by reading and discussing literature.
Nafisi's group faces bullets and beheadings,
yet the most awful horror is the day-to-day
slow death of the world of the imagination.

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

- William Carlos Williams