[lit-ideas] Re: Reading Lolita in Tehran
- From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 11:12:27 +0900
On 2004/04/22, at 0:28, Ceridwen Harris wrote:
> Whether or not this is what the author intended, - and I don't see why
> one
> should be limited by her intentions - the detail in this writing has
> been
> what informed my appreciation of the more abstract ideas, and so worth
> exploring en route to a broader perspective.
This is, to me, a beautiful statement of one of the great roles of
literature vis-a-vis philosophy. Literature not only dramatizes ideas,
making them more vivid; it also explores their human consequences in
ways that rigorous philosophical thought, obsessed with the definitions
and internal logic of abstract ideas, does not.
I should note that I come to this reading as someone who moved on from
an undergraduate degree in philosophy to a Ph.D. in anthropology
motivated by a desire to move in this direction. My "texts" have been
Taoist rituals and Japanese advertising, but I have been constantly
driven by two notions: Claude Levi-Strauss' injunction in the
"Overture" to _The Raw and the Cooked_ to study "the logic in tangible
qualities" and Clifford Geertz' assertion that we should not be trying
to substitute simple models for complex realities but, rather, to
develop complex models with the clarity and precision that makes simple
models attractive.
Ceridwen's evocation of the personalities of the women introduced at
the start of this book, with its close attention to things like hair
and blouse color, their responses to the question, what is the meaning
of "upsilamba," etc., are from this perspective thoroughly delightful.
What I look for is more insights on how details like these are related
to inferences concerning personality--for example, "prim" or
"vulnerable.
I also continue to be fascinated by the blurred, slippery boundaries
between "fiction" and "reality" in this work. Consider again the status
of the room in which we encounter these women. The bare walls may still
be there in Tehran, but the room as a lived-in space, filled with the
signs of a family's life as experienced by the author is gone. It
exists for her readers in the same way as a purely fictional room, a
text that evokes certain images and thus her readers' own individual
experiences as well as the more conventional meanings that we may, to
some extent, share.
Or, reading Ceridwen's description of the women in her previous
message, I noted how deftly our author assembled a cast of characters
that would not be out of place in a novel or (just teasing) a
"chick-flick" comedy. I remember seeing "news" footage of jet fighters
launched from aircraft carriers during Kosovo or, more recently, the
invasion of Iraq and thinking to myself as I watched them how I had
already seen similar footage before, in a movie called "Top Gun."
John L. McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama, Japan 220-0006
Tel 81-45-314-9324
Email mccreery@xxxxxxx
"Making Symbols is Our Business"
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