[lit-ideas] Re: "Reading Lolita in Tehran" - "Why one should bother to read fiction at all"
- From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 17:13:25 +0900
On 2004/04/26, at 11:32, Mohammad Al-Ubaydli wrote:
> So I ask you, with full understanding that the question exposes my
> ignoranc=
> e and betrays the my lack of sophistication: Why bother [to] read
> fiction?
I look forward to hearing how others answer this question. My own
life's experience suggests an answer close to one that I see Nafisi
proposing--to escape an oppressive reality and find a space of our own
in which to grow our imaginations by considering possibilities that our
everyday lives deny us.
That this answer is inadequate is obvious, since the same purpose might
be fulfilled by reading non-fiction and bad fiction can be as
thoroughly banal and limiting as the reality we find oppressive. (Oddly
enough, my own "escape" reading at the moment is Alfred Romer's _The
Vertebrate Body_, in the 1963 edition I purchased as a textbook in, I
believe, either 1965 or 1966. The language is elegant and includes the
sentence, "Simplest are the solitary tunicates," which has long seemed
to me one of the most beautiful in the English language. Contemplating
the theory --perhaps long since dead--that chordates and echinoderms
share a common ancestor is wonderfully removed from the political and
marketing issues that consume most of my days.)
Nafisi also suggests that she and her fellow readers enjoy the beauty
of the literary classics they read and asserts that there is truth in
these works--truth missing in the world outside that special space they
open up. Here we teeter on the edge of ancient philosophical
conundrums--the relation of Truth and Beauty to the Real.
Do we want to go there?
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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