[lit-ideas] Re: Reading Lolita in Tehran
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 00:35:20 EDT
Nafisi's book seems to pivot on contrasts between imagination and concrete
situation, between bookish sympathy and social cruelty, between universals of
art and specifics of people and place. Though Iran is not Lolita and the
Ayatollah not Humbert, one can find densely contrasting paragraphs like this
one on
page 148 of the paperback:
_____
"I found myself walking with a group of chanting students who had
appeared magically. Suddenly, we heard the sound of bullets, which seemed to be
coming out of nowhere. The bullets were real. One moment we were standing in
front
of the wide iron gate of the university and then I found myself running
toward the bookstores, most of which had closed because of the unrest. I took
cover
under the awning of one that was still open. Nearby, a music vendor had left
his tape deck running; some singer's mournful voice lamenting his love's
betrayal."
_____
Another contrast along these lines is between the writings of Mike Gold and
F. Scott Fitzgerald, between the ideological and the aesthetic. Nafisi gives
the ideologue little space except as a corruption of the aesthetic. And when
writ large in politics, the ideologue's corruption is writ large, as on page
109:
"The Islamic Revolution, as it turned out, did more damage to Islam by using
it as an instrument of oppression than any alien ever could have done."
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
