Before Sunset

(2004; Southcoast Village) Written and directed by Richard Linklater.   This film is the sequel to the 1995 film, “Before Sunrise,” a film that most people either loved or hated.  It was a sometimes-pretentious film about an American boy and a French girl who meet on a train and spend one night wandering the streets of Vienna together.  They don’t even know the other’s last name, let alone key information like phone-numbers and addresses (this was before the widespread use of email), but they opt to meet each other six months hence, in Vienna, and see what happens.  The first film ends without letting us know whether or not the couple followed through on their plans, leaving the viewer to decide if the ending will be romantic or cynical.   As the sequel, “Before Sunset” opens, Jesse is in Paris on a book tour promoting a novel he wrote based on the couple’s experience that one night.  Guess who walks into the bookstore?  That’s right, Celine (Julie Delpy), and the film unfolds in real time as we follow the couple through the streets of Paris.   Like the first film, but even more so, the film is, as every critic has noted, driven by conversation, but I would argue that it is also driven by body language and facial expression, and we see these two actors at their best, Hawke lending is nervous presence to what is, no matter how you look at it, an awkward situation, and Delpy explore the situation with a rich tableaux of facial expressions and gestures that help us understand how Jesse could fall in love with Celine in just one night, and remain in love with her for nine years, though he’s had no contact with her the entire time.   The first film worked for me, as Jesse explains in the first scene, because it made us believe in the power of meeting and connecting with another person.  As I’ve gotten older, just as the characters have, and, just as those characters realize, I’ve come to realize that these kinds of connections with another person are far rarer than we would like to think.  Sure there are lots of people I get along with, but very few with whom I have really connected.   This dynamic is what lends drama to “Before Sunset.”   Will these two former lovers, both of whom are in new relationships, one of whom is married with a four-year-old child, throw away those relationships to reestablish this one.  Will Jesse stay in Paris to be with Celine?  But what builds this drama is not some artificial plot device, but the real difficulty the two characters have in really coming to say what they really think and feel.  They flirt, and joke, and dance around the topic, but they find, as most of us it do, that it is both dangerous and difficult to say what you really feel.  So the question becomes, will they put into words what we all know is in their hearts, and this question takes priority over the more obviously cinematic question, will they put into action what we know they feel in their hearts?   I found myself loving this film, and though some critics panned some of the dialogue as failed attempts at profundity, I was attracted to this because it is exactly how people talk who do feel some kind of connection to each other, so connected that the ideas pour out of them without letting them fully form.  This quality, along with its exploration of the theme of the “roads not taken,” made it a quiet, but rich pleasure for my Thursday afternoon.   It’s a film that, like the first installment, will stick with me for a long time.

Sarah Laughs

This homily was presented at Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church, Corona Del Mar, July 18, 2004.  Somebody asked me to post it.   Four years ago when I was assigned to preach on this set of texts, I focused on the Gospel reading, describing the importance of engaging in spiritually-renewing activities.  But this time around I found myself drawn more to the first lesson.   In particular, I was drawn to Sarah and her laughter.  To really understand this story you need to read the whole Abraham-Sarah saga in Genesis, but I’ll just tell you that most of the drama revolves around Abraham and Sarah’s desire to have a child.  This desire was especially important to Abraham because God had promised to make a “great nation” out of his descendants, but his wife, Sarah, remained childless . . . for decades.  The desire to have a child was especially important for Sarah because, aside from her own maternal urges, in her world, a childless woman was an object of shame and pity.             Our lesson for today picks up the story at a point when Sarah is well past menopause and still childless.  Three men come to visit Abraham.  He doesn’t know who they are, but the reader is told that they somehow represent God.  In the course of their visit they reveal that Sarah, in spite of her advanced age, will, indeed, give birth to a son.  Meanwhile, Sarah, excluded from this conversation because she is woman, is listening at the door.  When she hears the men tell Abraham that she will become pregnant, she laughs to herself.  God asks Abraham why she laughed, and, in the verses that follow our reading, Abraham asks Sarah why she laughed.  “I didn’t laugh,” she says.  “Yes, you did,” Abraham tells her, and that’s how the story ends: without Sarah explaining her laughter.             So I have the same question God and Abraham had: Sarah, why did you laugh?  It’s possible she’s just laughing at the three visitors who think post-menopausal women can get pregnant, but I don’t think so.  As she laughs she asks a question, “will I have pleasure” and I think she means the pleasure of actually having a child, “i.e., will I have, at this stage of my life, after so many decades of trying and trying, even in the prime of my reproductive life, and failing, will I have that joy, that fulfillment now?”  I think she laughs at the absurdity of this hope, a hope that is absurd because it flies in face of reality.             I think this is what I would call the “laughter of despair.” This is when we laugh at something absurd, but something for which we still harbor some shred of hope.  Often people say that despair is the opposite of hope—that it is the total absence of hope—but if that is true, despair is, I think, haunted by hope.  We hope for something, but we do the math and realize that it’s not going to happen, and sometimes we respond to this juxtaposition of hope and despair with humor.              I think some of the best examples of this kind of desperate humor are generated by Chicago Cubs fans.  They know that no matter how good the team is playing during the season, they will never win the World Series.  So they joke about it.  For example:   When arguing for the installation of lights at Wrigley Field, Illinois State Representative John F. Dunn quipped, "Noise pollution can't be that much of a problem [at Wrigley Field]. There's nothing to cheer about."   Or consider Bill Buckner’s comment on the Cubs: “There's nothing wrong with this team that more pitching, more fielding and more hitting couldn't help."   Or consider the Chicago deejay who announced that "The Cubs were taking batting practice, and the pitching machine threw a no-hitter."   Or Joe Garagiola’s glass-half-full perspective:  He said, "One thing you learn as a Cubs fan: When you bought your ticket, you could bank on seeing the bottom of the ninth."   Or the joke: Q: Did you hear about the new Cubs’ soup?A: You take two sips and then you choke.   Or the story about a wicked Chicago man who died and went to the place all wicked people go. The Devil decided to shove him in a room and cranked the heat and humidity up.The man smiled. When the Evil One asked why the man was smiling he said: "Just like Chicago in Spring"So the Most Evil One cranked up the heat and humidity more. The man removed his coat, smiled, and said:"Just like Chicago in Summer"This time the Destroyer of Beauty cranked the heat and humidity to maximum.The man removed his shirt and tie and said"Just like Chicago in August"The Devil then got an idea. He shut off the heat and turned on the air conditioning. The room froze in seconds. Ice was everywhere. Polar bears hid in dens because it was so cold. Satan, confident he had finally won, peaked in the man's room only to find the man cheering, partying frantically, and shouting:...."The Cubs won the World Series...The Cubs won the World Series..."                 Cubs humor is a good example of this humor of despair.   They laugh instead of crying because, in spite of everything, they still hope, and it is their hope, a hope that seems so contrary to reality, that makes them laugh.  So today thousands of Cubs fans are doing the post-All-star game break math and they are hoping and despairing at the same time.  The Cubs are seven games back, but I know thousands of Cubs fans are “doing the math” and thinking “wild card” or, “if they just . . .,” and they are hoping one thing in the silence of their hearts, but with their mouths their despair is mocking that hope in the form of Chicago Cubs jokes.             So, the laugh of despair is that little chuckle at the disjunction between your hope and your calculations. In fact, I remember having just such an experience of despair while literally “doing the math.”  Since I had done well in math in high school, and performed well on the S.A.T., I was told I could enroll in Calculus my freshman year.  It was my first semester in college and I was really surprised to find out that not only did they not take attendance in college, they didn’t make me do the homework in my math class either.  The teacher assigned the homework, but the answers were all in the back of the book, and we didn’t have to turn it in.  I thought, “I’m pretty good at math, it’s basically just logic, right?”   So my attendance at class was not particularly regular, and neither was my homework.  So on the day of the first exam I showed up and read the first question:  “A perfectly graded funnel, eight inches in diameter at the top, and a half inch in diameter at the base is draining a liquid.  It took eleven seconds for the level in the funnel to drain one inch.  How long will it take for the funnel to drain completely?”              Now, I didn’t think that this sort of problem was the kind of thing you could figure out.  I thought if you really wanted to know how long it took a funnel to drain, you would just have to time it and see.  I had no idea how to solve the problem, but when I read the question, I laughed.  I laughed because I suddenly realized that my hopes of “just figuring things” out in this class were not going to work.  It was a laugh of despair.  In this case “doing the math” meant realizing that I was not going to be able to do the math, so I laughed to myself the laugh of despair.             A few days ago I heard this same laugh from a friend.  He has been struggling with depression and he was describing the medication he’s taking now.  He told me that he thought, over all, the medication’s effects were positive, “but,” he said, “I guess, to be honest, what this medication may ultimately do is help me be satisfied with a life of complacency,” and then he laughed.             I think this little laugh, was the laugh of despair.  You see, he’s thinking of leaving his wife for another woman.  “I’ve been doing the moral algebra,” he told me, “but I haven’t been able to solve the equation.”  He’s trying to make this equation, a moral equation, balance.  On one side of the equation is his wife, a warm, attractive, fun woman who still loves her husband.  One the other side is the other woman, a woman for whom he feels great passion, a woman who engages him intellectually and makes him feel alive and hopeful, a woman who holds out the promise of greater happiness and fulfillment.  But is it right, in hopes of achieving some greater joy or fulfillment for himself, to hurt his wife, a woman who has done nothing wrong?  This is how he tries to explain it to me.  He’s doing the math, but it doesn’t add up.  So, later, when tells me about his medication, he laughs at the thought that he could really be happy in his marriage, believing that staying with his wife is somehow tantamount to choosing complacency, a life of quiet desperation, and he fears this new medication will provide him with a false sense of contentment.  The real equation is, for him, with his own mortality.  With the thirty or forty years he has left, will he live a life hopeless complacency, or will he pursue the passion he’s longing for with this other woman?  You see, he’s lost faith; he no longer believes his marriage can ever make him truly happy.  But his laugh, that laugh of despair, suggests to me that some kind of hope still haunts him.  I think maybe, deep down, he still wishes he could be happy with his wife, though he despairs of it, so he laughs at his own hope for genuine happiness in his marriage and blames this hope on his new medication.             As hopeless as the Cubs can be, and as overwhelming as that Calculus problem seemed to me, they are nothing compared to these kinds of calculations, the calculations we make when we are in total despair.  It is when we are in these kinds of situations—the periods of great hopelessness—that “doing the math” becomes a very high-stakes endeavor.  Probably all of us have had these periods in our lives.  We do the math, make the calculations, and try to balance the equations, but the realities seem to offer no possibility for the kind of joy and fulfillment we are longing for, and hope suddenly seems absurd.             I wish there was someone wiser standing up here today.  I wish there was someone standing up here who could tell you how to confront this despair, but I find myself at somewhat of a loss. Still, I think the author of Genesis does, through Sarah’s story, offer us a way of thinking about our own despair.  If you read all of Sarah’s story, you find that at one point in her life, her despair drove her to take action.  Since she couldn’t have a baby, she decided that Abraham should have a child with her maidservant, Hagar, and this was thousands of years before the era of artificial insemination.  Without going into all the details, you can read them for yourselves, this turned out to be a disaster.  In a nutshell, Sarah’s desperate act did not bring her the joy and fulfillment she was hoping for; it only brought more pain.  This is what I think Genesis says to my friend who’s thinking of leaving his wife: desperate laughter is one thing—an expression of this mixture of hope and despair--but desperate actions are another and they rarely bring us what we are longing for.   I think that is what Genesis says to my friend: act from hope, not from despair.             But maybe you are skeptical about the wisdom of Genesis, because it took a real miracle to fulfill Sarah’s hopes, and maybe you don’t think you can expect, or even hope for something like that, so, then what can Sarah’s story say to you in your moment of despair?              Well, I suppose what I might say is that when Sarah laughed  at her own desperate hope she didn’t know that the thing she longed for most was only a year away.  I don’t know that I can promise you a miracle will always give you the thing you want, in fact, I’m pretty sure you can’t count on that, but what I’m learning, or at least trying to learn, is that life is a process full of possibilities, and as it unfolds, the future brings with it great surprises, not only surprises in our circumstances, but surprises in ourselves.  We realize that the thing we longed for maybe wasn’t the thing we really wanted after all, and that ease, comfort, and constant fulfillment are not what make our lives beautiful, but beauty comes in the most unexpected ways, sometimes it even comes when our wishes go unfulfilled, when our desires are not met, and when our plans do not work out.             My wife, Barbara, and I have not experienced the kinds of fertility problems Abraham and Sarah faced.  If I put toothpaste on Barbara’s toothbrush for her, she gets pregnant.  When we got married, Barbara and I planned to have two, or at the most, three children.  So, a year and a half ago, when I sat on the edge of my bed staring at a little blue strip on a home pregnancy test, I laughed.  I laughed because I realized that our family had just outgrown everything.  Nothing fit anymore: not our house, not our car, not our budget.  We did the math and realized that having four children didn’t make sense at all.              Annie was not what we had planned or hoped for, but she came anyway, and today I can’t imagine my life being complete without her.  Every morning I wake up to see a smiling face hovering inches above mine, and every evening when I walk through the front door I find her scampering to greet me, and I realize I love her in a way that no equation could calculate.  Yes, and I admit this now with a certain sense of shame, that staring at that blue strip a year and a half ago I laughed with despair at my situation, but now, thinking of Annie, my heart is full of only hope and joy.             That’s what Sarah’s story teaches me.  It teaches me that the laugh of despair can become, in time, a laugh of joy.  When Sarah’s son was born, they named him “Isaac,” a name that means something like, “God smiles,” or maybe even “God laughs,” because, from God’s perspective, there is no difference between the laugh of despair and the laugh of joy, the only difference between them being one of time and perspective.  In other words, just because our despair makes a mockery of our hopes, that doesn’t mean we should lose all faith. Sometimes the very thing we are really longing for is already on the way.   Life is a process full of endless possibilities for beauty, and for the person of faith our union with God, and God’s union with us, allows us to see the ghost of hope haunting even the most despairing moments of our lives, and seeing that hopeful ghost makes us, and God, laugh.

Film Review: “King Arthur” (2004; Theaters, wide release)

This is a big Hollywood movie. There is plenty of action to augment a well-paced story that propels the viewer towards a climatic battle scene where the good guys (Arthur, his knights, and the Britons) taken on the bad guys (the Saxons). It secures Keira Knightley’s future as real big-time movie star, as she shows that her talent, beauty, and charm are more than enough to fill up an epic screen.

The film tries to blend legend and history with a good dose of modern sensibilities. It is based on the theory that Arthur was really a Roman, or half-Roman, half-Briton knight, who led a group of Sarmatian knights at the beckon call of Rome. When Rome is forced to withdraw from Britain in the fifth-century, Arthur must decide whether or not to stay and cast his lot in with the Britons, who are now threatened with a merciless Saxon invasion, or return to Rome and enjoy glory and luxury. You can guess what he chooses to do.

But the film also recast the story as a modern tale of freedom and political autonomy. Rome, the Church, and the Saxons represent a threat to British freedom, and Arthur must champion an almost-Rousseanean ideal of social contract and individual autonomy. Knightley, as Guinevere, storms around seducing Arthur, more as a political subject than as a man, using both her sex appeal and political rhetoric to urge him to say. Hard is it may be to believe, her words seem to have more effect than her looks.

In the course of telling the story, Pelagius, the fifth-century theologian who lent his name to an enduring soteriology that emphasizes freewill and has been, by most brands of Christianity, considered heresy, becomes a kind of unseen ideological hero. Arthur’s only moral tie to Rome is through Pelagius, whose doctrine of free-will promises, for Arthur, to reshape the Roman Empire into a more egalitarian and peaceful society. However, when Arthur finds out that Pelagius has been excommunicated and executed as a heretic, he gives up on Rome. This is an interesting take on Pelagius (though not a novel one), and I like the way the film attempts to think through political implications of various theological perspectives, though I suspect the average viewer will miss this entirely.

All said and done, this is a fun summer movie with an interesting take on the Arthur legend. Beyond the allusions to Pelagius, there’s not much to chew on here as the notions of freedom and equality seem anachronistic and simplistic, but you will find yourself cheering for Arthur and enjoying Keira Knightley in some of the most interesting costumes she’s ever worn . . . sure beats her soccer uniform anyway.

Film Review: “101 Reykjavik” (2000; On DVD)
This is a small film which tries to take on a big idea: the problem of human existence. The theme is set up in the first moments of the film when the main character, Hlynure, declares: “I’ll be dead after I die and I was dead before I was born. Life is a break from death.” If you missed the point, a caption flashes, in English, Cary Leibowitz’s compact observation: “U can’t B dead all the time.”

The film pursues this theme by tracing the life of Hlynure, a young man who still lives at home with his mother, refuses to get a job, and spends most of his time drinking, watching television, and engaging in meaningless (for him) sex. His routine is meant to show us a man reduced to a very primitive level. In Iceland, the state’s social network takes care of him from the cradle to the grave. Abandoned by his alcoholic father, Hlynure was supported by child support until he was sixteen, unemployment after that, and, when he’s old, the old-age pension will take care of him. He fails to see any reason to get a job or pursue anything more meaningful than watching pornography. He sleeps, eats, masturbates, and drinks.

But the women in his life seem to have other ideas. In fact, in this film it is the women who seem to be all about the work of civilization (contra Freud for women were the enemies of civilization). Hlynure describes a girl he’s had sex with as a woman “living alone in a three-bedroom flat that she’s trying to fill.” When the woman announces that she is pregnant, Hlynure refuse to be involved with the pregnancy at all, protesting that he wore condom, and, presumably, should not be held responsible for his progeny.

Things are complicated when his mother invites her Flamenco-dancing friend, Lola (Victoria Abril), to spend Christmas with them. Hlynure obsesses over Lola, and, one night, while his mother is away visiting relatives, he sleeps with her. When his mother returns from the trip she comes “out of the closet” and tells Hlynure that she is not only a lesbian, she and Lola are in love.

While Hlynure debates whether or not he should tell his mother about Lola’s infidelity, he discovers that Lola his pregnant. While Hlynure’s mother knew that Lola was going to seduce someone with the aim of getting pregnant, she is apparently unaware that Hlynure is the father.

Hlynure then broods over the absurdity that he is to be the father of his stepfather’s (i.e. Lola’s) child who will also be his brother, i.e., his mother’s (adoptive) son. His only reaction seems to be greater and greater despair, but in the end he finds a place for himself, in his mother’s home, but now with a job and a purpose: to help care for his son/brother.

So the idea seems to be that the purpose of life is to perpetuate more life, and in this film only women seem to be aware of that. At one point Hlynure complains that the local night club is just a “waiting room for the venereal disease clinic,” a place that his “haunted by the ghosts” of aborted fetuses.

The film is certainly not a philosophical tour de force, leaving us, apparently with the idea that the only purpose in life is to perpetuate life, but if the life we perpetuate is equally meaningless, what is the point of perpetuating it?

To this end, I find my summer reading project—the works of Alfred North Whitehead—to be a refreshing alternative. For Whitehead there really does seem to be a meaning to life, though this meaning is not circumscribed by any particular teleology, found in his notion of enjoyment. Experience, and the enjoyment of experience, is the meaning of life, and Hlynure’s aimless activity throughout the film represents a kind of truncated experience, truncated because truncates it, denying himself opportunities for maximizing enjoyment by seeing the way is activities are related to all the events in the universe.

Still, this small film is beautiful in its own way, wonderfully paced, and, though this is not its aim, gives the viewer a wonderful slice of life in Reykjavik.

Film Review: “101 Reykjavik” (2000; On DVD)
This is a small film which tries to take on a big idea: the problem of human existence. The theme is set up in the first moments of the film when the main character, Hlynure, declares: “I’ll be dead after I die and I was dead before I was born. Life is a break from death.” If you missed the point, a caption flashes, in English, Cary Leibowitz’s compact observation: “U can’t B dead all the time.”

The film pursues this theme by tracing the life of Hlynure, a young man who still lives at home with his mother, refuses to get a job, and spends most of his time drinking, watching television, and engaging in meaningless (for him) sex. His routine is meant to show us a man reduced to a very primitive level. In Iceland, the state’s social network takes care of him from the cradle to the grave. Abandoned by his alcoholic father, Hlynure was supported by child support until he was sixteen, unemployment after that, and, when he’s old, the old-age pension will take care of him. He fails to see any reason to get a job or pursue anything more meaningful than watching pornography. He sleeps, eats, masturbates, and drinks.

But the women in his life seem to have other ideas. In fact, in this film it is the women who seem to be all about the work of civilization (contra Freud for women were the enemies of civilization). Hlynure describes a girl he’s had sex with as a woman “living alone in a three-bedroom flat that she’s trying to fill.” When the woman announces that she is pregnant, Hlynure refuse to be involved with the pregnancy at all, protesting that he wore condom, and, presumably, should not be held responsible for his progeny.

Things are complicated when his mother invites her Flamenco-dancing friend, Lola (Victoria Abril), to spend Christmas with them. Hlynure obsesses over Lola, and, one night, while his mother is away visiting relatives, he sleeps with her. When his mother returns from the trip she comes “out of the closet” and tells Hlynure that she is not only a lesbian, she and Lola are in love.

While Hlynure debates whether or not he should tell his mother about Lola’s infidelity, he discovers that Lola his pregnant. While Hlynure’s mother knew that Lola was going to seduce someone with the aim of getting pregnant, she is apparently unaware that Hlynure is the father.

Hlynure then broods over the absurdity that he is to be the father of his stepfather’s (i.e. Lola’s) child who will also be his brother, i.e., his mother’s (adoptive) son. His only reaction seems to be greater and greater despair, but in the end he finds a place for himself, in his mother’s home, but now with a job and a purpose: to help care for his son/brother.

So the idea seems to be that the purpose of life is to perpetuate more life, and in this film only women seem to be aware of that. At one point Hlynure complains that the local night club is just a “waiting room for the venereal disease clinic,” a place that his “haunted by the ghosts” of aborted fetuses.

The film is certainly not a philosophical tour de force, leaving us, apparently with the idea that the only purpose in life is to perpetuate life, but if the life we perpetuate is equally meaningless, what is the point of perpetuating it?

To this end, I find my summer reading project—the works of Alfred North Whitehead—to be a refreshing alternative. For Whitehead there really does seem to be a meaning to life, though this meaning is not circumscribed by any particular teleology, found in his notion of enjoyment. Experience, and the enjoyment of experience, is the meaning of life, and Hlynure’s aimless activity throughout the film represents a kind of truncated experience, truncated because truncates it, denying himself opportunities for maximizing enjoyment by seeing the way is activities are related to all the events in the universe.

Still, this small film is beautiful in its own way, wonderfully paced, and, though this is not its aim, gives the viewer a wonderful slice of life in Reykjavik.

Books: Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Handmaid’s Tale.
Last week I finished reading Azar Nafisi’s, Reading Lolita in Tehran, her memoir about a book club she started in Iran during the 1980’s and 90’s. She describes the Islamic revolution that took place there and reflects on how these events affected life in Iran, especially for women and intellectuals. As she does so, she also offers a reading of some of her favorite authors: Nabokov, James, Bellows, and Austen.

But this book is also a reflection on the role of fiction in the human quest for freedom. As these women suffered under the harsh and intrusive rule of the Ayatollah Khomenei, they found, in novels, a way to explore the reality around them, a reality they discovered was largely “fictional” itself, dreamed up by some imam whose vision needed to be forced on everyone else.

I was particularly drawn to her readings of Nabokov and Austen. Her understanding of Lolita is very similar to mine. Nafisi, like me, admires Nabokov’s ability to create space for Lolita in the story—to allow us to see how Humbert’s actions are affecting her—while still maintaining Humbert’s perspective. In Nabokov’s novel, Humbert imagines that his vision for Lolita will be hers. Any resistance on her part is a sign that she is spoiled, but her “cooperation” with him is, as Nabokov’s Humbert (inadvertently) points out, the result of her not having anywhere else to go. This is the problem confronting Nafisi and her students. Under the Islamic Republic they have nowhere else to go and they are subjected to a philosopher king’s utopian vision which they don't share.

This reminded me of another book I recently read, Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale. The parallels between Atwood’s dystopian vision and the Islamic Revolution are obvious and seemingly deliberate. But in Atwood’s novel it is the Christian right that creates this oppressive regime. Governed by the Bible, feeling threatened by enemies, and overwhelmed by some kind of ecological disaster, the Christian regime veils, silences, and excludes its women from public space, forcing some of them to become “handmaid’s” to male rulers who need to procreate. They model their program on the example of the Hebrew Patriarchs who used handmaidens to increase their reproductive capacities. (But they fail to note the way the text of Genesis depicts this practice as disastrous.) Interestingly, in this world women are denied the right to read, the very venue that gave some measure of empowerment to Nafisi and her students.

Unfortunately, envisioning a world in which the Christian right has taken over the United States and subjected its citizens, especially its women, to this kind of oppression is no longer hard to imagine. I found myself gripped with fear as I read this novel--fear for myself, my daughters, my wife, and my students, more than fear for the central character--as I can easily imagine that this world is one that Bush, Ashcroft, and Ridge would like to create.

I know this sounds alarmists to most people, but I’m genuinely afraid. If Bush wins the election in November, and it seems likely that he will, I fear for our country. No longer worried about facing reelection, what adventures will they embark upon next? What civil rights will they destroy in the name of safety? What speech will they censor in the name of our children? What dissent will they squash in the name of patriotism? Which countries will they bomb in name of human rights? All their talk of freedom and human rights is undermined by their unabashed support of Saudi Arabia. These people are evil, and if they get control of this country for another four years, I worry about what will happen to us.

But, as I said, I’m also attracted to Nafisi’s reading of Austen. Some people describe Austen as frivolous and apolitical, but Nafisi discovered that her novels are political, if one can see, in them, an attempt to point to the daily cruelties of life and to find, in them, a way to respond. It would have been easy for this group of Muslim women to blame all their problems on the Islamic regime, but, in Austen, Nafisi and her students found an exposition of the daily and personal cruelties that we foist on each other.

Lately, I’ve been feeling that this is exactly what life in Irvine is like. This is part of what I hate about my life right now. In my neighborhood (University Park and Village Park), a bunch overbearing (and overweight) women dominate life. They make enormous dramas out of tiny problems. They are always complaining, one might say, “bitching,” about each other. These big crises are always over the smallest things. Last week I watched a group of eight of these women engage in a heated conversation for half an hour over the fact that there were stacks of soda cans in the swimming team shed. One group, the concession stand group, felt they had a right to put them there. Another group, the “boosters,” resented the cans and said they were in the way of the swim coaches. One would think the easy thing to do would be to move the fucking cans to one side, but this could not be accomplished without bitter insults, malicious accusations, and heated debate. I suspect these people don’t want to face the fact that they are dying, and pretty fast, too, considering how much cheesecake they eat, and how little exercise they get, so they make their lives seem bigger by blowing everything out of proportion.

They do not read, except for Harry Potter, and they do not engage in any serious thought, except for cliché’s about religion being good for you and the need to support our president in this time of war, but they yack endlessly and mindlessly about their petty nonsense day and night.

How did I end up living in this shithole? I never wanted to be here. I never wanted to be living this life. I pictured myself, my wife, and my kids fraternizing with artists, poets, and musicians. I pictured Barbara painting (she’s very talented, though she doesn’t think so), spinning pots, and raising money for Green Peace, not engaged in PTA politics, filling our house with kitsch, and putting up with maliciousness of all these flabby yentas. I pictured my kids reading Lewis Carroll, not watching “Fifth Wheel.” I pictured a house with simple furnishings and lots of books, not cramped with toys the kids never play with and piles and piles of junk mail. I pictured us having friends who have actually read Nabokov and Atwood, not people who drone on endlessly about lawns, bathroom tiling, and sheetrock.

But here I am, in my own dystopia, waiting for November when Dubya, Cheney, and Aschcroft can really stick it to us. The fictional life of Irvine has become too painful for me. I’m glad I have David Foster Wallace’s 1088 page novel, Infinite Jest, waiting for me at home.