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.