Recently (No, like this past week) yet another article lauding the inglourious Nafisi as our best foot forward at contemporary literature appeared once again. Nothing against Nafisi personally, but I simply haven’t found her to be all that good, to be honest. Maybe she reads better in Farsi. Although her (main) book did have a very catchy title.
The premise of her most productive book to-date, namely that women inside Iran would gather and under Nafisi’s not so steady hand read and discuss (among other similarly demeaning works of literature) Lolita. The incredible (and I mean that literally) book by Vladimir Nabokov written in 1955. Once again, the past will not let an Iranian obsess in peace.
This frankly troubles me. Sure, it’s a poignantly fitting premise. I mean, who would not get the irony? That whole obvious parallel?
Women in Iran dominated and oppressed by an ugly entire system and society, one that seeks to perpetually subjugate, oppress, and if possible exterminate them from very view. Now juxtapose Nabokov’s novel about a not attractive older man’s obsessively examined and re-examined sexual and total obsession with the book’s 12 year old namesake.
We get it. Iranian women in Iran, are in many ways, the very same Lolita. Certainly so.
But… If you were on the very edge of it, of all books to choose from, why in god’s name would you ever pick up Lolita! It would seem counter-intuitive and that when in despair, the last thing you need is to attend a secret reading session with Nafisi, and wallow in your collective misery! To celebrate a man’s deepest desire? Even more than you are legally bound and spiritually led to do on a daily basis?
Let us look at exactly what happens in Lolita, so that the possible sheer madness in choosing this book over others, can be brought to a bit of light.
Spoiler Alert….
First off, Lolita dies. Not an un-horrible death, but the kind of death that absolutely all women absolutely fear the most, namely dying during childbirth. Imagine reading this in Tehran or anywhere in Iran for that matter and then having to drive home. Alone. I don’t care how big a rock star Nafisi might be, that is one long lonely drive home. Even Benyamin couldn’t pop you out of that depression.
What you’d think Iranian women in Tehran need most, is something inspiring and uplifting to keep them from losing their minds in no-women-allowed-Iran. You know, a story with actual hope. More importantly one that teaches you how to cope. And win.
Second, in the story, the man wins. Wow! So after all that pain and oppressive character manipulation and guilt tripping, the character that deserves the most retribution, gets away with it in the end? Twice! How’s that healthy for women to read about?
OK, right there, I don’t care if I’m not a woman (or am I ?), and if I may or may not have all the right senses to contemplate this fully as a man living in ghorbat, but I’d like to think that with an ending and plot like this, when assembling the list of books we would consider reading in a secret room with Azar Nafisi somewhere in Tehran, this one, Lolita, would most certainly be left off the list. Crossed off with a sharpie.
Third, the entire story revolves around the man, Humbert. A disgusting worst example of an entirely weak cheater of a man. His obsession and sexual desires, pointed right and directly at this young girl, is evaluated, re-evaluated, examined and re-examined over and over again, as if in doing so the grand crime of it all will somehow be justified, if we just keep on keeping it on the forefront of our single topic discussion. Lolita? forget her, this book is all about Humbert and his selfish desire to dominate her. She’s even painted not so subtly as a manipulative minx.
Although Nabokov himself said that there was no actual point to his story, and that it was based on a story he read, about an ape in captivity that drew an image on paper, and that Lolita most certainly did not have a moral, apparently Nafisi can see things in it that no one else can. Good for her. She champions Lolita despite a worse than bad luck, having been entirely dominated, oppressed, manipulated by her captor Humbert. From age 12 to the very last day when she dies horribly. Hopelessly and with no good graspable point of inspired vinidcation to anything remotely positive, at all. Somehow, despite the author’s own words, Nafisi still sees some mysteriously hidden greater point. And bless her heart if she actually finds personal solace in a brutal murder.
Although Humbert and Nabokov together it seems, outright continuously steal, crush, and destroy Lolita’s innocence at every turn of the page, all in the juvenile pursuit of Humbert’s own selfish and immature desires, and Nabokov’s less than veiled “exploration” of an evil in the heart of every man, Nafisi would somehow have us believe that somewhere between those real and the lines she sees in Nabokov’s book, lies Lolita’s heart of a champion, and that witnessing her fierce independence snuffed out so easily by nothing more than a mere weak-willed cheat of a man, in the end, is somehow useful in the greater dialogue of the modern Iranian woman in Iran today. Or, apparently, misery loves company. A lot of it. If misery were Polo, Lolita would be Tahdeeg.
That could all be very well and true. Maybe there is something to be said for the women in Nafisi’s book club commiserating with Nafisi and Lolita, in Tehran. Maybe it’s all about the fulcrum and not leverage. Maybe the opposite of something that seems so outright intuitively wrong, is actually wrong, and that the intuitively wrong thing, is somehow right and actually good for you or your soul. But I’m not so sure. All that healthy dialogue over despair, while just outside, in the streets, the very real “Humbert’s” surround every single slightest move you and your guilty hair make. Institutionally, Constitutionally, and Revolutionally, Iran itself is Humbert reincarnate. De-incarnate. So I’d think some sort of escapist alternate reality in which women are free and win the day, would be high on the order. You know, good old delusional positive optimism. A woman’s Clint Eastwood.
Nabokov’s Lolita is an acknowledged brilliant western literary exploration of feeling. A very bad feeling to be sure. And one that should of course be kept hidden in that deep darkness of a man’s dirty cave of depravity and animal netherplace. There is no doubt that the sheer un-controlled, un-apologetic exploration and indulgence of a man’s ultimate sex-domination-fantasy, is obviously freeing at some level. But freeing for men. Not women.
Witnessing poor Lolita’s long and slow fall and ultimate plight of pointlessness, I have to wonder what possible beneficial point it could ever offer today’s Iranian women on the very verge.
