Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0010368, Thu, 23 Sep 2004 20:12:29 -0700

Subject
Fwd: George Will -- Nabokov's novel "Invitation to a Beheading"
...
Date
Body
----- Forwarded message from spklein52@hotmail.com -----
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 19:46:43 -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: George Will -- Nabokov's novel "Invitation to a Beheading" ...
To: spklein52@hotmail.com


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/191978_will23.html[1] MAD
hatter's desire for nukes not irrational
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Seattle,WA,USA
GEORGE WILL: Iran is not a mere literary dystopia. It is perhaps the
biggest problem on the horizon of the next U.S. president because it
is moving toward development of nuclear weapons, concerning which the
Bush administration has two factions. ... [2]

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Mad hatter's desire for nukes not irrational

By GEORGE F. WILL
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

_A 10-year-old had awakened his parents in horror, telling them he
had been having an "illegal dream." He had been dreaming that he was
at the seaside with some men and women who were kissing, and he did
not know what to do._

-- Azar Nafisi, "Reading Lolita in Tehran"

WASHINGTON -- What the young Iranian should have done to please the
regime running the Islamic Republic of Iran is obey the prison rules
in Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Invitation to a Beheading": "It is
desirable that the inmate should not have dreams at all."

Nafisi, who left Iran in 1997 and now teaches at Johns Hopkins,
says, "What differentiated this revolution from the other
totalitarian revolutions of the 20th century was that it came in the
name of the past." In the name, that is, of a lost religious purity
and rigor.

.........