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EDNOTE. Michael Juliar, compiler of the essential VLADIMIR NABOKOV: A
Descriptive Bibiliography (NY: Garland, 1986) points out that Nabokov's
LOLITA plays a far more essential role in Azar Nafisi's recent READING
LOLITA IN TEHRAN than I, for one, had suspected. I would also call
attention to Juliar's essay "Inspiration for LOLITA" at
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/zembla.htm wherein he proposes
an explanation for VN's famously obscure statement that his inspiration
for LO was a newspaper story about an ape in the Paris zoo drawing a
picture. Of what? The bars of his cage.
----- Original Message -----
From: "M Juliar" <michael@juliar.com>
>
> The advanced uncorrected proofs of Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar
Nafisi,
> author of Anti-Terra: A Study of Vladimir Nabokov's Novels (Tehran, 1994),
> are out. The title is, I suspect, having read only the first two chapters,
> more than just an evocation of Nabokov's most famous novel.
>
> Two excerpts from the first chapter.
>
> 1.
> ....Manna pointed out that I was no Miss Brodie, and they, well, they were
> what they were. She reminded me of a warning I was fond of repeating: do
> not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn
> it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not
so
> much reality but the epiphany of truth. Yet I suppose that if I were to go
> against my own recommendation and choose a work of fiction that would most
> resonate with our lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it would not be
The
> Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or even 1984 but perhaps Nabokov's Invitation to
a
> Beheading or better yet, Lolita.
>
> 2.
> ....Here and now in that other world that cropped up so many times in our
> discussions, I sit and reimagine myself and my students, my girls as I
came
> to call them, reading Lolita in a deceptively sunny room in Tehran. But to
> steal the words from Humbert, the poet/criminal of Lolita, I need you, the
> reader, to imagine us, for we won't really exist if you don't. Against the
> tyranny of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn't dare
to
> imagine ourselves: in our most private and secret moments, in the most
> extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening to music, falling in
> love, walking down the shady streets or reading Lolita in Tehran. And then
> imagine us again with all this confiscated, driven underground, taken away
> from us.
>
> If I write about Nabokov today, it is to celebrate our reading of Nabokov
in
> Tehran, against all odds. Of all his novels I choose the one I taught
last,
> and the one that is connected to so many memories. It is of Lolita that I
> want to write, but right now there is no way I can write about that novel
> without also writing about Tehran. This, then, is the story of Lolita in
> Tehran, how Lolita gave a different color to Tehran and how Tehran helped
> redefine Nabokov's novel, turning it into this Lolita, our Lolita.
>
> There's more at
>
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0375504907&view=excerp
t
Descriptive Bibiliography (NY: Garland, 1986) points out that Nabokov's
LOLITA plays a far more essential role in Azar Nafisi's recent READING
LOLITA IN TEHRAN than I, for one, had suspected. I would also call
attention to Juliar's essay "Inspiration for LOLITA" at
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/zembla.htm wherein he proposes
an explanation for VN's famously obscure statement that his inspiration
for LO was a newspaper story about an ape in the Paris zoo drawing a
picture. Of what? The bars of his cage.
----- Original Message -----
From: "M Juliar" <michael@juliar.com>
>
> The advanced uncorrected proofs of Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar
Nafisi,
> author of Anti-Terra: A Study of Vladimir Nabokov's Novels (Tehran, 1994),
> are out. The title is, I suspect, having read only the first two chapters,
> more than just an evocation of Nabokov's most famous novel.
>
> Two excerpts from the first chapter.
>
> 1.
> ....Manna pointed out that I was no Miss Brodie, and they, well, they were
> what they were. She reminded me of a warning I was fond of repeating: do
> not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn
> it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not
so
> much reality but the epiphany of truth. Yet I suppose that if I were to go
> against my own recommendation and choose a work of fiction that would most
> resonate with our lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it would not be
The
> Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or even 1984 but perhaps Nabokov's Invitation to
a
> Beheading or better yet, Lolita.
>
> 2.
> ....Here and now in that other world that cropped up so many times in our
> discussions, I sit and reimagine myself and my students, my girls as I
came
> to call them, reading Lolita in a deceptively sunny room in Tehran. But to
> steal the words from Humbert, the poet/criminal of Lolita, I need you, the
> reader, to imagine us, for we won't really exist if you don't. Against the
> tyranny of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn't dare
to
> imagine ourselves: in our most private and secret moments, in the most
> extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening to music, falling in
> love, walking down the shady streets or reading Lolita in Tehran. And then
> imagine us again with all this confiscated, driven underground, taken away
> from us.
>
> If I write about Nabokov today, it is to celebrate our reading of Nabokov
in
> Tehran, against all odds. Of all his novels I choose the one I taught
last,
> and the one that is connected to so many memories. It is of Lolita that I
> want to write, but right now there is no way I can write about that novel
> without also writing about Tehran. This, then, is the story of Lolita in
> Tehran, how Lolita gave a different color to Tehran and how Tehran helped
> redefine Nabokov's novel, turning it into this Lolita, our Lolita.
>
> There's more at
>
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0375504907&view=excerp
t