"Reading Lolita in Tehran"

[fiefoe]

Somehow the fact that I couldn't get past the first 10 pages of "Lolita" doesn't get in the way of my reading of Azar Nafisi's memoir, (while my familiarity with Jane Austen didn't enhance my enjoyment of "The Jane Austen Book Club" at all. On amazon, people who bought the latter also bought the former.)

On the very first page, there's good advice for people who read:
'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.'

At the intersection of memory and imagination:

• 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...
• As I write the title of each book, memories whirl in with the wind to disturb the quiet of this fall day in another room in another country.
  
• the teasing void of memory
• That room, which I never paid much attention to at that time, has gained a different status in my mind's eye now that it has become the precious object of memory.