Azar Nafisi's memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran (Random House, paperback $13.95.) is currently #1 on the New York Times' bestseller list. As a literature professor living in Iran after the Islamic revolution, Nafisi privately taught lessons from banned books to a select group of her female students.
SPM spoke with Nafisi last week by telephone to talk about her memoir and her great love of literature. She speaks tonight as part of ASU's Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict's continuing lecture series "Religion and Conflict: Alternative Visions."
SPM: Your memoir really captures the joy of espcaping into books. Would you say that literature is a very important part of your life in this way?
AN: For me, yes. I mean, books have been so many different things for me. One is just the pure, unadulterated pleasure of reading, which I am very grateful for. But they have also, in one sense, they [have] been refuge. In another sense there have been so many channels of discovery. Through reading a book, you are entering a world. Books have been my main means of communication with society. Whether here [in the United States] or in Iran, that is how I have found a way to articulate myself publicly, through talking about books.
SPM: Do you still feel outraged at what you and your students endured (oppression) while living in Iran?
AN: Yes. That sense of outrage will never go away. First of all, because those things did happen, and second of all, because these things are still happening-though they are not happening to me, they are happening to others. And you want the world to know about it and you want the world to not let these things happen. But I discovered that I can inform the world through the eyes of literature. I'm not by nature a political person, and so,, whenever I talk about politics I have to bring my own view of politics in. Through literature I can do that. Every time I talk in just a purely political sense I'm just completely not satisfied.
Azar Nafisi at the College of Law's Great Hall, McAllister Avenue and Orange Street. 7 p.m. Tonight. Lecture is free, but tickets are required. Book signing to follow lecture. 480.727.6736.
SPM: Yes. In your book you spoke about how you felt literature offered a richness of understanding that the pure political activism you did in the '70s lacked.
AN: To be political you always have to take positions and at times become too polarized. And literature brings [and] takes you back to the complexity of life. It shows you how contradictory and paradoxical individuals are, and it also makes you more generous-minded towards others. For even the villains in the novels, in order to understrand why they are bad, you have to first understand them. It is literature [that] helps us discover why things happen.
SPM: One thing that becomes clear in Reading Lolita in Tehran is that your students have a very clear passion for the literature. In American universities, we are taught to engage with and analyze literature, but I think frequently we miss the passion - the opportunity to connect great books to our own lives. How do you feel about this?
AN: One of the things that worries me about here is that people becoming blasé about works of art. Novels and poetry were created for people to directly communicate with them. I mean, it is fantastic to be able to criticize and analyze but I think the first task should be to enjoy and communicate with the works on a one-to-one basis. And sometimes I think in American Universities that joy is taken away. We start imposing so much upon the texts that we never enjoy a good story. The joy that you get and the respect that you find for yourself when you discover that you can understand and communicate with difficult texts - that is what matters. People over here have so much, they don't understantd they cannot take things for granted. I think that is something my students [in Iran] could teach students here. That these texts deserve some reverence and deserve some respect because they won't always be available.
A lot of times people complain that the books are too difficult. Of course they are sometimes difficult, but everything that is good in life is difficult.
SPM: It's funny that you mention your concern about students becoming blasé, because one of the derisive nicknames ASU has is Apathetic State University.
AN: It's really a shame. Because you feel that every moment of your life will die and never come back again. You have to never be blasé or apathetic towards life. Because once it's there and [when] it's gone, it's gone. To have passion about what you do matters a lot.
SPM: Do you think there's a connection between the great passion you have for art and literature and your ability to survive while living in Tehran under the Ayatollahs?
AN: Yes. Literature has always been the place that I could go back to. And now after the Islamic Revolution, I know that everything can be taken away from you. Your house, your belongings and even the people you love can be taken away from you. But literature for me is something that is mine for as long as I live.
Reach the reporter atkathleen.heil@asu.edu.
