In response to my remark that Felten’s Loyalty would be a fantastic common read for students entering college, and much better than the book entering Mount Holyoke students are asked to read this year, Mallory asked what book it is that Mount Holyoke deemed to be the best book to send entering students this year. I meant to mention that, but somewhere between the start of the blog post and the end, I forgot, undoubtedly due to the surfeit of wandering asides in the post.
So, this year, every student entering Mount Holyoke was sent:
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Kristof and WuDunn.
Of course the title tells you everything you need to know about why MHC sent out the book. I haven’t read it, so I cannot offer an independent evaluation if it is every bit as bad as I am fairly sure it is. I can say, though, that one of my collegues stopped by my office after having read half of it; she was morally outraged by the book. I gather it is in the genre of typical Liberal Academic “we will step in and solve the problems in those poor undeveloped countries who don’t have enough enlightened Western Liberals to remake their society in our image,” and said outraged colleague is of the “We should preserve all the world’s cultures as cute little exhibits in the Giant Multicultural Zoo” variety of academics. (That isn’t how she describes herself, by the way.) I laughed and said, “Welcome to my world; I’ve been morally outraged by the common read every year.” But, since I haven’t read anything other than the title of the book, I don’t have anything to add.
Mallory also mentioned that her Common Read was Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi. Coincidentally, that was the only one of the Common Read books handed out at MHC that I actually read all the way through. I even wrote a review of the book for the Mount Holyoke News. Here it is:
I just finished the common reading for the year. Wow! There is no doubt about it: Lolita is a Great Book. A truly great book. So, by the way, is The Great Gatsby. Daisy Miller? Interesting. And, Pride and Prejudice is, as everyone who has read it can tell you, in a class by itself. Great books; truly great books. Those entering students sure are lucky to have had such an amazing summer reading list.
What’s that you say? Those weren’t the books everyone read? It was a book about reading those books? Huh?
In all seriousness, I would like to report that Reading Lolita in Tehran was every bit as good as, well, reading Lolita. Unfortunately, I can’t honestly say that. While I wouldn’t go as far as the Daily Jolter who noted that “it makes you wanna poke your eyes out,” said poster wasn’t all that far off the mark. Then again, finding unbearable prose in the common read is like shooting fish in a barrel: “I forgot to add: it was a cloudy, snowy day: and would it matter if I told you that I wore a yellow sweater, gray pants and black boots and he a brown sweater and jeans?” (Uh…no?)
Instead, think for a minute about the whole premise of the book. Here we have the tale of a group of Iranians who engage in the meaningful exercise of reading Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James and Austen. Quick: what do you notice about that set of authors? Not one of them is Iranian. Instead, they are all Western writers, all firmly within the Western Canon.
So, why is it that we here at Mount Holyoke College are reading a book about Iranians reading the Great Books of Western Civilization? Is it possible that Western writers, Western ideals are worth studying? Is it possible that the products of Western Civilization are more uplifting, better able to teach something important to Iranians, than the products of the Islamic Republic of Iran? Is it possible that the same is true for students at Mount Holyoke? Should Mount Holyoke students (gasp) read Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Daisy Miller, and Pride and Prejudice?
Of course, in order to reap the benefits of reading these books, we would have to read them in the spirit Nafisi suggests. As she notes about Iran, “We lived in a culture that denied any merit to literary works, considering them important only when they were handmaidens to something seemingly more urgent—namely ideology.” And later, she ridicules those post-modern types who “can’t even read the text in the original—they’re so dependent on some pseudo-philosopher to tell them what it says.” Fortunately, Mount Holyoke does not share that particular trait with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Right? I mean, here at Mount Holyoke we all realize that sometimes a Great Book is just a Great Book and not merely a vehicle to explore the ideology du jour. Right?
I would be remiss if I didn’t note that this whole book had one other rather disconcerting undertone. The book is in effect setting up a contrast between two societal forms: Western Civilization and Islamic Republics. There is little doubt where the author’s sympathies lie. Indeed, the book is a microcosm of a clash of civilizations, leading to a sort of Rorschach test: which civilization is preferred? Is it possible that the forms of Western Civilization are preferable to the forms of an Islamic Republic? Is it possible that even people living in an Islamic Republic would prefer Westernization? Is it possible that there is something good and noble about bringing Western Civilization to those who desire it but are trapped in an Islamic Republic? Can we even ask that question at Mount Holyoke?
But, I digress. The real point, indeed the only important point, of these ruminations is an encouragement. Read Nabokov. Read Fitzgerald. Read James. Read Austen. Those are writers worth reading.
An amusing follow-up. Shortly after the paper printed that, I ran into the President of the College. She said, “I read your article. It was really interesting. Why didn’t they read Iranian authors?” Ah, the academic mind: someone notes that if Iranians are reading the Western Canon, then maybe the Western Canon is pretty good, and the 20th century liberal academic responds by saying, “You are right; they, and probably we, should really be reading non-Western authors.”
The review above doesn’t include what I thought was the most shocking thing in the book, so I’ll add it here. Toward the end of the book, Nafisi writes, “The more I discovered the lyrical quality of our lives, the more my own life become a web of fiction….memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke.” I think that means: this whole book is really fiction. There may be some real events that somehow relate to the events described in the book (well, we know there was an Iranian Revolution, for example), but the whole story here may just be a web of fiction masquerading as autobiography.
No comments:
Post a Comment