Messenger

Messenger is the third book in a futuristic trilogy by Lois Lowry that includes The Giver and Gathering Blue. After having read Messenger, I have concluded that The Giver is the strongest of the trilogy — it has, I think, the most accessible and interesting message, and I didn’t feel it was quite as heavy-handed as the other two. I think Messenger was a bit stronger than Gathering Blue, but it still lacked some sort of cohesiveness. The story didn’t feel to me that it was completely told.

It was really good to see Jonas again, but I found it implausible that even given his gift of “seeing beyond” that he would lead a community at his age. I cannot recall where I read this, but at least one reader questioned why people in the society might have these supernatural powers — what had changed on Earth to enable people to, for instance, see across vast distances to others in trouble, to heal grievous wounds? This didn’t really bother me as I sort of decided these books were science fiction. They take place after an apparent nuclear holocaust. The survivors built different communities. We don’t really know what effect such radiation might have on people, but I am OK with the notion that some of them developed strange super-human powers. At any rate, lots of comic book heroes received their powers in such ways.

I found the society in The Giver to be the most believable. The people in that community created what they thought was a utopian society, but in reality turned into a dystopia. The society in Messenger was also utopian. Completely communist, the group helped each other and found shelter and food for newcomers. Then the society voted to close and strange things were happened when they went to “Trade Mart.” Exactly what were they trading away for the luxuries and better lives they desired? Even nature around the village started to poison and attack. I found the book to be somewhat of an indictment against how present-day Americans treat newcomers to our shores and a criticism of our materialism. One member of the community makes a Christ-like sacrifice, and things appear to be as they were before the group wanted to close — the utopia is restored.

I don’t feel I wasted my time in reading Gathering Blue or Messenger, but I wouldn’t read them again — I would read The Giver again — and I think the story was strongest when it was left at that. However, I sense that Lowry is not done with her futuristic society, and I sense an attachment between Kira and Jonas is in the works for a future book. If you read one book of the trilogy, make it The Giver and rest in the notion that the ending is happy for Jonas and Gabe.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

I don’t think I’ve ever read a memoir quite like Reading Lolita in Tehran. Azar Nafisi’s book is part recollection of her hardships and those of her students while living in an Islamic “republic,” and part recollection of the novels they read together and the meanings of those novels — how they resonated for each of them. The author/teacher has come to see the two as inextricably linked. As her “magician” says, “You will not be able to write about Austen without writing about us, about this place where you rediscovered Austen. You will not be able to put us out of your head. Try, you’ll see.”

Nafisi divides her recollection across her experiences with four books: Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov), The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), Daisy Miller (Henry James), and Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen). When I began this book several months ago, I had not read Lolita, and in fact, picked it up because of this book (I had read all the others). I found several passages in the section about Gatsby that I intend to ask at least my Honors students to read. I actually came to have a new appreciation for Daisy Miller, which I didn’t remember liking very much when I read it in college.

Nafisi began a literature class for women out of her home after being fired from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil. I found her accounts of teaching Gatsby in the university to be more interesting than her accounts of the secret literature class. To be honest, I found it difficult to keep up with all the characters. I’m not sure if this was due to the non-Western names or some other lack of mine or whether it was a failing of Nafisi’s. Perhaps other readers can comment with their thoughts on this.

In the Epilogue, Nafisi writes, “I left Tehran on June 24, 1997, for the green light that Gatsby once believed in.” It seems as if Nafisi’s characters have a love/hate relationship with the West. Many see it as a haven, while others revile it for its secularism and sinfulness, but most feel some sort of complex mixture of the two. In many ways, Nafisi’s relationship with Iran may be viewed the same way. She describes her homeland with sensuality one moment and disgust the next. Probably the most memorable passage recalled when Nafisi remarked to her husband that “living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe… you make your mind blank — you pretend to be somewhere else, you tend to forget your body, you hate your body.” It seems that books helped Nafisi escape. Books are the “somewhere else” that Nafisi went went real life became too much.

I think this book should be required reading for anyone who loves literature, especially literature teachers. It is a passionate defense of reading for the sake of reading, but also for the impact that literature can have on one’s life.

Note: I’m aware that the review image looks wonky with the hover hyperlink. I’ve been playing with the CSS, but I can’t keep it from working on the review image unless I take it off the rest of the site, and frankly, that would involve lots of color changes, because you can’t tell the text is a link without an underline. I’ve asked for help, so hopefully I can fix it soon. I decided it would be the lesser of two evils to let the review look wonky until I can fix it rather than make the links too hard to find.

If at times Lolita is difficult to wade through, I suppose the reader can chalk that up to the narrator’s admitted psychiatric problems. This book was hard to finish on many levels. First of all, the language itself is dense and beautiful, but requires the constant attention of the reader. I was unable to simply flip through pages, and I often had to go back and re-read things I’d missed. I wish I had a footnoted copy of this book in order to translate all the French I’ve forgotten since high school, as Humbert was so fond of throwing French speech into the narrative. Second, the narrator is absolutely despicable and reprehensible. I have to say that anyone who uses the term “Lolita” to refer to a sexually-aggressive female adolescent probably has not read this book. It is clear that poor Lolita is very much a victim of Humbert Humbert — a point made clear even though it is told only through his point of view. He is an unreliable narrator. His language, his intelligence are meant to beautify his actions and evoke sympathy from the reader, and a quick glance at several Amazon reviews for this book demonstrate that many readers do fall for his story. Humbert Humbert is a creepy pedophile, even if he is gifted with language. He admits to hanging out in places where he is likely to see girls in his target “attraction range,” which is a trait common to pedophiles. He is unattracted to girls or women of any other age range.

Interestingly, Nabokov’s allusions to Edgar Allan Poe’s work really made me see Poe in a new light — a sort of Humbert Humbert, if you will. As an American Literature teacher, I know Poe married his pubescent cousin. I always thought it was weird. After reading this novel, I see it as weird on a whole new level. Humbert excuses his lust for Lolita through allusions to other times, when grown men took child brides. I had always excused Poe’s behavior that way, but I find now that I don’t. Poe’s behavior was pedophiliac. Humbert christens his first love Annabel Leigh (a clear reference to Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee”). I do think a familiarity with Poe is helpful to readers of this novel.

I think this novel is open to both a literal and symbolic interpretation, which is one of the reasons it was stimulating intellectually. Humbert represents Europe — jaded, cynical, refined, intelligent, formal, but also corrupt. Lolita, on the other hand, represents America — young, uncouth, unrefined, naive. America raped and corrupted by the Old World. I think that it is an interesting way to look at the novel, and it works. As Nabokov emigrated to America, I have to wonder if the clash in cultures he experienced didn’t contribute to some of the ideas expressed in the novel.

I am glad I read this book. In a way, I feel like an initiate into a special literature club. It was really hard, though, and I wanted to smack the narrator constantly. He’s very clever, but he’s evil. I argue with the notion that this is an erotic novel. Humbert’s pedophilia is anything but erotic. I don’t see how readers could walk away from this book and feel that Nabokov was endorsing the idea that a grown man and a girl child can have a normal sexual relationship. In other words, Nabokov does not glamorize pedophilia or make it seem in any way romantic — quite the reverse. I am, however, no longer surprised that it is controversial — it astonishes me that Nabokov found a publisher for such fare in the 1950’s. The novel is beautifully written, and even funny in places, but ultimately, it is so sad — even Humbert eventually acknowledges that he ruined Lolita’s life. I think Lolita is a very good study of the mindset of a pedophile, and I shouldn’t be too surprised to learn that psychologists might study it for that reason.

I have spent an entertaining few days reading The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips. Phillips walks the fine line between humor and pathos quite successfully, and he manages to pull off a bit of a mystery that will keep you turning pages — not so much because you won’t figure out what happened, but, as reviewer Barbara Mertz in The Washington Post concluded, how it happened. The story is told through letters and the journal of his main character, Ralph M. Trilipush, a man I loved to hate and hated to love — self-absorbed and exceedingly arrogant, but naive — and you just have to admire his determination (or obsession? you decide). One of the major themes of the novel is the legacy we leave behind and our quest to become immortal — a different method for each character, yet somehow it all comes down to the same conclusion. What that conclusion is, I’ll leave you to discover. The ending is probably one of the most tragicomic things I’ve ever read. I wanted to laugh and cry at the absurdity of it. Indeed, one could accuse Phillips of bathos, but then, I think that’s what he was really after. That’s kind of what life is, in the end.

A warning to the reader: this book will require patience. It unfolds slowly, layer by layer, through the words of two irritating narrators. However, it is the preciseness with which Phillips captures “that sort of person” that makes the outlandish events believable. I enjoyed the writer’s style, but it might not appeal to everyone. Of course, you can always read a few pages at Amazon or check out an excerpt at the book’s website.