An intriguing concept, pairing a memoir about living through the Iranian Revolution and the resulting totalitarian regime with literary criticism of Western literature as an attempt to put it all into perspective. Unfortunately Nafisi’s effort fell flat to me, mostly because the writing feels too weak for the task.
The structure of the book itself is confusing, as she shifts around just enough that it’s hard to follow the sequence of events, plus there are many little digressions within chapters that don’t seem to add to the story. Though the book is ostensibly centered around the reading group she begins with some students after leaving her teaching position at the University of Tehran when the veil is imposed on all female professors, most of the book is not about this reading group but the events leading up to the formation of the reading group. Despite this, Nafisi goes into detail describing each of the students in turn at the beginning of the book. Yet, possibly because she has mixed up the details to protect everyone’s identities, they still appear hazy and undefined. This is kind of a petty complaint, but several times she makes comments about “reading Lolita in Tehran” in a manner that suggests it must not have been the original title, otherwise why would you namedrop your title SO MANY TIMES in the book?
I made it through about two-thirds of the story before skimming through the rest. I can’t figure out if the book wasn’t edited enough or was edited too much — likely for the protection of those involved, but to the detriment of the story. It’s disappointing as it should be an incredible account of a tumultuous time and place in history, but Nafisi comes off kind of smug and her story, convoluted.
I managed to get through all my schooling without ever reading The Grapes of Wrath (or any other Steinbeck novel), and since all sorts of people keep saying how “timely” it is, my curiosity got the best of me. Initially it felt like slogging through required reading until a certain point where I was amazed at “how timely!” it is. But then the ending is such a downer that I felt like I could have done without the experience.
Steinbeck alternates chapters between a general narrative about aspects of the Dust Bowl migration with the specific story of the Joad family being forced off their land and deciding to head to California. The technique serves to show the breadth of the problems, that these events weren’t just something happening to one family, while the Joads personalize it and show how truly awful everything was.
The general narrative can be annoying the way groups of people are lumped together, for example recurring descriptions of “the men” and “the women” was distractingly essentialist. But then the gender roles overall are annoying. In the course of the Joad story, Ma keeps stepping up and taking charge and then Pa will threaten to take a stick to her in someday when things are better and then Ma admits that she’d deserve it. Really, John? Would the lady really think she deserved being smacked with a stick by her husband for attempting to keep the family alive and together?
The ending is fairly controversial but mostly it was just sad (and creepy) to me. It doesn’t give closure but hints that the life of the Joad family finally reached a point where it would just be way too depressing to continue documenting.
