Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [72]
I was startled by Zarrin’s sudden question but appreciated this opportunity to focus on a point that had been central to my own discussions about fiction in general. “If a critique of carelessness is a fault,” I said, somewhat self-consciously, “then at least I’m in good company. This carelessness, a lack of empathy, appears in Jane Austen’s negative characters: in Lady Catherine, in Mrs. Norris, in Mr. Collins or the Crawfords. The theme recurs in Henry James’s stories and in Nabokov’s monster heroes: Humbert, Kinbote, Van and Ada Veen. Imagination in these works is equated with empathy; we can’t experience all that others have gone through, but we can understand even the most monstrous individuals in works of fiction. A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic—not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so. Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels—the biggest sin is to be blind to others’ problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.” I said all this in one breath, rather astonished at my own fervor.
“Yes,” said Zarrin, interrupting me now. “Could one not say in fact that this blindness or carelessness towards others is a reminder of another brand of careless people?” She threw a momentary glance at Nyazi as she added, “Those who see the world in black and white, drunk on the righteousness of their own fictions.
“And if,” she continued with some warmth, “Mr. Farzan, in real life Fitzgerald was obsessed with the rich and with wealth; in his fiction he brings out the corrupt and decaying power of wealth on basically decent people, like Gatsby, or creative and lively people, like Dick Diver in Tender Is the Night. In his failure to understand this, Mr. Nyazi misses the whole point of the novel.”
Nyazi, who for some time now had been insistently scrutinizing the floor, suddenly jumped up and said, “I object!”
“To what, exactly, do you object?” said Zarrin with mock politeness.
“Carelessness is not enough!” he shot back. “It doesn’t make the novel more moral. I ask you about the sin of adultery, about lies and cheating, and you talk about carelessness?”
Zarrin paused and then turned to me again. “I would now like to call the defendant to the stand.” She then turned to Mr. Nyazi and, with a mischievous gleam in her eyes, said, “Would you like to examine the defendant?” Nyazi murmured a defiant no. “Fine. Ma’am, could you please take the stand?” I got up, rather startled, and looked around me. There was no chair. Mr. Farzan, for once alert, jumped up and offered me his. “You heard the prosecutor’s remarks,” Zarrin said, addressing me. “Do you have anything to say in your defense?”
I felt uncomfortable, even shy, and reluctant to talk. Zarrin had been doing a great job, and it seemed to me there was no need for my pontifications. But the class was waiting, and there was no way I could back down now.
I sat awkwardly on the chair offered me by Mr. Farzan. During the course of my preparations for the trial, I had found that no matter how hard I tried, I could not articulate in words the thoughts and emotions that made me so excited about Gatsby. I kept going back to Fitzgerald’s own explanation of the novel: “That’s the whole burden of this novel,” he had said, “the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world so that you don’t care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory.” I wanted to tell them that this book is not about adultery but about the loss of dreams. For me it had become of vital importance that my students accept Gatsby on its own terms, celebrate