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I feel like I showed up for class without reading the required assignment. This book should come with a prerequisite reading list: Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, The Great Gatsby, Daisy Miller, and Pride and Prejudice or at least a warning for spoilers: (view spoiler)[Lolita is raped by an older man, Gatsby dies, Daisy Miller doesn't get a happy ending, and Elizabeth Bennett does (hide spoiler)]. If I would have known Nafisi was going to delve into these literary pieces like she would one of her class discussions, I would have wanted to read them before hand. It would have been nice to have them in my mind to go through the symbolism with her instead of being lectured at.

Reading this book, I pondered this question: can someone become too educated, too intellectual to write a good book? It becomes too analytic and not enough heart. This story about living through the Iranian tyranny of the last century could have been fascinating, but it becomes more about analyzing it to death than about the movement and people of the country. I mention this intellectual question because one of the underlying themes of the book is intellectual liberals vs religious conservatives. While I find the pursuit of education extremely important (and maybe I worship intellectualism too much), why is it always one or the other? Why does the spiritual lost in the educational realm? Can't we have both?

Surprisingly enough, the story of Iran told from this very liberal anti-Revolutionist made me sympathize with these Muslim extremist more than any other media has done so far. Not that I agree with their methods (I full-heartedly agree that forcing morals on people makes them resent them, not embrace them), but I found myself seeing the world through their eyes, especially where Nafisi condemns them the most. I can see them so caught up in their spiritual transformation that they want the world around them to be as pure. They see their country falling to the leftist extreme and they want to save it. We see our country falling into moral decay and we say "don't judge and don't preach." We fall on the other extreme and while freedom of choice is always preferable, I don't know that a social rejection of morality and religion is the answer either. Just for the record, I think the revolution was deplorable and I would have hated and feared to live through it. The backwards control of these men over women riles me. I'm just saying, I could see intention on both sides, and maybe a glimmer or redemption for some, but I don't think that was Nafisi's intention. I think I saw it to spite her because I wanted her to appreciate morality more and I wanted to counteract her bitterness.

My favorite part of the book was in the Gatsby chapter when the students put The Great Gatsby on trial to see if it was worthy to read in an Islamic country. (I find it amusing that they take no issue with Lolita but Austen is too much.) I loved this section because it discussed the purpose of literature, to learn and grow and not merely to be a window of morality. I often find that I learn more and feel more for a book that is not happy and clean, but one that tackles difficult issues, that makes me consider moral issues, not by showing me morality but by examining it and the lack of it. It strengthens my morality instead of deface it. Nafisi said: "A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil." I loved the concept of reading books from your frame of reference, that the women of Iran were comparing the themes of these books to their own lives, to the restrictions of marriage, to the laws about wearing veils, so that the books not only become a picture of this other world, but help them understand their own as well.

There are some very thought-provoking sections in the book and some beautiful illusions, but Nafisi tries to hard to drive in metaphors, to give us the sense of the surroundings, to make us understand her thought process, to pound the theme "Reading Lolita in Tehran" in just about every other paragraph, that the richness of the story is often lost in details about who ordered what kind of coffee and where people sat in her classroom and what the weather was like. There is a good story in there, but it got lost in the literature.