Reading Lolita Made Me Crazy

Does a book have to be serious in order for it to be taken seriously? I'm almost through with "Reading Lolita in Tehran", which I heard was an amazing memoir- and it is, but it is so ultra heavy and serious that now, all I want to do is curl up under my covers with a good comic book. I miss laughing with my books. It's ironic because part of the purpose of "Reading Lolita" is to convey the author's love of literature; it's about her desire to impart this love upon the reader. Instead, her book created in me this intense, semi-irrational aversion to the very thing she wanted me to love.

I'm reminded suddenly of the story I heard in psych class of a perfectly healthy man who pretended to be crazy in order to escape prison. When he was released and sent home to the care of his wife, the prison received a letter from his wife later thanking the guards for taking such good care of her crazy husband; that he was now safely in the care of a mental house. Turns out, after weeks/months of pretending to be crazy, he really did go insane.

In the same way, Nafisi took me, a perfectly healthy individual who loved to read novels, and through her desire to cure me (read: impart her love of literature on me), instead instilled in me a fear of "good literature". It's no surprise that I am often found these days sitting in the back of the car reading "Mutts" and laughing hysterically, or even sitting at a Barnes reading Godel Escher and Bach, which although it is no light read (literally), at least does not engage my emotions too much with depressing stories about the drudgery of living in an oppressed land.

Speaking of light reads, this morning I opened up a window to the Times, and started gasping and nearly hyperventilating (ok, exaggeration, but whatever).

"What?! What is it Angie?!, what's wrong?" asked Sarah and umma (mom).

"Guess what? The title of the 7th Harry Potter- it's been announced! EEE!!"

"OHMYGODWHATISIT?" cried Sarah.

"Gee, I thought it was something important," grumbled umma.

So exciting. Harry Potter gets serious too, but unlike "Reading Lolita", it's also funny and contains magic, fantasy, imagination, and thus bears little semblance to reality (although one can definitely draw some parallels if one really has the hankering to do so). In short, my kind of book.