Scan barcode
A review by jdscott50
The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books by Azar Nafisi
4.0
Nafisi’s part-memoir/part literary criticism is a response to a challenge. An Iranian reader approached her claiming Americans do not value books as much as Iranians. Nafisi’s uses this book to disagree with that reader. She states that America has always been shaped by its literature. It serves as a reflection, a guide, and a warning. The imagination, that creates literature, is the same imagination that creates hope, new ideas, and the future. She warns that those who fail to nurture this imagination, whether in schools or in the national dialog, will be faced with a bleak future.
Nafisi chooses three books (pre-1960) that have best reflected America: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Babbit by Sinclair Lewis, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. The first choice is an obvious one, but Nafisi does something different with it. She mirrors her own life and that of her best friend Farah who would die of cancer before this book’s publication. Huckleberry Finn becomes a metaphor not just for a changing America breaking free of its past. It is also that of Nafisi breaking free of a totalitarian Iran and facing an unknown life without her friend.
The second book she chooses, Babbit, is an apt choice. However, Nafisi’s book loses a bit of her momentum. Many reviewers have mentioned that readers can stop at about page 118 when the first segment of the book ends. I think it is worth continuing but with a caveat about the next section being more of a culture critic rather than a memoir. It fits her introduction to the book, but it is a sharp contrast to the segment with Huckleberry Finn.
Babbit is a criticism of the mundane conformist, the enemy of imagination. Instead of thinking for oneself, one just thinks with the crowd, doesn’t stand out. The segment of Nafisi dressing down the public education system is the United States is on target but seems a bit overwrought. The themes from Lewis’s work would inspire more American Literature deploring the plight of mediocrity and conformity that invades the country too often.
The last book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Nafisi explores the misfits and how it relates to modern technology. She juxtaposes how connected we are through technology, but how that makes us also very far away, separate and alone. It’s this concept of alienation that dominates the last section of the book.
Overall, Nafisi’s memoir is heartfelt but drifts too much into academic literary criticism. While the book connection is clever both for Babbit and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, it creates more disaffection for the reader. There is too much judgment of modern society and it comes off as rather cranky instead of illuminating. Her points, altogether, are valid. We must continue to strive for the new and use our imagination to create a better world. When she gets on that topic alone the message is very powerful. We should not cut off access to art and literature as these things inspire and empower us. Without it, the world becomes very dark.
Favorite Passages:
Although literacy is the first and essential step toward the kind of engaged citizenry necessary for a thriving democracy, it is not enough, for it is only a means to an end. What we learn and how we learn it is just as important. Regardless of their ideological inclinations, autocracies like those wreaking havoc in Iran, China, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea are afraid, and justifiably so, of the aftermath of literacy--namely, knowledge, the bit of the forbidden fruit, with its promise of a different kind of power and freedom. That is why the Taliban destroys schools and wishes to murder young teenage girls like Malala who are brave enough to publicly articulate their passionate desire for education and freedom. p. 15
For homelessness and despair, for the injustices and suffering imposed on us by the fickleness of life and the absoluteness of death, imagination has no cure. But it finds a voice that both registers and resists such injustice, evidenced by the fact that we do not accept things as they are. So much of who we are, no matter where we live, depends on how we imagine ourselves to be. p. 50
Nafisi chooses three books (pre-1960) that have best reflected America: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Babbit by Sinclair Lewis, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. The first choice is an obvious one, but Nafisi does something different with it. She mirrors her own life and that of her best friend Farah who would die of cancer before this book’s publication. Huckleberry Finn becomes a metaphor not just for a changing America breaking free of its past. It is also that of Nafisi breaking free of a totalitarian Iran and facing an unknown life without her friend.
The second book she chooses, Babbit, is an apt choice. However, Nafisi’s book loses a bit of her momentum. Many reviewers have mentioned that readers can stop at about page 118 when the first segment of the book ends. I think it is worth continuing but with a caveat about the next section being more of a culture critic rather than a memoir. It fits her introduction to the book, but it is a sharp contrast to the segment with Huckleberry Finn.
Babbit is a criticism of the mundane conformist, the enemy of imagination. Instead of thinking for oneself, one just thinks with the crowd, doesn’t stand out. The segment of Nafisi dressing down the public education system is the United States is on target but seems a bit overwrought. The themes from Lewis’s work would inspire more American Literature deploring the plight of mediocrity and conformity that invades the country too often.
The last book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Nafisi explores the misfits and how it relates to modern technology. She juxtaposes how connected we are through technology, but how that makes us also very far away, separate and alone. It’s this concept of alienation that dominates the last section of the book.
Overall, Nafisi’s memoir is heartfelt but drifts too much into academic literary criticism. While the book connection is clever both for Babbit and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, it creates more disaffection for the reader. There is too much judgment of modern society and it comes off as rather cranky instead of illuminating. Her points, altogether, are valid. We must continue to strive for the new and use our imagination to create a better world. When she gets on that topic alone the message is very powerful. We should not cut off access to art and literature as these things inspire and empower us. Without it, the world becomes very dark.
Favorite Passages:
Although literacy is the first and essential step toward the kind of engaged citizenry necessary for a thriving democracy, it is not enough, for it is only a means to an end. What we learn and how we learn it is just as important. Regardless of their ideological inclinations, autocracies like those wreaking havoc in Iran, China, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea are afraid, and justifiably so, of the aftermath of literacy--namely, knowledge, the bit of the forbidden fruit, with its promise of a different kind of power and freedom. That is why the Taliban destroys schools and wishes to murder young teenage girls like Malala who are brave enough to publicly articulate their passionate desire for education and freedom. p. 15
For homelessness and despair, for the injustices and suffering imposed on us by the fickleness of life and the absoluteness of death, imagination has no cure. But it finds a voice that both registers and resists such injustice, evidenced by the fact that we do not accept things as they are. So much of who we are, no matter where we live, depends on how we imagine ourselves to be. p. 50