A riff on Reading Lolita in Tehran

1/ Lovers of literature should read this book. 
2/ Especially fans of Nabokov, Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Henry James, or Jane Austen. Like me. I’m starting to see Azar Nafisi as a friend. 
3/ Critics and sceptics should, too, read this book. Reading Lolita in Tehran is an ode to literature, and a defence of literature. 
4/ It’s about books; about writers and readers; about good readers and bad readers; about reading and teaching. 
5/ Some students on the author’s course make me wonder why they chose to study literature at all, when they have no interest in it, reject ambiguity, and want to impose their brand of morality on a book. 
6/ But then can we not say the same thing about lots of literary critics or book reviewers? Those who are more interested in feminist or social criticism than literature, like Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar? Those who claim that male writers can’t write good female characters? Those who say that Tolstoy punishes Anna Karenina, because of misogyny? Those who reject the Western canon and dead white male authors? Those who look at everything through the lens of gender, race, and the privilege concept, and seem to judge an author by their identity rather than the quality of their works? And so on. 
7/ Reading Nafisi’s book, I’m glad I wasn’t born in Iran. 
8/ The idea that writers should serve the government, and an ideology, is so familiar. Totalitarian governments are all the same. 
9/ One of the most brilliant moments in the book is the trial of The Great Gatsby. A book on trial. 
10/ Many so-called feminists in the West should read Reading Lolita in Tehran. When they know what it’s like to be a woman in many other countries, they may stop with the faux outrage over non-issues, and the stupid things done in the name of feminism. It is insulting.