Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey

While there can be few works quite as remarkably of their time as these Confessions, at the same time it’s a good reminder of the fact that even though zeitgeists, fashions and modes of expression can change hugely, people don’t change much at all. And I’m sure the quirky little work will serve to illustrate that point for many years to come.

I was surprised how little of the composition is actually concerned with opium, but then, the title promises only confessions, not necessarily on the subject that defines he who confesses. The bulk of the slim volume is an autobiography, with some short chapters at the end discussing the pains and pleasures of laudanum consumption, linked by a brief admission that the two parts are linked only tenuously, the opium use of later years inextricably linked to the experiences of youth, they being both a cause for its use and having an effect on the vivid dreams that were its result.

But while some inkling of the mindset of an addict and a vivid impression of some aspects of life in England two centuries ago are inviting aspects of de Quincey’s work, what really fascinates is de Quincey himself, the way his stream-of-consciousness comes tumbling out in a way that makes Virginia Woolf’s prose look most affected, and the way he himself seems totally unaware of his idiosyncrasies. He admits he has less structured his narrative than ‘thought aloud’, and this is exactly right; he chases after tangents like a kitten after an unravelling ball of wool. We hear in great grandiloquent detail Quincey’s thoughts on the piano, and which Roman historian was his favourite, and bizarre episodes like the time a large swell of water in a canal required him and another pedestrian to run away, which he considered one of the only times it is permissible for a 19th-century gentleman to begin a conversation with a lady with whom he is not yet formally acquainted. But then when something really interesting comes along, like his time living in a squalid little flat with some horribly neglected little child, or when he befriends a young prostitute, the details get skipped over and we don’t hear nearly as much as we might like.

But then, that uneven sense of what is and is not important only adds to de Quincey’s perceived character – while his language is beautifully wrought and glazed in the conventions of his era, where broadness of vocabulary and sophistication of grammatical construction were prized, he dances about from subject to subject with a childlike charm that makes him very likeable. And his uneven relationship with his drug, his fear, his adoration, his feelings of being master and uncomprehending subject, make this aspect of him fascinating.

The dense language makes the slim little book quite hard to get through in casual sittings, being much better suited to an extended burst of concentration, and since the Wordsworth Classics edition I read (with the dubious choice of ‘The Death of Chatterton’ for its cover – I know that painting is often pointed to as more erotic than morbid, but he’s still dead and pretty, neither of which de Quincey was at the time!) had no annotations, I felt like a lot I might have learned would take more effort than it was worth to look up, which was a bit of a shame – though not enough for me to actually write them down and look them up. The experience of such a fine character as de Quincey, who proves fiction is often stranger than reality, is enough.

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

On the same day that I finished Reading Lolita in Tehran, I had noticed a small leaflet pasted to the clear plastic of the bus-stop outside my home, a short walk from London’s Central Mosque. It called for Muslims to join a protest outside 10 Downing Street against the West’s gross misrepresentation of Islam in the media, in the attack on the faith that has stemmed from the hysterical reaction to the actions of extremists. And it’s undeniable that now must be a hard time to be a Muslim in a Western country. Knowing this, I had to wonder about a book that has spent a remarkable length of time in the New York Times’ bestsellers list, which has at its core a scathing critique of the Islamic regime in Iran by one who lived through its worst excesses. The book, Nafisi’s memoirs of life in Tehran when the revolution came, of being forced to unwillingly don the veil of Islam, yet of defying the regime and setting up a little study group in her own home to read forbidden books of Western decadence by writers like Nabokov, Fitzgerald and Jane Austen, is undeniably fascinating and undeniably a sincere and honest reflection of Nafisi’s impression of life under a brutal and misguided regime, but would I even be reading it if not for the current climate of fear and suspicion around Islam? If not for America’s defensive need to know that the lifestyle of its citizens is so much better than that of the countries of the Middle East?

Perhaps not, but then I should consider myself lucky, for if not for the sensationalistic aspects surrounding this book’s release, I would perhaps never have heard of it. And I must state that it was primarily the reference to Nabokov, perhaps my favourite writer of all time, in the title that drew me to the memoir, rather than its setting.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is essentially built up of two parts. One part is the story of Nafisi’s life, of her time teaching in a university during a period when student ideology suffocated nuance of artistic interpretation, forcing most of her students to either brand anything from the West that features flawed characters as decadent imperialist propaganda, or to rally against this opinion and veer in the other direction, to a time when the revolutionaries have gained power and morality squads are permitted to arrest and flog any woman who lets her hair show, who laughs too loudly. The other part is her literary criticism of Western writers, in particular Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Jane Austen, all of whom get a section that centres on their writing. Nafisi is quick to apply the lessons these writers can tell us to her own situation – for example, the monstrous Islamic Republic becomes equated with Nabokov’s ‘dragon’ Humbert Humbert, the female citizens with Lolita: like the young victim, they are captured, made to embody an image that exists only in the mind of one who does not fully understand them.

However, because of the predominance of such comparisons, readers looking for close reading are likely to be disappointed. Nafisi is a consummate academic, living and breathing the words of writers past and present, but this is not an academic work. Nothing she says about Lolita or Invitation to a Beheading is anything beyond superficial, anything that shows any deeper understanding that can be gleaned from a cursory read. But perhaps simplification is necessary when the audience is not necessarily familiar with the subject.

While it is not necessary, it’s a good idea to read the work of the above-mentioned writers before dipping into Nafisi’s world. For example, The Great Gatsby is one of those books I’ve long intended to read, but never have. While Nafisi contextualises everything she says so that her points were coherent, there will be few surprises left for me when I come to read the book.

Essentially, Nafisi’s work is structured around these writers because that is such a great part of who she is. She is an academic and a teacher of English Literature, to the extent that everything is coloured by the pigments of the novels she reads. The real story here is of her life, of how she lived through the oppression of a regime she did not agree with, until she finally left for America ten years ago, just as the power of the Ayatollahs was waning. But all great memoirs are built out of the characters of their creators, and as well as a wilful, generous, brave and slightly winsome woman who writes in a simple and journalistic prose that is easily understood and peppered with bits of imagery so obvious that the platitudes actually become quite sweet, Nafisi is a great lover of literature, so necessarily that love must be represented in her novel. A remarkable work, over and above suggestions of it being a propaganda tool, a spyhole through which voyeuristic Westerners can peer to assure themselves of their own supremacy, it is an honest and straightforward sketch of a life lived in a terrifying but fascinating time, one that any reader will almost certainly find rewarding – and encourage you to dig out the trusty old Henry James volumes from the bottom of that pile of unread books, too!

(originally written 31.8.07)

Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

While I confess to being almost totally ignorant of literature written in Portuguese, despite taking some pride in being fairly widely-read, I can at least place a large portion on the blame on the Western canon, and take a modicum of vindication from the fact that I’ve now read one of Brazil’s most famous books, Dom Casmurro, and placed it very high on my list of favourite ever novels. It’s most certainly in my top ten, somewhere.

What is most incredible about Machado de Assis’s charming little story is that it was first published in 1899, but – only in very small part thanks to a sprightly translation – reads like the most modern of novels. I don’t just mean it has a colloquial style; its short chapters, flawed and fascinating narrator and constant playful digressions are a long way ahead of their time. This book needs to find its way into global consciousness, because it deserves it.

The story is simple, indeed, plays off certain genre expectations and predictable developments in a very postmodern way. A boy called Bento is destined to be a priest, but a childhood sweetheart gets in the way, and the two young lovebirds, along with one of Bento’s friends from the Seminary, form various plans to release Bentinho from an ecclesiastical life. Finally he is released and marries the girl, Capitu, and they grow up and raise a family. All is well until Bento begins to notice that his son looks less like him and rather more like his best friend…

Machado de Assis is a supremely competent writer, his references to Shakespeare and Tacitus showing his learning while his willingness to mock his own poetic ideas keep him grounded and entirely unpretentious. He follows the slightest tangents and purposefully makes Bento scatterbrained, telling readers that the current chapter really should have been before the last one, that he wrote a certain word but then crossed it out, that he has to pick up the pace because he’s running out of paper. Subtly, much more subtly even than in Pale Fire, we come to realise that despite Bento’s apparent self-belief, he also claims not to have the best memory, and the things he’s expecting us to believe aren’t really backed up by anything more than his personal impressions and convictions; however, since his whimsical ways are so endearing, a kind of familiarity with Bento can come into being that has its peer with very few narrators, and that makes his interactions with the son he grows to fear and despise all the more shocking.

Machado de Assis’ other books are now most definitely on my reading list.

Going Postal

I forgot yesterday to write about finishing Going Postal, which was the first time since…well, about 1991 that I read one of the Discworld books out of order (not counting re-reading). And that’s only because I got in into my had that I’d already read it before I read Making Money, for some reason. Rather wish I’d read them in the proper order, too, for of the two rather samey Von Lipwig books, Going Postal is far better. Its final turn is a little weak, building itself up to be a devastatingly clever and unpredictable twist, only to be a rather simple and ineffective one…and the problem of the backlog of letters was dealt with in a rather unsatisfactory way. Otherwise, though, it was much more interesting, introducing clever new ideas, centring on more interesting characters and having an antagonist who actually seems a threat, which was rather the problem with Making Money.

Perhaps more so than other Pratchett books I’ve read recently, there seemed to be a bit more of the old acerbic venom of his older books, a little shade of anger, and not just always been a loveable old eccentric. I enjoy Pratchett when he’s cleverly distorting real-world, usually very English, institutions. And the Von Lipwig books seem to exist to focus on those – the postal service vs the Internet, the concept of currency, and the cult of celebrity. The man is very clever and has been the one novelist I’ve consistently followed since I was eight or nine years old, and I’ve either read or possess in order to read shortly, every novel he’s ever read. I can’t even say that for Nabokov or Tolkien.