The Republic of Imagination

The Republic of Imagination
(America in Three Books)
Azar Nafisi
Hardbound, 328 pages

I loved her in Reading Lolita in Tehran because she reminded me not to be a passive reader and to appreciate fiction more, especially when I am in my reading stage when I devote most of my readings on non-fiction, memoirs and autobiography to be specific. I have a long list of readings after Lolita. Her stories in Lolita captivated me because of the fear and danger attached to her founding a reading circle in a totalitarian Iran. Her hunger for readings made me appreciate my freedom to read and I took it upon myself as responsibility to read more.

And here comes this book. This is not as fast-paced and as interesting a story as Lolita but Author Nafisi made me rethink here of my reading. In my reading infancy years, reading excites me with stories of varied settings but when I have already made some travels, my reading interests shifted to culture and nonfiction and as I mature as a reader, I wanted memoirs and autobiography and some occasional biography. Then she made this book to remind me of the humanity in fiction and how fiction should remind democratic America to stuggle for reading more of fiction rather than abolish it in favor of mathematics and standardized readings in school.

In this book, she started with Huckleberry Finn of Mark Twain and ended with James Baldwin. Huck reminded us of humanity when slavery was still in force and how being godly and in conformity with society can mislead us in giving justice to another human being. It is freedom from the society's shackles. Then In the cited books of James Baldwin, she convinced us that every story must be told because it is a necessity to be heard.

In between the two, she introduced us to Babbitt of author Sinclair Lewis. Babbitt is a satire on conformity but if given another deeper look, it is also about dissatisfaction, about anxiety despite all the outward checklist for success such as education, work, family and wealth.

At this point, she argued so well the need to fight for the Humanities subjects in the midst of the change in the curriculum in America which only saved reading and mathematics. Here, she illustrated how America needs to fight for and die for the reading of nonfiction in  school because "no matter how many utilitarian business-minded educators may try to erase the image of the poet, to make it irrelevant, it will endure. It will disturb us in our waking hours and haunt our dreams, because poetry, like love and lunacy, is as much part of the human condiction as fear and the courage to be free."

Next author is Carson McCullers. What America needs is what we all need. She explained through Carson's fiction that "as human beings, we have a profound need for empathy. We need to be listened to and understood." There is this need among Americans, "we Americans are always seeking." This solitude, she opines, is essential to democracy since it springs forth from a native self-reliance. 

In the sidelight, I share her observation: "I have discovered a new kind of loneliness... I have seen in photographs ... of young people who sit very close together, each one busy texting. What disturbs me... the youth seem to have no consciousness of where they are or whom they are with. They are not lonely; they are wholly somewhere else. ... but we seem in our own time to have become numb of our surroundings."

"Violence -- like love, hate, compassion, or greed -- does not belong to a particular nation, but one contribution of American fiction is its articulation of a modern phenomenon, the isolation of individuals, leading to a sort of emotional and social autism."

What will rescue us is passion, "a belief that one can give meaning to an otherwise meaningless life, the desire to create -- to face the world, with its pain and grief, and not evade it. That passion enables them to connect; it is something evanescent and enduring..." 

This book made me think of my country's democracy and how reading is neglected because materials are just lying around cheap and for easy access. Before, lack of books is our poverty. Now, our lack of passion is the new poverty. This book is an invitation for us to claim more of what the Republic of Imagination can give.