I’ve got mail

The sentence is gibberish.

Starting after the first “that” and trimming out some of the parenthetical phraes, we have:

“[T]he danger of totalitarianism in the United States … is far closer to Code Red … than from those postmodern slackers …”

The danger is closer TO Code Red than FROM the slackers? It’s meaningless.

I think Rowe is suggesting that American “individualism” is less individualistic than generally supposed and, perhaps, in underlying motivation, has something in common with Iranian Islamic radicalism. He’s pretty clumsy about saying it, however.

I think the best remark I ever saw on the popularity of Harry Potter comes from Patrick Neilsen Hayden: “They’re enormously popular, despite some flaws, partly because they’re charming and funny, but specifically because of their fabulously well-controlled pace of revelation.” Read the whole thing.

I also think Rowling is, in fact, a very literate and literary writer; she just doesn’t wear her erudition on her sleeve, which seems to conceal her from most literary critics.

To be sure, Idaho is hardly a match for the repressive regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but “God’s country” is certainly as fanatically political and ideological in its fantastic commitment to its version of “liberal individualism.” Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho is an object lesson to the attentive cultural critic that the danger of totalitarianism in the United States, equivalent to what Nafisi finds in the Islamic Republic of Tehran, is far closer to Code Red on the great frontier of the American West and in the White House itself than from those postmodern slackers in the halls of academe or on the back shelves of the Library of Congress.

The frightening thing is that these two sentences should be a better parody of ivory-tower cluelessness than anything I could come up with, but are apparently meant with complete seriousness.

The ‘Code Red’ stuff is just cryptic as used.

Does Rowe really mean that we are in danger of government control of what books we are allowed to read “equivalent to what Nafisi finds in the Islamic Republic of Tehran”? Or that there is a danger of totalitarianism “equivalent to what Nafisi finds in the Islamic Republic of Tehran”? Or that the danger of totalitarianism is worse than the danger of what is found in Iran?

It is as if Rowe got so swept up in over-wrought parallelism that he forgot what his point was.

Apropos Harry Potter and, hm, political analysis:
http://www.amazon.com/Potter-International-Relations-Neumann-Daniel/dp/0742539598

On the linked essay–there’s a fabulous picture book aimed at kids around six, ish, called Aunt Isabel Tells a Good One. It gets at some of this stuff about the elements of story and narrative in a more didactic way than Harry Potter, and is a nice intro to talking with kids about how narratives work for parents who are inclined to like doing these things.

Haven’t read Rowe’s essay, but from what you’ve quoted, Michael, it looks like scare-quotes around the first iteration of “independent” reveal the irony:

Fiercely “independent” ranchers fight the hated Bureau of Land Management, National Forest Service, and National Park Service, imagining that these federal agencies are determined to erode the ranchers’ freedoms. In stores and restaurants, bearded frontiersmen, or at least their late modern simulations, pay cash for everything, drive pickup trucks outfitted for any possible emergency, and pride themselves on their abilities to field strip and rebuild anything from an agricultural pump to a handgun and to hunt and “dress” in the woods a grizzly bear, elk, or moose – all of which can still be hunted in that region.

Now the rest of the paragraph makes sense, right?

14: That all these fanatics have fantastic beards?

This seems to be John’s point:

[T]he locals tend to be profoundly religious, openly racist, and incurably sexist.

Both here and in Iran, so books like Reading Lolita in Tehran — which isolate the problem (and the beards) over there — miss the fact that it’s not the much-bemoaned postmodern relativism we should worry about; rather, we should fear homegrown fanaticism of the sort which resembles, in its stupidity and ferocity, the very thing neo-conservative-appropriated books like RLIT want to use as justification for military action. Clear as day, I tell you!

“Does Rowe really mean that we are in danger of government control of what books we are allowed to read”

If the radical-right Christians have their way, we bloody well will be. Which I suppose is the point.

Not at all, Michael. We lit-crit types have to stick together in arguing that our cute kid stories are TOTALLY about the uniqueness of our own specially cute kids, lest we be lumped in with those annoying parents who buy wipe warmers and held accountable for the decline of American values.

Mr. Berube,

A wonderful essay on “Harry Potter”, thank you. I have forwarded it to my daughter, another Potter fan.

Michael:

Rowe doesn’t go after the Christian Right—like the Christian Identity folks who’ve settled in Idaho as Taliban West. He goes after those fiercely independent ranchers instead, who may indeed be mistaken about their independence from the state (which does a great deal to make their ways of life possible) but who are not, in the end, identical with the Christian Identity fanatics.

You’re right, of course, but I think what you’re missing is that he doesn’t distinguish between them. Both are born of the same (white, patriarchal, European) ideology, they merely manifest differently. The first in the rebirth of early American Protestantism, the second as its secular counterpart, as transformed by Emerson and Frederick Jackson Turner. Quite a bit of shorthand, and assumes a familiarity with his thought to the detriment of his argument, but I think it’s there. I’m merely an explicator here, and don’t buy many of the connections John makes here (as I told him back when he was still on my committee). There’s an elegant simplicity to much of what he writes, one which the facts too often belie for my comfort (as is the case with many of the theory-trumps-history approaches).

Two, in “situating” his argument about homegrown US fanaticism by way of his summer vacation place, Rowe does basically what Patrick says in the final paragraph of comment 5.

I certainly see where the offense can be taken, but when he says “vacations,” I think he means “the three months of the year I live in Idaho,” so he’s not a tourist per se. I don’t remember exactly — it’s been a few years — but I think his family’s owned land up there for many, many years, and that instead of jetting off to Paris/Rome/Barcelona like the stereotypical academic jet-setter, he fly-fishes in the Midwest like ordinary folk. Again, not an excuse for the sloppy writing, just some context. (Also, he would no doubt be thoroughly amused that of all his former students, I’m the one defending him.)

I’m from the South, so it’s all North to me.

The left doesn’t disagree with the right that people should be able to read whatever book they like in Teheran. We just disagree that bombing, invasion, demonization, etc. is the best way to get there. In fact, I think that if you just leave Iran alone to grow and prosper then people will be reading whatever they like in a decade or two, while bombing it raises the likelihood that you will still be looking at a repressive regime many years hence. This is not some kind of tactical difference in methods, but a fundamental disagreement in outlook on the world. Especially since the right demonstrably cares a whole lot more about the bombing than the freedom.

It is interesting to recall that Lolita was banned in the U.S. from 1953 (when Nabokov first sought, and could not find, a U.S. publisher) to 1958. I’m sure in 1910 it would have been far worse. Give Iran some time to find their own way.

sek: Idaho, the state in which he fly-fishes, is the “I” state that is definitely not in the Midwest. Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, sure. Not Idaho.

Wonder if more people in Idaho or Iran will be watching the U.S. Women’s Open this weekend, much less blogging it. (Certainly fewer than blogging the Harry Potter conclusion.) BTW, with all this concern about international invasions, I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to hear that the USGA put an article on all the international players in the field (more than Americans!) that characterized this as an invasion. We’l be back to the days of the “yellow peril” and the Cold War soon, I hope.

On the interesting question of which region of the US calls Idaho one of its own, I admit absolute ignorance. According to Wikipedia, it’s part of the West, not the Midwest, and not the Pacific Northwest, even though the latter is more westerly than states in the West. I’ll also note as there is no “Pacific Southwest,” California belongs to “the Pacific States,” as do Arizona and Nevada (to the immediate south of Idaho), despite the fact that they must wait for The Big One before they’ll be in spitting distance of the Pacific.

All of which is only to say: none of these regional associations makes much sense, and (to reiterate), from the South, it’s all North, even if some of it is West.

1) Idaho is most properly identified as one of the “Rocky Mountain States,” or as part of the “Intermountain West” (both of which generally include Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico), as distinguished from the “Pacific West” (California, Oregon, Washington state) or the “Pacific Northwest” (just Oregon and Washington, maybe parts of northern California at a stretch).

2) Those who know the region well will break it down further: you have Northern Idaho, or the Idaho Panhandle, which is part of the “Inland Empire” of eastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, and western Montana, and you have southern Idaho, which is part of Mormon Country (Utah, of course, as well as Wyoming down to about Evanston).

That’s more than you ever needed to know, of course.

I’m not clear on exactly what that final sentence means, so, dear readers, I humbly ask for your help. (I think it’s saying that we have more to fear from totalitarians in the Western US and the White House…

My geographically-motivated take on that murky last sentence in Rowe’s commentary from Cedarn, Utana:

Given the proximity of his vacation to the stomping grounds of that fiercely independent rancher, he-who-must-not-be-opposed-by-anyone-in-the-administration, I would gloss it as:

ZOMG!! Dick Cheney is totally going to win and not let us read the “wrong” books!

He would have phrased it less opaquely if he had not been distracted by a loud amusement park right in front of his vacation lodgings.

I liked RLIT, but I think a large part of the reason I liked it was that I rarely read any serious literary criticism.

The wogs start east of the crest of the Sierras. California is the West of the West. As far as I am concerned Idaho is East.
What struck me reading RLIT was the sad thought that those women either had to knuckle under or leave and most left.

“Reading Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho in Pennsylvania” would probably not have been a better title for this post.

The question of whether aesthetic ideas can be considered fallacious reminds me that whenever I see the word “bluestocking” I think “roundheels” and have to remind myself of the difference.

Arizona and New Mexico (mentioned in a later post) are part of a well identified region, the Southwest. Of which only a small corner of Texas is too.

Actually, many of my fellow Oklahomans consider our state to be in the southwest. Nobody else does, however.

US foreign policy since 1941 was all about making the world safe for Nabokov…

Hahaha, thanks for brightening my morning, Luis, I needed that.

But are you really buying the premise that books like RLIT want to use stupid ferocious fanaticism as justification for military action? How can a book want such a thing?

Incidentally, the term “useful idiots” was coined a long time ago to describe a certain kind of intellectual activity taking place in a certain political context. In the current geopolitical situation Nafisi and Rushdie certainly qualify.

I hate Rowling because she always knocks Hermione unconscious or takes away her strength just when the crucial moment comes. So Hermione has all the good ideas, is itching to get in the fight, and is removed so that Harry gets all the glory. I hate it. Rowling should know better.

Never thought I’d agree with you about anything, Michael, but I loved your Harry Potter essay, and would have loved it if you were as nasty to Byatt as she was (very stupidly, I might add) to Rowling.

And I still don’t agree with you or all her defenders on Nafici. I am Iranian and lived through the worst purges of the immediately post-revolutionary time, and even then, during those horrid times, you could still buy Lolita and whatever else you wanted and read. It was reading Iranian novelists that was dangerous, not European ones, as Nafici makes out.

Michael has been sited at TPMCafe:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jun/28/tough_leaders_for_tough_times

Homonyms have been cited at Crooked Timber.

I love Dr. Berube and the other Dr. B! Y’all remind me why talking about books–texts of all kinds– still matters!

SG and #55, yeah, Rowling sometimes does what you mention to Hermione (I call it “Scullying,” because it’s what Chris Carter did to Scully on X-files, which was infuriating). But I think Book 2 is the worst offender on that; since then, we see the MANY MANY times Rowling has other characters remind us that Hermione is the most clever and that Harry relies on her a lot. Sure, it’d be nice if there didn’t have to be exposition on that all time, but it’s also nice that there is. I love reading over and over that Harry’s friends are more clever than he is. And Rowling/Dumbledore also remind us constantly that Harry’s exceptional status is context-dependent. He’s both the chosen one and not the chosen one, and we’re really not allowed to see it as one or the other.

Okay, some context. or rather some discussion of context.
How does Nafisi compare with Marjan Satrapi, or other younger women who grew up after the revolution. What is the difference between the experience of those who lost freedom and those who learned about it, as it were from scratch? Satrapi has said she feels not quite at home in the west. How can this be? What are the opinions concerning all this of Samira Makmalbaf and those like her?

What is the significance of the open letter to Princess Farah
“Kindly Come and Do Us a Favor, Oh Lady” from one of the women’s rights activists arrested in March of this year? Why was Azadeh Forghani less than impressed by the gesture by her one time ruler?

What does it mean to listen to The women of Hamas. Is this feminism?

These are all questions of experience and context. And a little empirical study. Are Azar Nafisi represent the same interestsas the widow of the Shah? I don’t know, but it’s a good question. And it’s one the author of this post ignores, because he doesn’t think he needs to pay attention.
Ideas aren’t enough.
From the first comment:

“this all seems like a classic example of the ivory-tower pseudointellectualism of which the professoriate is so often accused.”

yup. Again

‘she’s not crippling the superhero. She’s crippling the woman’

Well, I dunno. I think its pretty obvious that she’s doing both: in crippling the superhero (which Hermione pretty clearly is) she’s also crippling the woman.

But I guess I put the point I was trying to make a bit ineptly. I wasn’t trying to say – although maybe it came across that way – that it doesn’t matter that JKR cripples Hermione, because its just an instance of a standard genre convention.

What I was trying to say is that Rowling has got herself into a bit of a pickle by endowing Hermione with all the powers she does, and that the explanation of the crippling is not some kind of underlying misogyny (which on the other hand I think might be going on in Disney)but that – having set the scenario up as she has – is that that’s what the genre then requires.I do agree, though, that its problematic that in doing that she is thereby crippling a strong female character.

I also think its intersting that the reason there’s any sort of problkem here at all probably derives from something which sg draws attention to: ‘ the public school environment… creates a boys’ own adventure atmosphere ‘ – setting up Hermione as the really impressive character strikes me as an attempt to undermine (subvert?) this, although in a way that is problematic because of all the other stereotypes it plays into.

In other words – writing fiction sets all sorts of intellectual challenges and in an extended serial some of the solutions one comes up with cause one problems later on – and what makes it especially difficult is that one can’t go back and adjust the beginning later on.

BTW – if there’s anyone out there thinking that there’s something peculiar about devoting so much thought to popular culture and to children’s books in particular: if it was good enough for Plato, it’s good enough for me.

I didn’t read Rowe’s essay but I did read Dubashi’s critique of Nafaisi’s book. Dubashi says:

in the span of the same period of time (the 1990’s) that Azar Nafisi deigned to live in Iran and sought to save the soul of a nation by teaching a privileged few among them “Western Classics,” Iranians had produced a glorious cinema that has captivated the globe in awe and admiration, produced a feminist press and literature rarely matched in any other country, and elected more women to their parliament than those in the United States. The [by Nafasi] narrative eradication of Persian literature and Iranian culture while writing in an entirely Iranian context mutates into a more global dismissal of world literatures at large, any literature or culture that might pause and pose an element of resistance to imperial designs and their ideological foregrounding.

I didn’t like Reading Lolita in Teheran for the same reason Dubashi didn’t. Nafasi sounds like she and one professor/friend at the university are the only two feminists in the nation. Her telling of her own political history is really muddled. She was in a far left Iranian group in the U.S. and supported the revolution against the shah. Nafasi’s book gives a particularly bad account of the politics of the Iranian revolution. I’ve seen some Iranian feminist cinema and it’s much better than Nafasi’s book.

And attacking Rowe’s essay based on a couple quotes taken out of context is really unfair.
I was a student of Rowe also.

Michael,
You said that Nafisi’s critics are criticizing her idea that ” the cultural sphere should have relative autonomy from the state?” None of Nafisi’s critics say that. What Dubashi and other says is that her account of Iranian women’s literary and other arts activities is innacurate. In her memoir Nafasi sounds like herself and maybe 1 other women friend are the courageous women and others don’t exist.

Iranian poet Friday Hassanzadeh said, “In recent years, women writers [in Iran] have been more popular than men writers for they are better to able to express the hidden realities of family and society. Women writers like Roya Pirzad,Fariba Vafi, and many others have won the most famous literary prizes and people buy their books in spite of financial problems. The books of women writers reach the 20th or 30th edition within a very shorttime. But as for poets, our great poets are still Forough Farrokhzad and Simin Behbahani from the 1940s and 1950s. Meanwhile, among our
great directors, women like Rakhshan Bani Etemad, Samira Makhmalbaf,and Tahmine Milany have achieved international success and fame. Andour best playwrights have been women too. Increasingly, more women than men are studying in universities.

Dubashi, Hassandeh et al have said there are many courageous women in Iran–writers, film directors, playwrights. They have participated in resistance to the ayatollahs for decades, including the decade after Nafasi left. Nafasi didn’t stand alone the way she portrays in her memoir which I find highly inaccurate. Dubashi and other says if one looks Irananian woman’s huge resistance to the ayatollahs, then the portrait Nafasi makes in her memoir of the single women leading her band of students is very limited one.

In the time when Bush et al. has been calling Iran the Axis of Evil, then getting an accurate account of that country is very important. Nafasi does not give us that accurate account we need.