Republic of Imagination

Republic of Imagination November 11, 2014

As she has traveled in the US to promote Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi has heard a lot about the dismal state of reading in America. She wasn’t convinced, and begins her new book, The Republic of Imagination, with a defense of the American reader:

“The majority of people in this country who haunt bookstores, go to readings and book festivals or simply read in the privacy of their homes are not traumatized exiles. Many have seldom left their hometown or state, but does this mean that they do not dream, that they have no fears, that they don’t feel pain and anguish and yearn for a life of meaning? Stories are not mere flights of fantasy or instruments of political power and control. They link us to our past, provide us with critical insight into the present and enable us to envision our lives not just as they are but as they should be or might become. Imaginative knowledge is not something you have today and discard tomorrow. It is a way of perceiving the world and relating to it.”

The more she traveled in the US, the more she saw signals of danger: “It is not just bookstores and libraries that are disappearing but museums, theaters, performing arts centers, art and music schools—all those places where I felt at home have joined the list of endangered species. The San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and my own hometown paper, The Washington Post, have all closed their weekend book review sections, leaving books orphaned and stranded, poor cousins to television and the movies. In a sign of the times, the Bloomberg News website recently transferred its book coverage to the Luxury section, alongside yachts, sports clubs and wine, as if to signal that books are an idle indulgence of the super-rich.”

Tocqueville, she fears, was right: “America’s desire for newness and its complete rejection of ties and traditions lead both to great innovations—a necessary precondition for equality and wealth—and to conformity and complacency, a materialism that invites a complete withdrawal from public and civic spheres and disdain for thought and reflection.”

Her new book explores several classic American novels in order to raise “new questions, to define not just who we are but who we want to be.” Huck Finn is the central character in her study, since in his rejection of “roots and tradition” he became “a parent to so many homeless protagonists of American fiction.” Babbitt and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter are her other two selections. 

But she begins her book with a brief summary of the book that first enthralled her as a child – The Wizard of Oz. Drab as Kansas is, especially in comparison with the dazzle of Oz, Dorothy just wants to go back, because there is no place like home. That becomes a parable for Nafisi’s understanding of the importance of literature. There is something deep within that loves home, no matter that home isn’t much. That home isn’t just land and topography; it’s partly a product of imagination, an imagination nourished by a national literature. 

Without literature, we’re likely to be distracted by the glitz of exotic places, and lose connection with our roots, rootless though they may be. We’re likely to forget Kansas ever existed. We remain a republic, she suggests, only as we continue to be a “republic of imagination.”


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