'What we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth'. Discuss.

Between the ages of about 13 and 15 I was unhappy. Before then I enjoyed primary school or was managing OK with the senior school transition. After that I was busy working on my GCSEs before escaping to sixth form. The reason I was unhappy wasn’t anything particular, it’s just I was a teenager. I was also not very popular, difficult to get along with and acted like I was superior to everyone else. In any case, books were my escape. I think it was in this period that I would read almost one book per day. I remember coming home feeling miserable and lying on my bed with yet another book, escaping.

Books help us deal with reality. Or at least, they seem to give us the impression that there is shape to our lives, that one day we will get to the end of whatever thing is troubling us and move on, in the same way that we know the hero or heroine will win through in the end. I suppose when I was reading fantasy novels I was, in my imagination, also adventuring in ways I never would in real life. My own quest was to finish my five years in secondary school intact.

I’m fairly sure that if I were to read back over some of those novels – mostly a mixture of fantasy novels and novels about children in various wars and conflicts – they would evoke that part of my life. It’s this layering of reality and fiction that I’m finding while reading Reading Lolita in Tehran (Aza Nafisi, 2003). I must have picked it up a few years ago but never got round to reading it until a friend told me how much she’d enjoyed it. I’m about three quarters of the way through and am indeed finding it very interesting, although it’s difficult to know how much of it is fact and how much (especially conversation) is fabrication. It’s about the author’s career teaching English Literature at various universities (and a book group) in Tehran, Iran, during the 1980s and 1990s and is stimulating and heartbreaking at the same time. It did remind me, oddly, of Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip (2006). This is the story of a young girl, Matilda, who lives on a tropical island where the only white man becomes the teacher and uses Dickens’ Great Expectations as his main teaching aid. Considering Mister Pip was so highly acclaimed (and was nominated for the 2007 Man Booker prize) I was underwhelmed, but I have a feeling that if I had more affection for Great Expectations (my least favourite Dickens) I might have enjoyed it more.

My overall impression is that in Reading Lolita in Tehran it seems that the novels and writers under discussion are being read into the Iranian society of the 1980s and 1990s, whereas with Mister Pip the emphasis seems to be to be on the utter foreignness of the text. It’s completely out of place on the island, and wondering about this other world – Pip’s world in unknown England – is what helps Matilda to escape what is happening in reality. For Azar Nafisi and her students, every novel becomes a starting point for political debate and to illustrate what is happening in Iranian society. Lolita, a young girl whose life and textual voice has been taken away from her, seems to embody the position of Iranian women, with so many rights and freedoms taken away from them. Yet literature is for these women an immense escape. Nafisi describes how, racked with insomnia during night attacks at the time of the Iraqi-Iranian war, she would read. Yet she describes herself as being capable of greater concentration than usual under these straitened circumstances.

Right at the beginning of Reading Lolita Nafisi tells us she warned her students: ‘...do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.’ Yet she admits that “It is of Lolita that I want to write, but right now there is no way I can write about that novel without also writing about Tehran. This, then, is the story of Lolita in Tehran, how Lolita gave a different color to Tehran and how Tehran helped redefine Nabokov’s novel, turning it into this Lolita, our Lolita.”

Perhaps C.S.Lewis was right to say that ‘Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it’ after all. Because in the end what we bring to our reading of any text – our beliefs, prejudices, experiences – shapes how we view it and how we remember it, as well as how we experience life itself.

On a lighter note... Literary highlights on stage and screen recently for me have been:

BBC’s new adaptation of Emma. Light and delightful, although everyone is far too beautiful! (Oddly enough I quite enjoy adaptations of Emma although I heartily dislike the book itself and only got through the whole thing with much will-power and at least three false starts)

RSC’s production of Hamlet as shown on Boxing Day in the UK. David Tennant impressed me greatly, particularly by the fact that he genuinely made me laugh. There was something particularly memorable about the grave scenes (the digging of Ophelia’s grave and her burial) for me, although I’m not enough of a Hamlet buff to know why. Of course, when you sit through three hours of something like that, it does make it slightly (and accidentally) amusing to see the majority of the cast die in the last 5 minutes!

A stage production of Flat Stanley (original book by Jeff Brown, 1964) which I went to see this very afternoon with my mum and two of my young cousins. Anyone else remember the story about the boy whose notice board fell on him in the night and made him flat? It was excellently staged and lots of fun, although the fake American accents were a little grating.

Southbound Train

Oh, and I guess they'll say I've grown
I know more than I wanted to know
I've said more than I wanted to say

I'm headed home
Yeah but I'm not so sure
That home is a place
You can still get to by train

So I'm looking out the window
And I'm drifting off to sleep
With my face pressed up against the pane
With the rhythm of my heart
And the ringing in my ears
It's the rhythm of the southbound train

Oh, well the wind starts to look like her hair
And the clouds in her bright blue eyes
As the sea and the shore fall and rise
Like her breast as she breathes by my side

And the moon is her lips as the sun
Is headed on down to the sea
Like her head as she lays down on me
Until we reach ocean side

Over and over I hear the same refrain
It's the rhythm of my heart
And my sleepy girl's breathing
It's the rhythm of my southbound train

Oh, I suppose they'll say I should've known
Or maybe I'm just feeling old
Like a lawyer with no one to blame

I'm headed home
Yeah but I'm not so sure
Home is a place that'll ever be the same

So we're picking up our things
And we head out in the cold
And your eyes are where you carry the pain
When I hear the whistle weeping
It's crying to the sky
It's the rhythm of the southbound train
It's the rhythm of my southbound train


This afternoon I walked into Tours to go to the library, and this song came on my mp3 player. It's a track from Jon Foreman's EP 'Fall' (a series which also includes 'Winter', 'Spring' and 'Summer', all well worth a listen) and seemed to fit with the beautiful autumn afternoon - a clear blue sky, orange light, turning trees and just-warm air. It contains one of my favourite song lines: 'I'm not so sure/That home is a place/You can still get to by train'. It sums up how I feel in life as I travel to new places and meet new people and realise that it's OK to feel at home everywhere and nowhere. My home is not here, it's still to come. And I think Foreman's saying the same thing, but he's also talking about a person being his home too. This is something I've definitely experienced; with close friends and loved ones it doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing, you can feel at home.

The words are beautiful and the music is too, with the wonderful use of strings and harmonica and the throbbing train-like motion of the cello bass complementing the words. It's a love song but it's also a song about life, experience, change and going back.

Standing in the long now

Realising that I haven't blogged in many months I thought I'd give a summary of the Greenbelt festival, which I returned from yesterday. It is an annual Christian arts and music festival held at Cheltenham racecourse. I enjoyed music by Duke Special, Athlete, Foreign Slippers and Sixpence None the Richer and talks by John Bell and Earth Abbey (about permaculture) - sadly no Rob Bell though!

The theme for Greenbelt this year was 'Standing in the long now', and I include an excerpt from a reflection on this theme:

"In an age of 'do-it-now' and the instant decision, when waiting times are always coming down and the destination always trumps the journey, the idea of 'the long now' is deeply resonant for people of faith. In our traditions we keep alive the stories of iconic figures from past millennia because we know they will inspire us in bringing change to the present one. We mark a season of advent, consciously waiting for hope to be born and some kind of culmination of history. We recite a C4th creed which 'looks for the world to come' but subconsciously admit that it's turning out to be a pretty long now when after seventeen centuries it often seems no closer.

So what does it mean to stand in this long now? To become long-sighted? To plan for a present we may never experience, to long for a world we may have left before it arrives. What would it be like if gratification was not instant and the waiting had not been taken out of the wanting.

Would a credit-crunch take on a different perspective?

Would a painting or a piece of music take on another kind of value?

And how about a career? Could that find itself in competition from something as old-fashioned as a 'vocation'?"

(Martin Wroe, http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/festival/2009/theme)

This idea of living slowly, with care for the planet and with enjoyment of God's creation is always prevalent in Greenbelt's attitude and the nature of the artists and speakers it invites. I went to several literature-based talks, all of which you should be able to download from Greenbelt's website, should you be interested. The first was Suzanne Bray speaking on 'Rooted in the living word'. Suzanne works at l'Universite Catholique de Lille, and is the reason I was able to spend some time there in my gap year. Her main focus is on British Christian writers of the early 20th century, such as C.S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers. She spoke on the literary heritage which all English writers carry, often without realising it, and the fact that it is rooted in at least 14 centuries of Christian influence in writing. Through a whistle-stop tour of a set of extracts from each century (some of which I had the privilege of reading aloud) she illustrated this to fascinating effect, from 12th century Arthurian legends, to Chaucer, to Shakespeare and Milton, to Austen, to Tolkien.

Straight after this was Andrew Tate, a lecturer at the University of Lancaster, who I heard speak on 'Epic narratives' - their history and application particularly through Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost and Pullman's His Dark Materials. He interestingly suggested that, through using an inherently Christian story/plotline Pullman is "Of God's party without knowing it", among other things. I was glad to have studied Paradise Lost this year, otherwise I think I might have been a bit lost.

Later on I went to see Jasper Fforde, who I have previously recommended, speak about his writing. He was very amusing, and I was encouraged at his manner of speaking - rushing over his words, getting things tangled up, as I know this is the way I speak! He was very matter-of-fact about the writing process and evidently enjoys his own writing immensely. He read an extract from his forthcoming novel Shades of Grey which promises to be full of fun as usual, although not set in what he calls his "Nextian universe".

My last literary event of Greenbelt was Michael Ward, who has recently become fairly famous for his book Planet Narnia. The BBC made a documentary about it over Easter, The Narnia Code, which I saw and was interested by. His basic theory is that the Narnia books are not, as has been thought by many, full of chaos and confusion but that they are in fact held together by a thread of thought. This is that each of the seven books is based around the imagery of one of the seven planets in the medieval view of the cosmos - a line from a Lewis poem about Jupiter ("Winter passed and guilt forgiven") made him think of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and he has linked up the other books with other planets accordingly. It's an interesting theory, although not without problems (for example, some imagery is threaded through the whole series rather than being confined to one book only). I would like to read Planet Narnia itself but refuse to pay for a hard back copy! I think I'll look for it in a library...

I was going to add more thoughts about some other things I've been reading but perhaps I will save it for another time as I've rambled (again!). However I will say that I watched the new ITV production of Wuthering Heights recently, and am half way through re-reading it. The more I read it, the more I appreciate what a strange, individual book it is - I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it, and perhaps I'll post some thoughts up another time as it really is one of my favourite books. Suffice to say that I think the new adaptation to be quite good - in general it is in the spirit of the book. However I felt they had tried to make Cathy and Heathcliff too nice - much nicer than they are on page, in any case. I was glad to see the presence of Nelly, who is often left out from the action though she is quite important. Mr Lockwood, the novel's narrator, is - as usual - absent, perhaps understandably. I do think, though, that he is important as he is, like us, an outsider to the main action of the novel and thus stands out because he has a different perception of what is 'normal' in society to how the Earnshaws and Lintons live. Lockwood plays the reader to an extent - we too have no connection with the strange events of the novel (for they are strange). I could go on, but won't. One final reservation about this adaptation is that it is probably quite confusing for someone who's never read the novel - I think the way it's been split up is meant to help in understand what can be quite a contorted storyline but I'm not sure it does.

Sexing up the Renaissance

I've just finished watching Simon Schama's BBC programme about John Donne, which was aired last week but thanks to exams I've not been able to watch till today! It's on iPlayer for at least another four days, and is part of the BBC's poetry season. Check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/ - you can vote for your favourite poet. I'm not sure I can pick just one out of the fantastic collection they've got on there! You can also check out Owen Shear's series called 'A Poet's Guide to Britain' - I've watched the first one (about Wordsworth's 'Composed upon Westminster Bridge') and it was very interesting. He's also done programs in the same series on Sylvia Plath, Matthew Arnold and George Mackay Brown so far.

Back to John Donne and Simon Schama. In theory this programme was a good idea, and as far as it went it was an informative, atmospheric production, with a bit of literary analysis thrown in as well. Unfortunately for Mr Schama I am currently studying Donne for an exam on the Renaissance period after having been examined on literature of the Romantic period, so his comment that Donne was "unlike the solitary, brooding poet figure" made me wonder why he would expect Donne to be exhibiting characteristics that were only expected of poets from around 200 years later. His surprised comment that Donne wanted to be admired and be elevated socially also seems odd considering that this is true of virtually every other Renaissance poet, battling for promotion in the court.

Schama is shown discussing the poetry with actress Fiona Shaw, who performs snippets from several of Donne's poems. A good idea, but the male narrative voices of the poems seems a little incongruous with a female voice at times. These conversations are interesting and provide fresh perspectives on the poems but focus on personal responses to the poems - fair enough, considering many people are put off by poetry anyway - but there is no mention of the things that make Donne unique for the period, such as what critics have called his 'mutuality' and speech-like rhythms as well as the different narrative personas he assumes. The way the poems are linked into a biography of Donne's life gives them a very contextual viewpoint which clouds other readings of the poems, and is also misleading as most critics (so I'm told) agree that the usual order of publishing the poems (i.e. love lyric to religious lyric) is not chronological. The emphasis is very much on his love lyrics, presumably in order to sex up what are already fairly erotic poems and make them appealing to the public - again, fair enough, but it ignores the importance of Donne's religious poetry. Schama claims at the very end that he doesn't like the practice of splitting the poet into his two personas - Jack Donne and Dr Donne - yet this is what he has effectively spent the entire hour of documentary in doing.

There are also a few blatant errors, for example some of the background music manages to sound fairly Renaissance-inspired, but some is obviously from a more classical or romantic period - be consistent Mr Schama! He and Fiona Shaw also refer to 'The Canonization' as a sonnet. I wondered whether the stanzas of this poem were in fact sonnets but, although the rhyme scheme is vaguely reminiscent of Petrarchan sonnets it is only 9 lines long - sonnets are always 14 lines!!

All in all, it was a programme worth watching for someone who has never encountered Donne before - and also for those who know his work fairly well too, but be aware that you may be cringing inside at times! After making the Tudors interesting, Schama has obviously turned to the poets of the period and given Donne - at least - his usual dramatic treatment.

Here are two of the poems Schama and Shaw discuss. They're great, go and explore John Donne :)

FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout ;
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call's what you will, we are made such by love ;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;

And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage ;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes ;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize—
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love."


Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.