Vacation Reading

by Jean Marie Moffa
May 16, 2006

A few weeks before our spring break, and in great anticipation of our trip to Florida, I took an indulgent trip to Borders. I grabbed two paperbacks off the tables, nearly trembling with the anticipation of being in warmer, sunny places, doing as little as possible that didn't involve relaxation. Novels seems to be the stuff of vacation--lush, fictitious worlds so far from our everyday routines...and yet, the two books I grabbed were not fiction.

I selected Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, because I needed connection. I needed connection to good books, and I got the impression that this one might deliver. The quote on the front was promising. ("Remarkable...an eloquent brief on the transformative power of fiction." --The New York Times) I also wanted some non-news-generated perspectives on anything Middle Eastern, and I am ever interested in women's issues, so on all three counts, I was ready to read.

And my, did Nafisi deliver. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a tough book--a tense book--at moments, feeling not quite the perfect vacation read, for all its weighty issues--but ultimately, a consuming tapestry that inspires beyond its words. Azar Nafisi's tale unfolds just as she resigns her final teaching position in Iran (professor of English literature, University of Tehran) for refusing to wear the veil. Having grown up in Iran before the revolution and rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini, she had her formative years in one of the most open societies in the Middle East. The state of this society during and after the revolution changed radically, bringing with it terror, persecution, imprisonment, executions, and governmental controls on everything from books to cosmetics.

What makes Nafisi's writing so captivating, though, is not the heinous crimes played out before us. No, it is the remarkable way in which she seamlessly intertwines the themes of the literature she is teaching with the realities of her world, laying before us a richness of fiction and of her daily life. As such, she makes a brilliant argument for the power of--and the reason for--literature, and well beyond carrying us through the lives of her students and her family, she lives and writes out the passion that is reading, the passion that is living.

I chose The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean, because its events unfold predominantly in south Florida (my destination), because I love orchids but know little about them, and because I was intrigued to read the book that inspired the movie Adaptation. Was there even a doubt? An obvious vacation read. Ostensibly about orchids and those who pursue them, Orlean's work is far from simply that. Each page brims over with people, places, and tales so enigmatic and vibrantly bizarre that it seems they must be fictional--and yet, they are not. Orlean is a reporter. With a remarkable ability to get it all down, she draws us into the world of orchids and the place called Florida, to have us emerge (pulse quickened from the drama, skin dampened by the humidity that nearly drips off the pages) with a keener understanding of passion.

Little did I know, when I grabbed Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Orchid Thief for my getaway vacation reading, that these two books would have so much in common. Transported to the chaos of Iran during wartime, and deep into Florida's thickest wilderness--both places at once oppressive and surreal--I journeyed into the heart of passionate pursuits. I spent my vacationing hours getting lost in the quests for beauty, truth, freedom, wealth, peace....and getting an opportunity to breathe in the wonder of passion. What rejuvenation it was.