I've not read Lolita, the Nabokov novel--but it's next on my reading list.
What I'm reading, for the second time, is a memoir by Azar Nafisi, called Reading Lolita In Tehran.
I was at Day's house when I read it the first time and Jackson was about three years old, playing in the next room. I was telling Day about the lives these women lived in Iran after the Revolution under a totalitarian regime: they could not eat ice cream in the streets, could not wear make-up, were forbidden to fall in love.
Sometimes the morality committee would march into classrooms and inspect the fingernails of girls and if they were too long, they would cut them to the quick until they bled. They lived in fear of their houses being raided. They could only read books approved by the censors--which didn't include Lolita or any book that had to do with sex, adultery, or anything else forbidden by the government. Before 1978, they lived as we do.
Jackson ran into the room and asked, "Where do they do these things?
"Far away," I said, wishing he'd not overheard.
"In a country called Iran," Day said.
Three-year-old Jackson was indignant. "They have to stop! What can we do to make them stop?"
Day told him she'd have to think about that.
The next day, Jackson asked again.
"You have such a heart for justice, Jackson," Day said. "Maybe you could write a letter. Tell me what to say and I'll write it for you."
He didn't have to think long. Here's the letter from Jackson:
"Dear Bad People. Stop it. Love, Jackson."
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