Reading Lolita in Tehran (Originally published July 1, 2013)

I purchased Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi about eight years ago, when it was a best-seller. I was intrigued by the premise of a secret book club in Iran, by women loving literature so much that they were willing to risk their lives to read it. When I glanced through it, I realized that it was divided into four sections: Lolita, Gatsby, James, and Austen. Having only read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility at that time, I decided to read the suggested titles by Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen before plunging into this memoir. After all, I couldn’t let the characters be more well-read than I!

Little did I know that this would become an eight-year journey. I stumbled through Nabokov (oh, to have a teacher like Nafisi to guide me!). The other titles were easier to comprehend, but with the turns my life took (two boys in high school marching band), it took me much longer than anticipated. This spring I completed the last title, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen, and I was ready.

What inspired and intrigued me was Nafisi’s commentary on literature. She says, “Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world.” (p. 94).

I was a history major in college, not a literature major. I have always loved reading, but have never interacted with books so much as absorbed them. One of the reasons I started this blog was as a tool for me to interact with my reading more, to think about the ideas presented in the books I’m going through. Seeing the intensity and fierceness that the girls in the book had towards literature made me realize how casually I’ve taken the ability to read whatever I’ve wanted. In a free country, we hold these freedoms so carelessly that, until we see what it’s like for others, we don’t see what privileges we have.

This book, although not fiction, has forced me to question what I took for granted and think more about what I’m reading. I’ve never been one to mark in books or fold corners to mark passages, but I did in this book, to save the passages I want to consider for this blog. It felt strange but also liberating. I’ll discuss these other passages in future posts.

So, read on – and question and be unsettled!

Thank You, Mr. Cole

In the book I'm currently reading, the main character, Jim Qwilleran, a journalist, credits a teacher for teaching him how to write. He says, "Fortunately I had a tenth-grade teacher who taught me how to write a thousand words about anything - or nothing...Behind her back we called her Mrs. Fish-eye, but she knew her craft, she knew how to teach! Every time I sit down at the typewriter to pound out another column, I mutter a thank-you to Mrs. Fish-eye" (Lilian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Sang for the Birds, p. 8).

I had a tenth-grade English teacher like that. Oddly enough, he also had not one nickname, but two. And he taught me how to write.

His name was Bill Cole. He taught my sophomore English class, and I was fortunate to have him again for a class called Great Books my senior year.

At the beginning of the school year, he wore Hang Ten t-shirts and OP shorts. Everyday, a different combination of t-shirt and shorts. He told us his name was Beach Bum. Then, on Friday, Nov. 13, he suddenly showed up in long pants and a long-sleeve button-up shirt. He told us that Beach Bum had left and that he was now The Sheik of Apparel. Now he wore shirts that looked like they had come out of a 50's thrift store - stripes, zig-zags, plaids. And, again, a different one each day. Then, in the spring, timed to another Friday the 13th if possible, the Sheik left and Beach Bum reappeared. He pretty much had us convinced that he was two different people.

Not only this, he proceeded to give every student in all of his classes a nickname. He would take his time, distributing nicknames one at a time over the course of the year. Once you got a nickname, he would only call you by that name. You even had to put it on your assignments in place of your real name. He especially liked it when the students used his names to refer to each other.

His nicknames were amazingly spot-on. Julie was Cool Jul (was and still is), Anne was Classy Lassie, Andre was The First and Foremost (went on to be president of the Great Books club), Pete was Golden Boy (went on to be Valedictorian). My sister was virtually the only one to never get a nickname, because he said that she perfectly embodied the name Sarah, and he could not find a better one.

And me? I got stuck with Neat-n-Nifty. Imagine how that went over with 15-year-old me. No 15-year-old wants to be known for being neat.

This man knew how to teach writing. He divided the year into three-week sections. During the first week, he would introduce the writing assignment, whether it was a summary, description, narrative, etc. He would read examples from previous years' students that he especially enjoyed (of course, we didn't know who wrote them because they were attributed to their nickname).

He showed us how outlining your ideas before writing helped organize your thoughts and ensure you had enough support. He taught us how to use a "grabber" and a "clincher" to tie up our writing, with appropriate examples. He helped us frame the all-important thesis statement to reflect our entire paper.

The second week was devoted to writing the paper, due on Friday. He would grade the papers on the weekend. Then we all looked forward to the third week, when he would read his favorites to the class. It was an honor to have your paper read aloud, or even more, kept for future years.

He was also the first one to teach me how to diagram sentences. In my elementary-school years during the laissez-faire 70's, somehow I had never been taught basic grammar, and I really struggled with diagramming. Mr. Cole was the only teacher in high school to give me B's in English, mostly due to diagramming. But, slowly, I learned.

He taught us about the "Gross Errors": using apostrophes to show plurals, mixing up its-it's, and other grammar mistakes. To this day, I have an eagle eye for grammar and punctuation errors. I especially hate to see them in print - "How could they publish this Gross Error??"

I learned, like Qwilleran, how to write a thousand words about anything fairly quickly. This came in handy in college, when as a history major, I had many papers to write on deadlines. As an adult, writing is natural to me and something I enjoy.

So, as I begin this next phase of my blog, I am muttering a thank-you to Mr. Cole, who shaped me into the writer that I am today. Even if he did call me Neat-n-Nifty.

P.S. If you're a La Habra High School alumnus, please comment below with your nickname from Mr. Cole! And feel free to correct me if I have misremembered details from over 30 years ago. I'll be sure to change my work for accuracy.

The Last Chapter (originally published June 25, 2013)

In case you’re wondering about my blog title, a few months ago, my (then) 17-year-old son informed me that since he was soon graduating from high school, I was now entering the last chapter of my life. Thanks a lot. My response was, “Where does that put my parents? The Epilogue? Index?” It’s great to have a teenager around to give you some perspective.

But, he’s right, in a sense. I’ve been a parent for 20 years, and now both of my children are adults, graduated, moving on with their lives. Hopefully there is more than one chapter left for me.

So, in the restlessness that I’ve been experiencing this summer as I’ve been re-evaluating my life, I’ve decided to start a blog. My life keeps moving forward, but I have to re-examine who I am. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom, working part-time for 10 years. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be, what I want to do with my life.

We’ll see where I go with this. I expect I’ll do random posts on eclectic subjects – parenthood, children, literature, faith, and whippets. It’ll probably be like “shuffle” on my iPod, the way I like to play it – varied, mixed-up, never knowing what will come next.

The Last Chapter, Phase 2

Hello, everyone!

I have changed my blog platform out of frustration with my last blog provider. Many times I was unable to access my blog and I have had enough. I am switching to blogspot and am hoping to be much happier here!

I was able to briefly access my old blog website and print out my previous posts. I'll either re-type them into here or hopefully copy/paste them when I can access them. Either way, you'll see some older posts from the last nine months reappearing.

If you had an email subscription to my old blog, I think you'll have to resubscribe here --->

Please let me know either here or on Facebook if you have any problems viewing this site or subscribing!

Thanks for reading!