| Thursday, July 7, 2011 2:56AM | | | | Reading Lila Azam Zanganeh | Posted By: Arnon Grunberg
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Two years ago, I met a young woman at a dinner party in New York. A few authors were present at this party, so literary gossip was obviously an important part of the entertainment that night. But this woman asked me serious questions about writing and discipline. She was working on a book herself, and she wanted to know what my take was on discipline.
Her name is Lila Azam Zanganeh and two years later her book, The Enchanter— Nabokov and Happiness, has been published.
The book came out at the same time in the U.S., the U.K. and the Netherlands. I was flattered when Lila’s Dutch editor asked me to do a public interview with her in Amsterdam.
The Enchanter is an homage to Nabokov’s work and poetics. It’s also an autobiography of a fictional reader, a how-to-learn-to-read-literature book and a meditation on happiness throughout its 15 chapters and prologue. The Guardian declared, “Be warned—it’s like nothing you’ve read before.” The Guardian was right.
But nothing is worse than when the interviewer is so much in awe of the interviewee that he forgets to ask questions.
And there were many questions to be asked.
Lila writes—since we have lunch in New York every three months or so, I believe Lila is more appropriate than Ms. Zanganeh—that she has a genuine aversion to politics, in which she keenly joins Vladimir Nabokov. Such a refreshing statement at a time when all writers and artists seem obliged to save some part of the world, a time when beauty for the sake of beauty is treated with the greatest suspicion, not to say aversion. But how much reality can we avoid before the accusation of escapism should be taken seriously?
Lila quotes, again with approval, Nabokov’s famous statement that “Lolita has no moral in tow.”
Yes, we should protect ourselves from those who try to turn great literature into simple moral lessons. But it seems to me that it is hard to separate the beauty of the language from the moral implications that the story has to offer.
“Yes,” Lila said that night in Amsterdam, “of course, morality is part of the equation.”
The next morning Lila sent me a text with some friendly words about the interview, but she also added, “I’m sorry you dislike V.N.’s world so much (and mine).”
Later that morning, we met for a quick glass of grapefruit juice and I explained to her that I didn’t dislike V.N.’s world, nor hers. A critical question can be proof that you take something seriously.
While sipping at my grapefruit juice I realized that this is one of the great pleasures in life: to disagree with a friend on literature.
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