Writing: You can't tell by the color · 3:54pm Oct 8th, 2014
In one corner, against the wall, colorful cushions have been spread out over a Persian carpet. Some of us are sitting propped up against the cushions. The wine and vodka are homemade, but you can't tell by the color.
Reading Lolita in Tehran, IV.15
You can't tell by the color?
Changing that one word from "taste" to "color" says so much.
The narrator is describing a party in Iran in the 1990s. Wine and vodka are illegal, and Persian carpets are shyly subversive, because they represent pre-Islamic Iran. The wine and vodka are homemade, and of course you can tell by the taste. But you can't tell by the color.
That means the party is a success. It paints a picture of normalcy, an illusion that they can enjoy as they would a movie (if they were allowed to see any good movies). That's all they can hope for. They don't expect to enjoy the wine and the vodka. They just want to be able to pretend that they do.
I'm wondering, though; how many people caught that on a first reading? :-/
Or was it mentioned earlier in the book that home-made wine and vodka taste different from "normal" vodka?
Dunsany does something similar in describing a banquet at an expensive and dishonest hotel: "There was wine at a guinea a bottle that you could not tell from from champagne, and cigars with a Havana label" (from "
The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the JewelerThe Bird of the Difficult Eye"). He affects a persona too genteel to accuse the hotel of selling inferior goods at premium prices, instead slyly complimenting the subterfuge.Y'know Iranian wine—the Shirazi whites, in particular—was reckoned to be the finest in the Middle East. Shirazi wine is likely what's in the jug of wine that's meant to accompany the loaf of bread, the book of verses, and thou, in fact. And European travelers reckoned it to be of the very highest quality as late as the 17th century.
None is made today, and what with the variety being subject to genetic drift with nobody caring for is wine-making properties, not to mention the loss of knowledge, none will be made ever again, either. The vast vineyards of Iran are busy making—sigh—raisins.
It's depressing, is what it is.
Anyway. It's a very well spotted little bit of writerly skill. Saying quite a bit by one unexpected word. Shades of your information-theoretic understanding of literary excellence there, I think. Will you be reviewing the book?
The "unexpected" reference didn't get me by surprise, but my point of view is uncommon. I haven't drunk anything alcoholic since I was, well, eight I guess (and that one was an accident), so when referring to alcoholic beverages I think about every characteristic except taste.
That being said, it is an interesting example of using sensory input to tweak the meaning, unusual in that it achieves that effect by using sight; typically, given the over-reliance on sight to describe things, when trying to change how the reader perceives something a different sense is chosen.
Isn't that a huge over-interpretation on your part, though?
It probably isn't, but--like devas--I wonder how many readers caught the thing.
2517635 2517952 Do you need to consciously notice it for it to have an effect?
2518038
Not necessarily, no.
However, considering the fact that most interpretations of Islam explicitly prohibit any and all consumption of alcohol, I wonder how many people at the party had drunk enough to be able to tell a difference from home made spirits versus store bought ones.
To be honest though, I'm just playing devil's advocate; your point, in more general terms, still stands.
My father knew a man who had lived in Iran during the time of their revolution, and all the bans on Western music started coming down. The fellow eventually got out of the country, and was a huge Bryan Adams fan. He and my father listened to a bunch of CDs (as my father worked in the record business at the time, selling the CDs from the publisher to the stores), and it was a long line of "Oh, this one came out before the revolution, I recognize this," and "Oh, this one new, must have come after the revolution."
2517654 Indeed, and now I'm thinking if I ever find out a particular brand of chocolate-covered raisins uses that source, I might decide to abstain from that, and have some wine made elsewhere instead.
2517654
We have such a tumultuous relationship with alcohol. We have been drinking it for so long it's pretty thoroughly ingrained in our cultural, and possibly genetic, identity, yet we keep trying to ban or otherwise stop ourselves from it's consumption. It's like a massive, species wide "Why can't I quit you!"
2518038
I'd say you do, at least in a way you described it. If you didn't, wouldn't you just skip over the sentence as yet another brick building the whole scene?
And here you've not only spotted the scratch in that brick, but you stopped, marveled at it for a while, and put a huge sign next to it, reading "Hey, look! There's a scratch in that little brick. (Since you obviously have trouble spotting it, it's the third from the left in the second bottom row.)"
2517654
Don't know, but it's a great book.
2536499
Onto The List it goes, then.
2536923
Re-reading this for no good reason 7 years later, I remember nothing at all about Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Was it good?