How to read a novel?

  Don't go chasing after the grand theme, the idea, I told my students, as if it is separate from the story itself. The idea or ideas behind the story must come to you through the experience of the novel and not as something tacked on to it. Let's pick a scene to demonstrate this point. Please turn to page 125. You will remember Gatsby is visiting Daisy and Tom Buchanan's house for the first time. Mr. Bahri, could you please read the few lines beginning with "Who wants to..."? "Who wants to go to town?" demanded Daisy insistently. Gatsby's eyes floated toward her. "Ah," she cried, "you look so cool."
    Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.
    "You always look so cool," she repeated.
    She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was astounded. His mouth opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby, and then back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as some one he knew a long time ago.
    On one level, Daisy is simply telling Gatsby he looks cool and Fitzgerald is telling us that she still loves him, but he doesn't want to just say so. He wants to put us there in the room. Let's look at what he's done to give this scene the texture of a real experience. First he creates a tension between Gatsby and Daisy, and then he complicates it with Tom's sudden insight into their relationship. This moment, suspended in mid-air, is far more effective than if Nick had simply reported that Daisy tried to tell Gatsby that she loved him.
    "Yes," cut in Mr. Farzan, "because he is in love with the money and not with Daisy. She is only a symbol."
    No, she is Daisy, and he is in love with her. There is money too, but that is not all; that is not even the point. Fitzgerald does not tell you-he takes you inside the room and re-creates the sensual experience of that hot summer day so many decades ago, and we, the readers, draw our breath along with Tom as we realize what has just happened between Gatsby and Daisy.
    "But what use is love in this world we live in?" said a voice from the back of the room.
    "What kind of a world do you think is suitable for love?" I asked.
    Mr. Nyazi's hand darted up. "We don't have time for love right now," he said. "We are committed to a higher, more sacred love."
    Zarrin turned around and said sardonically, "Why else do you fight a revolution?"
    Mr. Nyazi turned very red, bowed his head and after a short pause took up his pen and started to write furiously.
    In retrospect it appears strange to me only now, as I write about it, that as I was standing there in that classroom talking about the American dream, we could hear from outside, beneath the window, the loudspeakers broadcasting songs whose refrain was "Marg bar Amrika!"-"Death to America!"
    A novel is not an allegory, I said as the period was about to come to an end. It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing. I just want you to remember this. That is all; class dismissed.

Reading Lolita in Tehran