Doris Lessing, at the age of 87, won the Nobel Prize! I wondered when that would happen. I love her writing! I still teach The Fifth Child to my AP Students. She left Rhodesia--Zimbabwe--in 1949 and her family to persue a career as a writer. A bold and still controversial move surprisingly enough.
Doris Lessing!
- Thread starter gerrydodge
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2007
- Messages
- 543
- Reaction score
- 102
- Location
- Atlanta
- Website
- weirdquietgirl.wordpress.com
I just heard that Harold Bloom said that the last 15 years of Lessing's career she's produced nothing better than 4th rate sci-fi. This is exactly why I have such disdain for the academic world. What a pompous ass he is!
hey peeps, just wanted to let you know that on the 6pm news here in the UK, she sounded extremely ungrateful to be receiveing it! was in shock to hear her stay this with such disdain in her voice.
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2007
- Messages
- 543
- Reaction score
- 102
- Location
- Atlanta
- Website
- weirdquietgirl.wordpress.com
Here's a link to an AP article about Lessing's reaction to her win:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071011/ap_on_re_eu/britain_lessing_reaction
"I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise," Lessing said. "I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071011/ap_on_re_eu/britain_lessing_reaction
"I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise," Lessing said. "I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off."
It seems to me that her priorities are exactly where they should be. From the same AP article linked above:
"Lessing brightened when a reporter asked whether the Nobel would generate interest in her work.
'I'm very pleased if I get some new readers," she said. "Yes, that's very nice, I hadn't thought of that.'"
It's about the books and the readers for Ms. Lessing, not the prizes. I like that.
"Lessing brightened when a reporter asked whether the Nobel would generate interest in her work.
'I'm very pleased if I get some new readers," she said. "Yes, that's very nice, I hadn't thought of that.'"
It's about the books and the readers for Ms. Lessing, not the prizes. I like that.
Lessing
The Nobel isn't a prize for literature, it's a prize for who can write the longest polemic. It has been for several decades, and Lessing just adds to this. If you want a long, dense, unreadable treatise on some group of society, or want an equally long, dense political statement, just pick up a novel by a Nobel prize winner.
The Nobel isn't a prize for literature, it's a prize for who can write the longest polemic. It has been for several decades, and Lessing just adds to this. If you want a long, dense, unreadable treatise on some group of society, or want an equally long, dense political statement, just pick up a novel by a Nobel prize winner.
Anyone who thinks Nobel prize winners inevitably write dull, turgid books, should pick up novels by winners of the the last two years. Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red is a page-turning murder mystery. Lessing's Diaries of Jane Somers is gossipy henlit about a glossy magazine editor. I'm delighted by the Nobel committee's turn towards authors who write gripping, engaging, fun books that are literate and thought-provoking at the same time.
I got so excited that I blogged about Lessing today.
I got so excited that I blogged about Lessing today.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2007
- Messages
- 2,918
- Reaction score
- 604
Orhan Pamuk is a delightful writer -- as well Steinbeck, Hemingway and, yes, Faulkner. And although the one Lessing book I read I didn't particularly enjoy (Love, Again, which I don't think anyone claims as one of her greatest), it was neither dense, unreadable or political. And even though I read it more than ten years ago, many of the scenes still stand out to me vividly in memory.
The answer, as it is with all things: read more.
The answer, as it is with all things: read more.
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2007
- Messages
- 2,548
- Reaction score
- 228
I've only read The Fifth Child. I'm afraid I remember not enjoying it much but that was about 15 years ago. It was part of my 20 Century women writers paper and I adored most of the books I read on the course, I think it was the only one I didn't like. As I recall it was about a child that was horrible and didn't have much else to it. Did I miss something?
Well, without sounding polemic, yes, I think it did. It had a lot to do with society and how we treat those who don't turn out the way we expect them to turn out and who we blame for having them and then, what we do to them when they appear. I think it also has to do with the abandonment of children, something that had great weight for Lessing since she happened to abandon her own when she moved to England.
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2007
- Messages
- 2,548
- Reaction score
- 228
Well I was 21 when I read it. I'm 36. I still have it in the house maybe I should re-read.
And that reporter interviewing Lessing was right. The Golden Notebook is suddenly one of Amazon's best sellers.
And that reporter interviewing Lessing was right. The Golden Notebook is suddenly one of Amazon's best sellers.
Doris Lessing: A Prose-Poem In Apppreciation & In Reflection
HER GOLDEN NOTEBOOKS
Part 1:
A sizeable proportion of Doris Lessing’s(b.1919) devotees embraced her 1962 classic The Golden Notebook as their bible. This book has become her most famous and influential work, the story of a writer's divided selves: political, literary and sexual; an account of the breakdown of tradition and the importance of socialism and, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, of voting labour. "Everything's cracking up," she wrote. The book sold millions of copies and anticipated the social shifts of the sixties. Her fans still look to her as some banner-waving outrider for the feminist cause with some words of wisdom on every issue under the sun.
But Lessing has grown very contrary in her late adulthood and old age, making statements and writing novels that have confounded her fanbase. Lessing says she plays with ideas in her books. "People are always asking writers for definitive answers," she states, "but that's not our job." When asked questions she uses mischievous evasion tactics and iconoclastic stylings, signs of a mind that is restless, but not wandering, wrote one critic.
Part 2:
Lessing states that in the late 1950s there was an enormous energy in society. In those years communism began to shred before the eyes of its committed adherents. Her book The Golden Notebook was about this shredding and about feminism. She says that her overriding concern when she writes is to get to the heart of some matter. "Books have been my life," she states simply and with emphasis, "I was educated on them.'' She is not one of those writers who sits around worrying about posthumous fame. Much of her work has aspects that are autobiographical and she has written two volumes of straight autobiography, Under My Skin and Walking in the Shade.--Ron Price with thanks to More is Lessing," The Daily Telegraph, September 25, 2004.
The first world you remember
in the twenties and thirties has
disappeared as you say; even
socialism and liberalism, as
C.Wright Mills added back
in ’59, have lost their power(1)
to be the centre and to hold
the fort for a beleaguered
humanity doing battle with
the phantoms of a profoundly,
wrongly informed imagination
and sinking deeper into a slough
of desponding gloom & doom.
And me, a child of that first 7 Year Plan
and the dawning of the Second Baha’i
Century—as you were marrying again,
finding communism and that new hope
for the world which would last only 15
years—one of your many abandoned
hopes which seems to still spring eternal
in your breast—as if through some
fortuitous conjunction of circumstances
we the people would be able to bend the
conditions of human life into conformity
with our prevailing human desires.
Sadly, I feel the foundations of your
confidence are frail containing some
desperation to believe, but not really
understanding the meaning and the
magnitude of the great turning point
of history we have passed and are
passing through. But, as you say, Doris,
writers do not really have answers, and
it is high time people stopped looking to
them for their oft’ illusory prescriptions.
1 C. W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959.
Ron Price
18 October 2007
HER GOLDEN NOTEBOOKS
Part 1:
A sizeable proportion of Doris Lessing’s(b.1919) devotees embraced her 1962 classic The Golden Notebook as their bible. This book has become her most famous and influential work, the story of a writer's divided selves: political, literary and sexual; an account of the breakdown of tradition and the importance of socialism and, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, of voting labour. "Everything's cracking up," she wrote. The book sold millions of copies and anticipated the social shifts of the sixties. Her fans still look to her as some banner-waving outrider for the feminist cause with some words of wisdom on every issue under the sun.
But Lessing has grown very contrary in her late adulthood and old age, making statements and writing novels that have confounded her fanbase. Lessing says she plays with ideas in her books. "People are always asking writers for definitive answers," she states, "but that's not our job." When asked questions she uses mischievous evasion tactics and iconoclastic stylings, signs of a mind that is restless, but not wandering, wrote one critic.
Part 2:
Lessing states that in the late 1950s there was an enormous energy in society. In those years communism began to shred before the eyes of its committed adherents. Her book The Golden Notebook was about this shredding and about feminism. She says that her overriding concern when she writes is to get to the heart of some matter. "Books have been my life," she states simply and with emphasis, "I was educated on them.'' She is not one of those writers who sits around worrying about posthumous fame. Much of her work has aspects that are autobiographical and she has written two volumes of straight autobiography, Under My Skin and Walking in the Shade.--Ron Price with thanks to More is Lessing," The Daily Telegraph, September 25, 2004.
The first world you remember
in the twenties and thirties has
disappeared as you say; even
socialism and liberalism, as
C.Wright Mills added back
in ’59, have lost their power(1)
to be the centre and to hold
the fort for a beleaguered
humanity doing battle with
the phantoms of a profoundly,
wrongly informed imagination
and sinking deeper into a slough
of desponding gloom & doom.
And me, a child of that first 7 Year Plan
and the dawning of the Second Baha’i
Century—as you were marrying again,
finding communism and that new hope
for the world which would last only 15
years—one of your many abandoned
hopes which seems to still spring eternal
in your breast—as if through some
fortuitous conjunction of circumstances
we the people would be able to bend the
conditions of human life into conformity
with our prevailing human desires.
Sadly, I feel the foundations of your
confidence are frail containing some
desperation to believe, but not really
understanding the meaning and the
magnitude of the great turning point
of history we have passed and are
passing through. But, as you say, Doris,
writers do not really have answers, and
it is high time people stopped looking to
them for their oft’ illusory prescriptions.
1 C. W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959.
Ron Price
18 October 2007
Last edited:
A wonderful expose, Mr. Price. Lessing is a valuable and important writer in the 20th century and, as you point out, a bit of a curmudgeon in her old age. I adore most of her writing and I love that she is able to change her ideas and her writing style and not give a single damn what others think.
Disagree.
Orham Pamuk? Toni Morrison? Kenzaburo Oe? Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Fantastic writers. And I have only read two Lessings, but neither I read, Oryx and Crake and The Fifth Child,fit your description.
IMO, however, Phillip Roth > Dorris Lessing.
JBI
Banned
The Nobel prizes have gotten more political as the years go by. They tend however to miss a few things. For instance, they gave Marquez a Nobel but not Borges... As if Borges didn't make Marquez what he is. They neglected Tolstoy, Ibsen, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, etc.
Personally, I was cheering for Thomas Pynchon, though I guess they don't want a repeat of what Jean Paul Sartre did.
Personally, I was cheering for Thomas Pynchon, though I guess they don't want a repeat of what Jean Paul Sartre did.
Oryx and Crake was by Margaret Atwood. Another writer who is probably on the Nobel long list.
Which reminds me that I read on Making Light that many people wrongly think Doris Lessing is Canadian.
Which reminds me that I read on Making Light that many people wrongly think Doris Lessing is Canadian.
After nearly 5 years
After nearly 5 years, I offer you all my belated thanks for your responses.-Ron
After nearly 5 years, I offer you all my belated thanks for your responses.-Ron