Doris Lessing: Nobelist

They could have given it to Philip Roth for paeans to his penis. They could have found some previously untranslated shepherd in Transylvania writing haiku in a language spoken by a dozen other shepherds. They could have found some trendy political prisoner, jailed for his writing. But, amazingly, the Nobel committee decided to recognize a woman writer whose work has opened up the female soul to literary scrutiny, chronicled and questioned the war between the sexes, refused to categorize the human species by cliché or received wisdom and allowed her great imagination to engage the universe. This prize gives me hope that one day women writers maybe celebrated for their creativity rather than diminished for their gender.

Doris Lessing's books have irritated me as much as delighted me. I believe that the greatest writers are irritants. (Think of Jonathan Swift). The Golden Notebook inspired me because its heroine was a woman as engaged by her intellectual and political life as her sexual life. She was a woman in full. I longed to write books about such women -- not mad housewives, not sex-maniacs, but whole people struggling, as most of us struggle, to put the disparate pieces of our lives together.

Doris Lessing inspired me. She still inspires me. I have been less than inspired by the literary choices of the Nobel committee. This year they have redeemed themselves. Now Doris Lessing will be reprinted and able to reach more readers. She will go into the bloodstreams of young writers, filling them with the oxygen of innovation. May she inspire you as she has inspired me.

Comments

[InformedSources]

In Shikasta, Lessing's lightly veiled sci-fi view of the modern history of earth, published in 1979, she all but predicted the rise of Islamic radicalism. She saw that the social and economic condition of young people in the Middle East could only lead to the kind of global insurgency that we're struggling with now, 25 years later. In The Making of a Representative for Planet 8, also 1979, she describes the human consequences of rapid climate change on a small planet that is transformed from a tropical paradise to a cosmic snowball in a single generation.

Yes, she's a great writer and her books are rewarding as literature. But she's also a proven visionary, a seer of the first order. We ought to look to her for guidance on the way forward, for ourselves and for the planet.

Congratulations, Nobel-Prize winner Doris Lessing! May your wise words be more widely heard, and attended.

[realitytrumpsbull]

Gimme a good science book instead...

[csbrudy]

Lessing's Decent into Hell opened my eyes to both the tortures of insanity and the ordeals women have been enduring since the beginning of time. I could not put the book down. She well deserves the Nobel.

[gablemancer]

I'm extremely happy that Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She has always been one of my favorite writers. I love her works of science fiction especially. The Canopus in Argos series is one of my favorite series of books, and Shikasta is without a doubt my favorite book written.

[meokie]

Canopus in Argos is a genuine cosmology cleverly disguised as literature.

[lisasolodwarren]

Hear, Hear! Although I would have been thrilled for the Nobel to have gone to Roth who I believe writes about a whole lot more than his penis, Lessing is a great choice. She was pivotal in my early life as a reader and writer, too. And I applaud the decision to reward her, even as late in her life as it is.

[yourstruly]

Lunching with my 83 year-old poet friend yesterday, we speculated that Lessing must have outlived the obstacles to her Nobel, and bravo for her! You're right, Erica Jong, that she can be irritating, both personally and on the page, but she created one hell of a body of work.

I was first drawn into her fiction reading The Sundowners about a young woman chafing at colonial life in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe; reminded me of the segregated American South of the thirties and forties as described by my mother. The semi-autob­iographica­l arch of Lessing's work takes her off the farm into the city, then to London, where she struggles with so many issues common to the then-contemporary feminist movement. Finished for a while with that line of inquiry, she delves into futuristic speculations about the course of Western society and interplanetary travel, which annoyed the literary establishment. Then, just to prove that publishers are inhospitable to new talent, she writes two novels under the pseudonymn Jane Somers before fessing up.

I love Lessing because she ruthlessly follows her deepest curiosity whether into (and out of) the Communist party, feminism, anarchy or Sufism or simply about what it means to be an aging but still sexual woman in our time. If anybody earned this, she did!

[Slattimo]

Re. the notion of literature being inherently silly post-WWW: is democracy a replacement for the sublime, the transcendent? Are all strings of words now equal? The next Nobel to the roomful of monkeys winnowing their way toward Shakespeare. Respectfully, it might be time to log off for a few hours.

[Slattimo]

Jane Smiley has longed to write books, like Lessing, about women in full? Why doesn't she? And re. the notion of literature being inherently silly post-WWW: is democracy a replacement for the sublime, the transcendent? Are all strings of words now equal? The next Nobel to the roomful of monkeys winnowing their way toward Shakespeare. It might be time to log off for a bit.

[olivine]

Ummmmm, I believe this was written by Erica Jong- NOT Jane Smiley.

[larry278]

Hacks who will never win any prize may still choose to cite Robert Browning and say, "Praise for the living is tainted praise.". But that doesn't sell books or buy a beer to cry in.

[Morcat]

I may not always enjoy Lessing's work as much as I might enjoy some others, but I always learn something from her -- something that can't always be said about many modern writers. For me, more than anyone, she has better explored what it was like to try and navigate womanhood in the 20th century than any other writer. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

[Fuji]

I didn't appreciate the crack at Philip Roth, who is a wonderful writer.

[isis]

I'm glad a woman got it.

[CandideinNC]

It is too late. Vonnegut is dead.

[madnana]

Indeed. Part of my awakening as a thoughtful, questioning person was the reading and re-reading of "Cat's Cradle". His body of work may not be quite as literary as Lessing's to some people's way of thinking (although"The Golden Notebook" was my salvation as I staggered through a professional world populated by hostile men and I am thrilled she won), but like Lessing, he continued to write words with reading into his eighties. He was wonderful on "The Daily Show" before he died and left us a wonderful legacy of outrageously good reading.

[JackMonroe]

Looks to me like the Fifth Child made it to the White House...

[alguien]

and now we're Briefing for a Descent Into Hell

[sufi66]

Don't like the Philip Roth remark. He's an original writer who also deserves Nobel recognition, but writing honestly about sex in relationships is something the Nobel people have an aversion to. Henry Miller has also been victimized by the same unimaginative Nobel mentality. Of course, Both Roth and Miller have written much more than about sex, but expecting the committee to see beyond its fears would be as impossible as spotting a unicorn in Central Park.