Doris Lessing gave her acceptance speech for the Nobel Literature Prize last night. It is one of the most moving things I have read for ages.
Since her award was announced some six weeks ago I have seen her novels all over the place in prime locations: at train stations and general book stores. Let's hope that this sudden boost in sales can help her send a few more books to where they are needed. I'm also wondering whether I and others (who read this blog and are affiliated to organisations that I belong to) might not help this cause by donating unwanted and unloved books that do no more than gather dust on our bookshelves. Does anyone fancy a Christmas clear-out?
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6 comments:
Haven't read Doris Lessing for ages, I thought she lost her touch a bit. I still think The Golden Notebook was her masterpiece. I remember reading it in the sixties along with a stack of other mind-blowing feminist titles.
That is widely thought of as her masterpiece - though I think I was bit too young (early twenties) when I read it to fully appreciate it. I got a lot out of the Canopus in Argos series. She was widely criticised at the time for starying into SF - though she says that these are the most important books she has ever written and that SF provides an excellent medium for social commentary. I recently very much enjoyed reading the Fifth Child and the astounding follow up Ben in the World. Memoirs of a Survivor and The Good Terrorist are also good introduction points for her work.
Have just reread her speech, and the bit about people who spend all day blogging, seduced by the inanities of the internet. That's a pretty absurd statement about a sub-culture that obviously ranges from the brilliant to the inane and the true to the totally fabricated. She's turning into a bit of a Luddite in her old age!
I was moved and disturbed by her speech. That's Lessing for you in a nutshell. She takes you right out of your comfort zone and confronts you bluntly with the structural defects of civilization. Her descriptions of book discussions in starving African villages were astounding, and her advice to young writers was very pertinent. I was curious what kind of speech she would write. This was less cantankerous than I thought it would be, but at the same time more anguished.
C
Nick - I don't think she is quite a luddite - she has a facebook page - which is pretty rad for an 88(?) year old! And though we both blog I'm sure you won't disagree that there are an awful lot of inanities out here in cyber land, that we can lose an awful lot of our time here and that the noise to signal ratio is pretty intolerably high at times.
I agree there's an awful lot of rubbish, but then you just have to be selective the same as with any other intellectual resource - newspapers, TV, books, plays, whatever.
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