RIP Doris Lessing

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I read The Golden Notebook when I was in high school, but never really thought of it as "feminist," especially because the protagonist wasn't likable (autobiographical as she was). What drew me to the book was the structure - the division of the protagonist's self into distinct parts/notebooks, with the yearning to bring them all together in the golden notebook. Very much a psychological novel. This and The Children of Violence series (Martha Quest, etc.) portrayed characters, who I didn't really like or want to be like, but with whom I identified: introspective and self-analytical. I've attempted her "sci-fi" books a couple of times but couldn't make it through. She was an odd bird - deeply analytical, but eccentric, even flaky. SOunds from what I've read pretty fearsome to encounter in person. Not very nice. I enjoyed many of her short stories, including the one you refer to Mark, and One Off the Short List.
Laura
-----Original Message-----

From: Mark Kohut 

Sent: Nov 17, 2013 3:58 PM

To: "kelber at mindspring.com" , "pynchon-l at waste.org" 

Subject: Re: RIP Doris Lessing



A friend, male, who went to London to meet her, said the force of her personality was palpable....Somewhat dismissed The Golden Notebook, her best known and cited by The Swedish Academy....said it was largely written out of a crush on a 'communist"....who I think was the now-forgotten---his novels are shapeless, Clancy Siegel....(I loved Going Away anyway, more than I ever did On The Road)... I have been feeling vicarious fear all day as the memory of her story of the boy who risked his life to swim thru an underwater rock tunnel comes back to me......then there's To Room 19, this way madness lies.... In her autobio she writes of her young bohemian days in London that there
 was ALWAYS a pot of stew cooking---for whoever showed up, flopped over, etc.....I read this in the middle of my boring middle age and knew too late it was what I had always wanted.....
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l