RonPrice

The following is a quasi-eulogy, a prose-poem, written in appreciation for this woman of immense literary energy, one of life's many mentors for many reasons--a woman who has inspired many.-Ron Price, Tasmania
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HER GOLDEN NOTEBOOKS

A sizeable proportion of Doris Lessing’s(b.1919- ) devotees embraced her 1962 classic "The Golden Notebook" as their bible. This book, with the passing of time and in retrospect, has become her most famous and influential work. It has several interlocking themes: 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, the importance of voting labour.

"Everything's cracking up,” she wrote back then. 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, leaving them at best still appreciative but puzzled. Lessing says she plays with ideas in her books. “People are always asking writers for definitive answers,” she states, “but that's not their 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.

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, unconsciously so she says, 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,”--for some ideas--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.W.
Mills added back in ’59, have lost(1)
their power to be the centre and
to hold the fort for a beleaguered
humanity doing battle with 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 will be able to bend the
conditions of human life into conformity
with our prevailing and more urgent 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
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Updated for: The International
Discussion Forum

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married for 42 years, a teacher for 35 years -and a Baha'i for 50.

moon_dancer_withU

Thank you for this personal perspective on some of the works and the personality of Doris Lessing, Ron.
...A lifetime dedicated to writing and a lucid analist of different societies, interwinded with sound principles of life and living.

I confess I've heard only recently of Doris Lessing, in the context of her being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. That didn't impress me much, frankly. I've read Elfriede Jelinek ("The pianist"), the Nobel Prize winner in 2004, and I was completely disappointed, wondering what kind of criteria could have motivated such a choice. The world was definitely going mad, if such a literary creation, promoting a high degree of perversity and violence had even managed to get to be published, nevertheless to capture the attention of a jury decerning the Nobel Prizes.
Well, it seems they've been better inspired this time and now I look forward to read some of Doris Lessing's works.
Thank you again for your input, Ron.

I'd ask a moderator to unite these 2 threads concerning Doris Lessing and I hope, dear Ron, that you won't mind. The homage that you brought in your "Personal Reflection" is a noble gest and I'm sure it will stand out for many.

Regards.