Thursday, October 11, 2007

Lessing Wins Nobel

I am truly overjoyed to hear that Doris Lessing has won this year's Nobel Prize! I've enjoyed so many of her novels, especially The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and Memoirs of a Survivor.

This from Yahoo news just a few minutes ago.

12 comments:

Chet said...

Wow! Excellent news!

Anonymous said...

Yes, at long last! She truly deserves it. I feel she gave a whole generation of women a voice.

-- Preeta

Anonymous said...

don't know who anne lessing is. though she looks sufficiently old (sorry). more info please.

Anonymous said...

Anna (or Anne) lessing is a fictional girl who has been falsely accused of murdering her boyfriend. Her best friend Susan told the police that she saw Anna do it. Susan it seems, was jealous because the boyfriend (Chris) used to go out with her and she wanted revenge. Anna is in prison as a result.

A bold choice, Nobel Committee!

The Supreme Hydra.

bibliobibuli said...

machinst- anne lessing??? anyway if you need more info on DORIS just click the link. i thought i didn't need to put this up meself since it is so well done already!

Edmund Yeo said...

Never expected Doris Lessing any love since she dabbles in sci-fi, and genre fiction is too 'lowbrow' for the Nobel Prize.

(Hah, Bloom's such a hater)

Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica's has many nice things to say about Lessing in his 2005 review of Selected Stories.

Edmund Yeo said...

Never expected her TO GET any love, I mean.

Anonymous said...

My bad, sorry. I reckon I must have mistaken Doris for Anna -- it was Thursday Pool Night. :-)

Have followed the background links. The name rang no bells at all at first, until I followed your label and found a previous post, 'The Sex Life of David Herbert' and I remembered Lessing's article then. (There's a typo in the 4th para of that post btw.)

Hm.

Musing on what I mean by 'more info':

I tend to read more on Physics Nobelists, the first flashcard I will require would be an abstract of their major scientific contributions; it is not so important to know their personal biographies.

In fact my first thought when I read the post was that Doris Lessing had won this year's prize for Physics.

For a Laureate of Literature it seems relevant --for a satisfying lo-res infonugget, appropriate for a newsflash -- also to know also the major themes in her work.

The request for info was a reflex action :-)


Now...Hydras...hmmm...cool.

bibliobibuli said...

yesh i know what you mean machinist

i reacted to the news with a big yippee for a writer whose work i've loved only to realise that there is a whole generation of readers scratching their heads and saying "who?"

the world moves on. writers fall in and out of fashion even while they are still alive.

it's not easy to sum up in a few words a writer whose body of work is so varied. "feminist" is one of the words that would do to describe some of her writings, since she writes about the sexual politics between men and women with great clarity and in a way no-one had before, esp. in "the golden notebook"

she writes about race too "the grass is singing" is one of the most powerful books i've ever read, i can still feel that great whoop of fear going through my stomach

there's a lot to explore. i'd like to read her science-fiction but haven't got round to it yet. i feel a bit ashamed that my own memory is so short on details and all i'm left with is an aura of these books that meant a lot to me three decades of so ago (now you haven't even lived 3 decades, mate!)

the most recent book of hers i read was a charming account of her cats, in which she shows she has been accepted into their culture. any writer who loves cats must be good.

Anonymous said...

30-years of reverberations! It sounds like she is a wonderful writer. I am currently reading The Cave by Saramago, my fourth from the also-Laureate, and wonder if I might enjoy something from Lessing too, now that I've heard of her. If you had one book to hook me with, which one would you choose?

By the way, I have made a drawing of The Supreme Hydra and The Squid Overlord having a go at each other on my blog. :-)

Anonymous said...

I looked up the Nobel citation: "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny"

Hanafi Mohd Noor said...

Her writings were awesome.
www.hanafionline.com