Doris Lessing - One Nobel Prize I Don’t Mind

I don’t give much credit to the Nobel committee and their prizes and, as far as I’m concerned, most of the money that’s been awarded in these prizes over the years could have been much better spent somewhere else.  But I’m kind of glad that Doris Lessing got the prize in literature this year.  I don’t read or write much fiction these days, but in earlier times, through my 20s and early 30s, when I was writing a lot, she was an influence. 

I particularly enjoyed her novel The Good Terrorist, which I read shortly after it was published, in the mid-late ’80s.  In fact, it was one of the biggest influences on a novel that I started writing and got going for about 150 pages during the late ’80s and early ’90s.  (Although I was no novelist - I much preferred writing short stories, which I put much more effort into over the years.)

My novel was sort of a satirical horror novel, different from Lessing’s (although Doris Lessing also did write a few borderline horror novels in her time, as well as lots of science fiction), but The Good Terrorist definitely lurked behind a lot of it. 

The story of the dysfunctional Leninists in The Good Terrorist and the dynamics among them reminded me quite a bit of a rebel punk rock house in West Philadelphia that I had been part of during my last year in college (1982) - which experience itself was also a big influence.  But Lessing’s novel rang even truer for me when I reread it in the late 1990s, when I was heavily involved in the anarchist scene.  I’ve spoken to a few radical leftists and anarchists who really didn’t like it.  And I’m almost certain part of the reason for their dislike of this novel was that its satirical depiction of dysfunctional leftists hit a little too close to home.  Moreover, her character study obviously applied across sectarian divides (otherwise, maybe those critics would have been able to laugh a little more at the black humor, considering that the people she was satirizing were Leninists, not libertarian socialists or anarchists).   

I also read her breakthrough novel, The Golden Notebook. a long, long time ago (like when I was about 22 or so), and enjoyed the writing quite a bit.  A little later, I read a collection, African Stories, which impressed me even more.

Ms. Lessing has written some stuff that left me with mixed feelings as well.  I remember, about 10 years ago, reading this somewhat odd memoir that she wrote in support of the courageous “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, which was full of endless complaints that the West was not sufficiently supporting the Afghans against the Soviet Union.  It struck me as rather odd that, somewhat like Ronald Reagan, she seemed to be making heroes out of the muhjahidin.  (My memory of the timeline is getting a little shaky now, but I should add that I think she wrote it in the late ’80s, about ten years before I read it.  I don’t know if that had anything to do with my impression of it.)

Of course, her story wasn’t just simple propaganda; it was more complex than that, and much of her sympathy was justified.  The Afghan people were suffering a very bad plight (as they often have during their history), and there was a lot of compassion and humanism within Lessing’s story, deserving praise.  But I did consider her book in some places to be politically rather…questionable.  It would be interesting to read it again now and see what I think of it in the present context - or ask other people to read it and see what they think about it… 

There is a very interesting Wikipedia entry on Doris Lessing, with some good external links at the end of it.  I recommend going to it if you would like some more information or brushing up on information about this usually fascinating author.  I intend to visit there a few more times myself.