Doris Lessing has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
She is a challenge.
One of the times I was in college, I was required to read The Golden Notebook. Trying to be a good student, I picked up the book early, thinking I'd just read through it quickly before the semester started. Little did I know what lay ahead.
Before the semester began, I'd read through the book 4, maybe 5 times. Each time gleaning more, but knowing that I'd missed most of it. I read it 2 more times during the semester in hopes of keeping up with the class discussion.
My copy is well worn.
Since that semester, it's been read again. Still I know I'm missing much of it, but it's addicting.
It's always been, since that first read, a book I can't stop reading. It is simply an amazing text to me. It operates on so many levels and offers up so much to the reader.
An excerpt: pg 153
Stalin died today. Molly and I sat in the kitchen, upset. I kept saying, "We are being inconsistent, we ought to be pleased. We've been saying for months he ought to be dead." She said: "Oh, I don't know, Anna, perhaps he never knew about all the terrible things that were happening." Then she laughed and said: "The real reason we're upset is that we're scared stiff. Better the evils we know. " "Well, things can't be worse." "Why not? We all of us seem to have this belief that things are going to get better. Why should they? Sometimes I think we're moving into a new ice age of tyranny and terror, why not? Who's to stop it--us?" When Michael came in later, I told him what Molly had said--about Stalin's not knowing; because I thought how odd it was we all have this need for the great man, and create him over and over again in the face of all the evidence. Michael looked tired and grim. To my surprise he said: "Well, it might be true, mightn't it? That's the point--anything might be true anywhere, there's never any way of really knowing the truth about anything. Anything is possible--everything's so crazy, anything at all's possible."
No comments:
Post a Comment