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Lessing Is More

Congratulations to Doris Lessing for winning this year's Nobel prize for literature. She is a worthy winner.

I do hope that Canada's Margaret Atwood wins one day, for her extraordinary - nearly unrivalled - contribution to poetry, prose, and critical writing. No other living writer in the English-language has so shaped their own national literature as she has, a sort of belated Yeats for Canada, say, or Ibsen. She's also an outspoken advocate for PEN, and other good causes, and a brilliant, witty public speaker.
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Andrew Shields said…
My favorite Lessing book is "The Fifth Child." Have you read that? 130 or so pages (depending on the edition) of pure punch.

(Email me about the Veress?)
Fri Oct 12, 10:05:00 pm 2007
Unknown said…
Really, Andrew? Brilliant, sure. But The Fifth Child is inhumane, judgemental, smug, and evil. It doesn't make the parents or the society that brought the child into the world responsible. Instead, it makes the child, who was never loved. And in some ways, not only is it not pro-life (I am not advocating any one position or another, but the books' position on things is nefarious), it is anti-life. It is all for executing, snuffing out, and getting rid of this child, just because the parents never overcame their absurd, irrational hatred, which is really just a self-denial and hatred of themselves in disguise. A brilliant book, yes, but a truly repellent book. I am not against Doris Lessing winning the Nobel prize, but she should be severely questioned about her sympathies in this book.
Mon Oct 15, 08:44:00 pm 2007
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