It’s Nobel prize time around about now, and Doris Lessing has just picked up the literature prize. She is actually the oldest ever winner, at 87. (I have learnt a new word from that press release:epicist - a writer of epics).
I’ve always had a soft spot for Doris because she was never ashamed of writing some sci-fi, unlike certain other high profile writers one could think of (cough - Margaret Atwood). In fact, is this the first time a writer whose work can be found on the sci-fi bookshelves has won the nobel prize for lit?
Not read a huge amount of her stuff, but impressed with the books I have picked up - I read a couple of her Canopus in Argus series and thought they were really excellent, written with a unique voice. **Briefing for a descent into hell **didn’t click for me, but the fifth child is a near-masterpiece.
They’ve been showing video on the news over here; it seems the first she heard of it was from the reporters sent to her house to interview her about it.
“You’ve won the Nobel prize for literature!”
“Oh, Christ.”
Simon Mayo’s show this afternoon had Ronan Bennett’s new book and the translator of Irene Nemirovsky’s book, both of who squeeeed when Doris Lessing came on the phone. She said to Simon that Mr. Marquez had been phoning her house for ages, and she wanted to speak to him.
I read The Fifth Child in college and thought that it was just something that my teacher personally liked and on that basis alone felt it worth putting into a class. What prose there was wasn’t impressive, what story there was was very unoriginal, and what point there was was vapid. I’m surprised I remember the book well enough to give that much of a summary.
I used to like Lessing’s writing, a lot–to the point that I sought it out. The ideas in some of her books may sound old and trite now but they were news to me when I read them.
However, I have been consistently unable to make myself reread them, and I tried.
But nonetheless I was glad to hear she got the Nobel.
I have never read a word she’s written, but that she said “couldn’t care less” instead of “could care less” automatically vaults her into my pantheon of heroes.
I don’t think it’s that she doesn’t care as much as she doesn’t care the way she would have half a century or so ago. She has been nominated many times before and has been thought of as a worthy candidate for at least the past thirty years or so and as such I think she gotten quite familiar with the idea.
