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DORIS LESSING IS MY HERO.
I whooped for joy this morning when I read over at the Times that Doris Lessing won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. As the Guardian notes, she's only the 11th woman to win the prize, and the oldest living person to be awarded the honor.
She's best know for The Golden Notebook which is usually hailed as a feminist text, but is just as bold an experiment in literary form. (Side note, check out this audio snippet of her reading from the book.) I highly recommend her Children of Violence series, which has some of my favorite writing about women struggling to maintain identity within political movements.
Her response to the news?
Stout, sharp and a bit hard of hearing, after a few moments Ms. Lessing excused herself to go inside. “Now I’m going to go in to answer my telephone,” she said. “I swear I’m going upstairs to find some suitable sentences which I will be using from now on.”
I'll refer you back to the title of this post.
--Phoebe Connelly
COMMENTS (4)
He Phoebe, I'm a fan too, and FWIW, have quoted her on more than one occasion. Here's one:
http://tianews.blogspot.com/2006/10/prisoner-of-thanatos.html
Posted by: Eric Martin | October 11, 2007 5:23 PM
Lessing wrote:
"Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise."
I exclaimed delighted –
“Congratulations Doris and Thank you for expressing ‘it all’ so extraordinarily well.”
Posted by: Chak De India | October 11, 2007 7:49 PM
And one of the best aspects of this award is that it royally annoyed Harold Bloom, whose outrage is always a sterling way to know you're doing something right.
Posted by: jeffreydj | October 11, 2007 10:42 PM
A little disappointed that a troop of English majors didn't show up at her door, handing out used copies of her books to the press:
"It's all in here."
Posted by: Steve Paradis | October 13, 2007 10:11 AM