Fiction Daily.
A blog on writing, writers and why we read. Posted most mornings by Marion Blackburn. www.marionblackburn.net
Nobel to Doris Lessing
Yesterday the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Doris Lessing for her life's work. Part of me rejoiced and part of me wanted to scream. It's about time!! Her novel, The Golden Notebook, stands with the great books of any literature, any time. Her approach in The Golden Notebook was to fragment several parts through the narrator's own notebooks. This was not a device, but rather a genuine reflection of the narrator's own struggle to find depth and consistency in the jumbled morality surrounding her.

It's been 25 years since I read that book. As a college student, it was as if someone were telling me a little about the vast philosophical world I was entering, of ideas and longing, but that I was not alone.

Reading through the notebooks -- black, red, yellow and blue -- was literature with meaning I had not previously experienced in the so-called cannon of the 70s. Arriving at the ultimate golden notebook nearly took my breath away.

With this award, I am reminded of this author who, in a time and culture, Rhodesia and later, London as a single parent, when she could have followed the rules, instead followed the single, logical, artistic road before her.

2007-10-12 16:22:58 GMT
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