These past few years have been tough for humanists. Torture, war, tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate greed, drilling in the Arctic wild, rampant consumerism and a cutback in certain civil liberties have all been raised as key tools in keeping “the American people” safe from an unseen and – to this day – still uncaught enemy. In such an environment, it would seem there is nothing quite so decadent as a collection of old book reviews.
And yet to pick up Doris Lessing’s “Time Bites” is to remember why a mere whiff of that hoary old liberal offshoot of humanism is so compelling. Here are Lessing’s essays on Tolstoy and Austen, on the wholesale rape of Zimbabwe’s economy by Idi Amin, and the traditions of Sufism. In any other writer’s hands, this jumble would be an awkward mix – the sign of an older writer clearing her desk, which she is doing. But running through each essay is a passionate belief that humans can overcome our tendencies for ignorance and cruelty if we simply apply our mind compassionately to the task.
Lessing’s roundabout path into becoming a writer seems to give this idea greater ballast. Born in 1924 in what would later become part of the “Axis of Evil” (now Iran, then called Persia) Lessing grew up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where her father had moved their family to farm tobacco and corn. By the time she moved to London in 1949 with her young son, Lessing had been twice married and divorced, once a secretary, suddenly a writer.
None of the pieces in “Time Bites” dates back quite this far, but the pinch of postwar poverty hangs about them yet. Lessing takes nothing for granted, including the luxury of having something to read at all. In “Books,” a short piece published to mark the opening of a library in Cairo, she writes about a trust that sends donated novels and volumes of poetry to villages in Africa. The response is astonishing.
“These villages have no electricity, telephone, running water, but they beg for books from every visitor. … In a bush village far from any big town, or even a little one, such a trestle with 40 books on it has transformed the life of the area. Instantly study groups appeared, literary classes – people who can read teaching those who can’t – civil classes, and groups of aspirant writers. A letter from there reads ‘People cannot live without water. Books are our water and we drink and we drink from this spring.”‘
One might say the same about Lessing. Ornery in her dislikes, comfortable with the imperfect, she possesses the open-minded curiosity of an autodidact. “Time Bites” contains essays on Woolf, Austen and Simone de Beauvoir, as one might expect, but there are also reviews of lesser-known works, such as “The Past Is Myself,” by German writer Christabel Bielenberg; a new translation of the Arabic classic, “The Story of Hai bin Yaqzan”; and “The Ice Palace,” by Norwegian novelist Tarjei Vesaas.
Like John Updike, Lessing never frets over whether she is entitled to enter these texts. Political correctness to her is a language experiment gone awry, and reading is the equivalent of an American passport; it can take you just about anywhere. As does Lessing’s prose, which limps and grumbles along with all the grace of a 1974 Volvo 240 DL – sturdy and inelegant, but utterly trustworthy.
And for all her reputation as a humorless old bat, there’s humor too. The one laugh-aloud moment in the book comes when Lessing describes how a biographer tracked her down and would not let go, at least from afar:
“It is evident from the letter’s tone which is that of a happy chipmunk who has just found a stash of hallucinogenic mushrooms, that it has not crossed her mind that her victim might not welcome spending what is bound to be weeks if not months in the company of someone she has never met and certainly would not have chosen, sharing intimate details of her past and deep thoughts about life in general.”
Given her matter-of-fact tone, Lessing is sometimes at her best when not addressing books, but the world at large with the chop-chop rhythm of an op-ed columnist. A series of pieces written in the wake of 9/11 address the attacks with an empathic equanimity that was often lacking during those strident times. “Ignorant armies like the Taliban are not terrorists,” Lessing wisely notes. “Saddam Hussein is not a terrorist, he is a brutal dictator. … Terrorists are those highly trained ruthless groups waiting in the United States and the countries of Europe to murder, poison and destroy. Let us catch them if we can. In order to understand them we must learn the laws that govern cults, and brainwashing.”
It is strange here that Lessing neglects to mention terrorists in Latin America or the Middle East, who have been just as lethal, if not more so than those on Western soil. We all have our blind spots is the lesson, one supposes. Overcoming them, one book and experience at a time, is what Lessing celebrates in this thoughtful and engaging collection. Whoever said that humanism couldn’t fight terrorism?
John Freeman lives in New York. His reviews have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.
“Time Bites: Views and Reviews”
By Doris Lessing
HarperCollins, 376 pages, $27.95
