NEW YORK – Doris Lessing, Nobel laureate. This year’s winner of the literature prize should inspire a fresh look at the long, prolific career of the author of “The Golden Notebook” and dozens of other works, and a fresh debate about the taste of Nobel judges.
Lessing, whose novels, short stories, memoirs and plays have reflected her own unexpected journeys across time, space and ideology, was praised Thursday by the Swedish Academy for her “skepticism, fire and visionary power.”
Lessing’s previous honors include the James Tait Black Memorial Book Prize and the W.H. Smith Literary Award.
For at least one generation of women, “The Golden Notebook,” Lessing’s 1962 novel about a writer’s personal and political reckoning, was a moment of self-discovery comparable to “Catch-22” for anti-war protesters or “The Catcher in the Rye” for teenagers.
But the Swedish academy’s announcement was stunning even by the standards of Nobel literature judges, who have been known for such surprises as Austria’s Elfriede Jelinek and Italy’s Dario Fo, picks challenged for valuing political dissent over artistic merit.
Lessing, almost two weeks short of her 88th birthday, is the oldest choice ever for a prize that usually goes to authors in their 50s and 60s. Although she continues to publish at least every other year, she has received little attention for her recent work and has been criticized as didactic and impenetrable.
“This is pure political correctness,” American literary critic Harold Bloom, commenting on Lessing’s Nobel, told The Associated Press. “Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable … fourth-rate science fiction.”
Lessing is herself a critic of political correctness who broke with the British Communist Party in the 1950s, has often presented women (including herself) as vain and territorial, and has insisted that “The Golden Notebook” is not a “trumpet for Women’s Liberation,” as she wrote in the introduction for a 1993 reissue.
Author “couldn’t care less”
LONDON – Doris Lessing pulled up to her home in a black cab. A media horde was waiting. Reporters told her she had won the Nobel Prize for literature, to which she responded: “Oh, Christ! … I couldn’t care less.”
“This has been going on for 30 years,” she said. “I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I’m delighted to win them all, the whole lot, OK? It’s a royal flush. … I’m sure you’d like some uplifting remarks.”
Lessing, 87, is the oldest winner of the literature prize.
