arguchik: (Default)
arguchik ([personal profile] arguchik) wrote2007-10-11 10:47 am
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rock it, doris!

doris lessing won the nobel prize for literature. she is only the 11th woman to win the literature nobel since they started handing out the prize in 1901, and only the 34th woman to win a nobel of any sort.

i still remember reading "a sunrise on the veld" in my 1st year comp class at GRJC. i was entranced. it was the first time i had read something that seemed to capture and express the implacable amorality of nature--something that i, an instinctive atheist in a city whose culture was dominated by fundamentalist calvinist christians, had always felt but never dared to express too loudly (except among like-minded friends, or, oddly, in classroom discussions...or on the paper message board in GRJC's student center, where i could remain anonymous; and also in my papers for school). lessing's essay made a huge impression on me, at a time when i was just starting to realize how much bigger, messier, and more diverse and interesting the world "out there" was, than my provincial hometown of grand rapids, MI.

it's funny, i haven't read much more of lessing's work. i would be very interested to read it with a postcolonial theoretical lens. i would expect her work to be somewhat problematic, or at least complicated by her position as a white, imperial british subject (read: member of the colonizing class) who was born in what is now iran and reared in what is now zimbabwe.

i understand her later, SF work is pretty bad, or at least has been critically lambasted. i should check it out. my curiosity is piqued.

[identity profile] blacksnail.livejournal.com 2007-10-11 10:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Whoa, Grand Rapids? My mom grew up in Whitehall. The folks now have a condo there right on White Lake where they hope to retire.

Small world!

[identity profile] arguchik.livejournal.com 2007-10-11 10:28 pm (UTC)(link)
very small world! my first (and best) college roommate grew up in montague. her dad used to run a public golf course there, and he also raised belted galloways for awhile (probably beef, but maybe dairy).

[identity profile] glaucon.livejournal.com 2007-10-11 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)

"...spilled some dressing
on doris lessing.
these writer types are a scream."

--moxy fruvous

[identity profile] arguchik.livejournal.com 2007-10-11 11:40 pm (UTC)(link)
LOL--she'd probably be more flattered by that than she was upon being notified that she had won a nobel. apparently she was quite disdainful, and quipped that they were probably just giving it to her because they figured she was going to die soon, and they can't give it posthumously.

[identity profile] wondrousbeauty.livejournal.com 2007-10-15 03:52 am (UTC)(link)
Magus has a bunch of her books on display, if you have an inclination for window shopping. :)

[identity profile] arguchik.livejournal.com 2007-10-15 04:01 am (UTC)(link)
aha, thanks!

have you read her at all? what's your take?

[identity profile] wondrousbeauty.livejournal.com 2007-10-15 04:03 am (UTC)(link)
No take, sad to say. I've missed out on Lessing altogether.