Doris Lessing - Visionary, Prophet, Feminist

The Doris Lessing I Knew: Young, Passionate, and Struggling to Keep It Together




"Doris Lessing, died this week at 94, was one of the major fiction writers of the second half of the 20th century and one of the most vividly representative literary figures of our times. She was a visionary, prophet, feminist icon and Nobel prizewinner given to constant literary reinvention. She was a young, romantic, passionate, fiercely ambitious single mother pounding away at a portable typewriter trying to keep it together, writes Clancy Sigal, of his former lover.

And yet the story behind Lessing's oeuvre remained riveting. She herself seemed open to change in a new way - not only creating characters to populate the times with symbols, but being one herself, as if the very business of putting pen to paper had become a confidence trick for conjuring a future. She was always losing old readers, gaining new ones, regaining others. Even her talent for demolition and her habit of cutting her losses were not to be relied upon. She was adept at tracing sly signs of continuity where that particular path through the narrative woods had been overgrown and bypassed time out of mind - not least by Lessing." 

read articleDoris Lessing - Visionary, Prophet, Feminist | Portside: s by  LORNA SAGE and CLANCY SIGAL