Doris Lessing has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and I am very happy. Though a few of her recent pronouncements on feminism have made me wince, I’ve loved her work since I first read “The Grass is Singing” when I was sixteen. From the “Golden Notebook” to the devastating “Love, Again”, she’s one of the great masters of the English language and a giant in the field of women’s literature. I’m so pleased that this came while she was still with us.
Next to her fellow Nobel laureate (and fellow African) Coetzee, there is no other living writer who has had a greater impact on my thinking about the individual’s responsibility in the world. (And I’m one of the few people I know who’s read the whole “Children of Violence” series — twice. For pleasure.)
Long overdue.
“I’m so pleased that this came while she was still with us.”
Hugo, they only give these prizes to the living. If she wasn’t still with us, it never would have come.
True. But it is often said of the dead, “She/he ought to have won the Nobel”.Graham Greene is the premier example. Given Lessing’s advanced age, I was expressing relief that she was not destined to join Greene in that category. But my wording was indeed awkward!