“Doris Lessing Returns
From Outer Space”
Evidently, a transcript of Leonard introducing Lessing at an
event. About Lessing’s early work, The
Golden Notebook, Leonard writes, “I learned more from that novel than I’d
really wanted to know.”
Later he was unhappy with Lessing’s books about other worlds
in the Canopus of Argos series and
writes, “It’s not fun to be dismayed by a writer you are compelled to read
because so much of what you know, you got from her in the first place.”
He obviously loves Lessing’s writing, “Any prize for
literature that Lessing hasn’t won, including the Nobel, embarrasses itself.”
She did eventually win the Nobel in 2007, one year prior to Leonard's death.
His conclusion is “…don’t tell a great writer what to write
about; you take whatever you can get."
New word: Canopus = the brightest star in the constellation
Carina.
New
learning: Lessing was born in Iran (then called Persia) in 1919.
Picture of her on the morning of the Nobel announcement and the NYT article:
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