Time Bites (2005) is a series of essays by British author Doris Lessing
(1919-2013). She writes about novels and authors, and current events – for she
has a point of view about almost everything.
She writes about love, sex, intimacy, morality, marriage, infidelity,
pregnancies, children, and family life in novels, from DH Lawrence, Virginia
Woolf, and Jane Austen to modern writers. She discusses the scandals and the
controversies, and how the novels are ‘firmly’ of their ‘place and time.’
She says the book that changed her was The Sufis (1971) by Idries Shah, and
writes several essays on his books.
She writes about European, American, Australian, Eastern, African, and
Russian literature, showing an extensively global outlook in the books she
reads. She critiques novels, but is not critical, because she covers the books
she reads, understands, and loves.
She writes about censorship of books and the inner censor within writers
who edit their own writings due to ‘political correctness.’
Lessing includes autobiographical essays, such as discussions about her
book, The Golden Notebook. I liked her essay called My Room, about the bedroom
and the view of her ‘bird-inhabited confusion’ of an English garden.
Her views about people writing biographies about her are mostly philosophical,
but sometimes her annoyance shows; she mentions a ‘bad biography’ where ‘all
the facts about my family are wrong, including my daughter’s name.’ No, she did
not own a farm in Zimbabwe, and she is amused at the ‘phantom friends’ who
contribute to biographies, claiming to know her intimately. ‘This woman says
that my (naturally) curly hair was
achieved with the aid of a home perm
kit. Now that’s fighting talk.’
Lessing, in each and every essay, is direct, unapologetic, well-read,
scholarly, and informative. She is thoroughly thought-provoking, and always
brilliant.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
Comments
Post a Comment