Putting the questions differently : interviews with Doris Lessing 1964-1994

by Doris Lessing

A collection of interviews with the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature that serves as an invaluable companion to her work. Doris Lessing is one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These interviews give us her thoughts on her early years as a communist and fledgling writer in Southern Rhodesia, her views on marriage, the family and feminism, on other writers from Tolstoy to Lawrence, and on her later experiments in psychotherapy and mysticism. She reveals how these preoccupations have influenced her own work, from ‘The Golden Notebook’ to her acclaimed autobiographical masterpiece ‘Under My Skin’. The book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand not just Lessing, but also the profound impact she has had on our age.

Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Doris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).

Reviews

[Moira McPartlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up from a bargain bin just after the author's death. I have never read any of her work but do own an unread copy of The Golden Notebook. After reading through this book of selected interviews I now want to read all her work. The interviews take place over the period 1964-1994. As would be expected there is a bit of duplication in content but overall the editor has made a good job of making them varied, picking out different themes and book chat. Although chat is maybe the wrong word. Some of the interviews were very intellectual and a bit deep, this tone mostly originating from the interviewer with Lessing giving as good as she got. What came over most was Lessing's genuine concern for the way humans treat the earth and her mild contempt for literary academics and critics. She inspired me as a writer and I liked her a lot as a person.