Some thoughts on Doris Lessing

By a quirk, I just finished reading my first Doris Lessing novel last week - The Memoirs of a Survivor - though I have a signed copy of Briefing for a Descent into Hell (which I could not finish) - and was saddened to learn on Sunday that she had died, aged 94. I love this clip of her reaction to learning she had won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2007, she was then 88.  She is one of those hallowed writers you feel guilty for not having read more of. An interesting article on her life from the Telegraph, and this, which I still have to read, from the Guardian, Diana Athill and others on The Golden Notebook (I hope to read The Golden Notebook at some point but will probably never get round to).  I would though definitely like to read Under My Skin, having just read Hilary Mantel's review in the London Review of Books from twenty years ago.

My Goodreads review of The Memoirs of a Survivor here.

Lou Reed, Doris Lessing and Lionel Shriver

I felt sad about Lou Reed, 71 is not old (especially as I am approaching 50). You feel sad not only for the (at times, grumpy) man, but for the person you were when you listened to his music. Transformer was an album I listened to countless times with my first boyfriend in early 80s. We were together for five years. I can still see us taking the album out of the sleeve to put it on the record player. He lived in a 'rough' area and his dad was a communist. He'd shout upstairs, It's time Nasim was going over the road, and  the boyfriend would  dutifully walk me home. All of them are dead now, the druggy boyfriend, the father and Lou Reed. In that order.

I've just started Doris Lessing's The Memoirs of a Survivor, it's been yellowing on my bookshelves, I've no idea when I got it. I'm only 35 pages in but love its strangeness and clarity, and Hugo the yellow cat/dog. Am smiling that her character smokes one cigarette every day, one of the characters I'm writing just now does too - her luxury in one dreadful day after another. These coincidences always happen, and are always going to happen, but just so you know I'm not nicking from Doris. (I met a woman once who smoked one cigarette every New Year's Eve.)

I'm having an eye saga again, no uveitis, thankfully, and touching all the wood in the world, every single tree, but the pressures have risen again, no idea why as there is no inflammation, and I stopped using steroid drops two years ago, but the pressure-lowering drops do not agree with me, they cause eyelid swelling - most eye drops do in my case, and ME can make you especially sensitive to drugs - which is just not on. And my poor eyes are dry as stones. When you have an opthalmology appointment now, they phone you a week before and you press this key and that  key to confirm. I'm always scared I make a mistake, but I love our NHS and would happily press keys every day to confirm.

And speaking of eyes, am very tempted to say to Lionel Shriver, Dry your eyes, Lionel. Also tired of her and Jonathan Franzen badmouthing social media, they don't understand that many writers use it intelligently and creatively. Yes, Lionel, dry your eyes.

Always too many on the shelves

There are always books you can give to charity, always too many on your shelves, even when you have given away as many as you can bear. I almost donated George Simenon's La Verité sur Bébé Donge a few weeks ago but when I opened it I realised it was my French prize in fifth year at high school so, of course,  I can't release it. Why we keep these things I do not know. I doubt I'll read it again and it will  continue to gather dust.  I can't release The Lord of the Rings either, that was my Maths Prize.  I've never read it, and I probably won't - though we had to do The Hobbit in English, that's probably why I chose it in the first place. (I  haven't seen any of the hobbit films, but I do remember Bilbo Baggins' name, it's intriguing what stays in your head from books you read years ago.) I'm also quite tempted to give away Doris Lessing's Briefing for a Descent into Hell, I don't think I ever got through it, but it's signed so I can't. I must've seen her at Edinburgh Book Festival but  don't remember when.