As she is a prolific writer, I got her books from the local library. I read her novels in sequence, as they had
been written. I started with her first novel, The
Grass Is Singing, then proceeded to the big fat tome, African
Stories, then onto the Martha Quest
novels, five in all. Amid reading the
novels, I purchased a slender, burgundy paperback copy of her
essays—entitled A Small Personal Voice—and
read all of that.
Tucked in the book of essays was
the introduction to The Golden Notebook. A creative manifesto, the introduction explained the thoughts, feelings and ideas that went into the writing
of this ground-breaking 1962 novel about
Anna, a writer who captures the essence of her life in her notebooks. In addition, Ms. Lessing
discussed the novel’s themes, motifs,
her inspiration and writing process.
By the following summer, Nelson
Mandela was touring the US. "Mandela
is in Atlanta," I wrote in my journal, in awe. Everyone
was giddy with excitement. "We are
at a juncture of history," Mandela said. So I began reading up on South Africa and Mandela,
to educate myself.
Also, I wrote : "I have a new idea for a novel. Something stunning and beautiful. I'd have to research the countrysides . . . .—I guess. I read Lessing and she is so specific in her descriptions—nature, leaves, etc. . . ."
It was a Faulknerian summer—long,
languid, hot. That July 4th, we
sat in the backyard. A turquoise
umbrella gave us shade. Fire sparklers
lit up the air.
I had purchased my own paperback
copy of The Golden Notebook, with its
peach-and-black cover and a pencil sketch of Doris Lessing, in profile. And, once I started reading, I knew it was
good. I'd known she was a good writer, but this novel confirmed it. I was a bit annoyed, though, that she was so rational, cerebral and analytical.
But most of the time she was on
target—not about me personally, but for many women.
I did not like the Free Women
section—not enough to read more than once. It's hard to say why. Maybe that it seemed so artificial, so
perfect. They did not seem like real women. Or any of the women I knew. But perhaps that was
the point: the novel was artifice. Life
was raw, messy, shambolic, with a seemingly random pattern that is hard to
discern when you’re living it, and more difficult to convey in a work of art.
However, I liked the other
sections. In The Golden Notebook, Lessing conjures so many different tones and
characters. It's hard not to think of it
as a tour de force. During this time, I remembered that she had once been asked why her novels mostly have no
black Africans. She answered that she
did not wish to portray a character infused with her own white African limitations.
For Ms. Lessing, it would have
been inauthentic to give the character thoughts and feelings
she had no scope of knowing.
Even so, I was fascinated by
Africa as she described it. As a young woman
with a stubborn artistic sentiment and sensibility, she lived in cloying
surroundings she describes as a
"backwater." Rebelliously, she
dropped out of school as a teenager, then set about, at turns, rambling the African
steppes—strewn with kopje
trees—and educating herself in The Novel.
Ms. Lessing writes of this time in some of her autobiographical
essays. Later, she escaped to the city, got
a job as a secretary and began her first
novel.
I did not realize it then, but I
had claimed Doris Lessing as my literary
mentor.
So reading The
Golden Notebook changed my
life. Thereafter, I regarded the novel and
novel-writing in a different way. I
learned I could say anything and not
make things all neat and pretty in my writings. There was beauty in the truth, to paraphrase
Keats and author Anchee Min.
When I began writing my
second novel, I felt I could say the unsayable. I could
show the verboten, the hidden. I could know the unknowable and share dark nebulous areas of the spirit—the sublime and the subliminal. The consciousness of beauty and the
super-consciousness of one woman's life.
I sought to get all the tiny details correct—foods, historic details,
vernacular. I wanted to create a world
for the reader, and re-create a world for myself—on the page and on the pc screen.
--Yolanda A. Reid
For more info about Doris Lessing and her writings,
visit www.dorislessing.org and www.thegoldennotebook.org.
