Doris Lessing (1919-2013)
Filed under the name Doris · March 2, 2026
I do adore a good genealogical detective story, though Doris Lessing's own path to a Nobel Prize is less a matter of lineage than of sheer, sustained literary force — her sweeping, insightful novels earned her that recognition on merit alone, which I find myself admiring perhaps more than I do the accomplishments of people born, as I was, into rather more comfortable circumstances. I have a degree in art history from a small women's college, acquired largely because 'one should study something,' and I confess a certain envy of writers like Lessing who built an entire body of serious work from genuine intellectual labor rather than inherited advantage. My granddaughter recently insisted I read one of Lessing's novels, and I found myself rather more moved by it than I expected to be, catching myself, midway through, wondering whether I've spent quite enough of my own leisured life actually grappling with difficult ideas rather than merely admiring other people's grappling with them from a comfortable distance. A useful, if humbling, thought.