Joyce

James Joyce

“O pa!” he cried. “Don't beat me, pa! And I'll… I’ll say a Hail Mary for you... I'll say a Hail Mary for you, pa, if you don't beat me… I'll say a Hail Mary....”

~ from Dubliners by James Joyce

James Joyce was born on a Thursday - the second of February in 1882 –in Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin.  His parents, John and May, were a middle-class Irish Catholic couple, were reportedly bad with money and unhappy.  James was the first of their ten surviving children, and his childhood was filled with painful memories.  A brilliant student, he excelled at Jesuit schools, despite his father's alcoholism and his family’s unpredictable finances. He went on to attend University in Dublin and later began writing and teaching.  Joyce bleeds green, and his Irish experiences are at the core of his writings, providing the settings for his fiction.   He is best known for writing Ulysses, the massive novel that no publisher would touch and Joyce self-published –it is now considered one of the greatest novels of the 20^th century.  Joyce is also known for his heart-wrenching poetry, short-stories and his published letters.

When We Met:  I grew up with an Irish Catholic father who loved Joyce and had many of his works in his extensive library.  One night, when I was about sixteen, I decided to read from my father’s bookshelf instead of  the pulp well from which I usually drew.  I borrowed a copy of Joyce’s Dubliners, a book that appeared to be a collection of short stories.  I read a story called “Counterparts,” a haunting masterpiece that I still consider one of the best stories I have ever read.  It seems simple in plot—one day in the life of a man in the throes of alcoholism—but it injects the terrible emotion that accompanies abuse. I didn’t sleep much that night, but I never forgot the way the story affected me. 

Why He’s Good:  Joyce is seen as a “writer’s writer” constructing both the long and short story with personal tension and human idiosyncrasies.  He speaks the Irish Catholic dialect of the English language so well that the reader can hear his heart beat while reading.  Joyce describes the inexplicable guilt that permeates our DNA.  He shows unattainability in love and life.  He juxtaposes unsinkable hope and a dismal future.  He introduces us to the priest who says mass, the barmaids pouring drinks, the children with one coin to spend, the fathers who cannot remember their children's’ names.  Everything he wrote seems as if it is sealed in his blood.

Plot Variations:  A Dublin resident wanders through one day, his appointments and relationships changing through the massive, ever-shifting sea of prose, directing his world and future.  A particularly offensive young man uses women as sexual objects and then cons them into giving him money. An author details his own Dublin upbringing, his family relationships, and his eventual questioning of all things conventional.

Buy One:  A summer read is Dubliners, the book that made me a Joyce fan.  It also is the easiest of Joyce’s to read, since it is a collection of his short stories.  It’s rewarding and rich and beautiful, and pretty cheap here.  

If you really want to get a sampling of Joyce, pick up The Portable James Joyce, which includes four of the six books on which Joyce's astonishing reputation is founded: A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man,  his Collected Poems ; Exiles, Joyce's only drama; and his volume of short stories, Dubliners. There is also a bit of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.  How’s that for a cheater recommendation?  Available here.

Favorite Quote:  It’s deceptively easy and Irish; also filled with pain and longing, like all of Joyce’s work: “When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart.”

Trivia: Joyce was born in the same year as Virginia Woolf, a fellow modernist writer!  Both were born in 1882, and both writers also died in the same year, 1941. Both wrote landmark modernist novels, published in the 1920s, whose principal action takes place over just one day in mid-June (Ulysses and Mrs Dalloway). Both pioneered “stream of consciousness” – a technique associated with modernist writing.

Poetic License: Joyce was a poet first and foremost.  It is poetry that shaped his beautiful, flowing, liquidy prose.  James was an outspoken opponent of the Catholic church, but his writing betrays his own heart’s quest to find God.  I leave you with a one of his poems, simply entitled “A Prayer”:

Again!

Come, give, yield all your strength to me!

From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain

Its cruel calm, submission's misery,

Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.

Cease, silent love! My doom!

Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will!

I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.

Draw from me still

My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,

Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying

Him who is, him who was!

Again!

Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear

From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.

Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.

Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,

Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me!

Austen

“IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

― The opening of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

 Jane Austen portrait by James Andrews (colored and reproduced) 

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 in Stevenson Rectory, a small village in Hampshire, England.  Jane's parents, George and Cassandra, were well-respected in their community. Her father, educated at Oxford University, served as village rector of their Anglican parish. The family was close and the children grew up in a creative environment. When Jane was young, she and her siblings were encouraged to read –from their father and mother’s extensive library. All eight Austen children wrote poems, plays and novellas.  Jane soon distinguished herself among her siblings with a creative voice and wrote novels.  Two of which –Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice—were published anonymously.  

Since Jane was a lady in the registered gentry, she could not earn a living from the sale of her writings nor sign her name as the author.  It wasn’t until Jane died, at forty-one years old, that her siblings, Cassandra and Henry, pushed for the publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, and for authorship to be attributed to all of her works.   

When We Met:  I was 29, and we had just moved to Sacramento, when I saw the film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.  I fell in love with the story and decided to read the book.  It took a minute to get used to the language, but Austen’s story was powerful and easy to love.  After Sense and Sensibility, I read Pride and Prejudice, a perfect novel that leveled me halfway through when Darcy proclaims his love for Lizzy. No film has ever been able to deliver the surprise of that paragraph – or the written perfection of Lizzy’s reaction. After that Came Emma, then Mansfield Park, my favorite.  After that I read Persuasion, another perfect beauty. 

Why She’s Good: She’s funny.  She tells stories of families, not just individuals.   Austen delivers stories about the search for true love and understanding in a world that is not perfect.  Her characters have faults, weaknesses, and strengths, just like we all do, and they remind you of people you know.  The reader can’t tell the heroes from the villains until disaster strikes—and disaster always strikes.  Austen is able to deliver socially complicated stories with happy endings, one right after another.  Time after time, she stepped up to the plate, hit a home run and then (because she was an English Lady) was not allowed to run the bases.  I think Jane serves as an example of writing something for its own beautiful reward, that may or may not be recognized in a writer’s lifetime. 

Plot Variations:  Two sisters, one rational and the other romantic and emotional, find themselves fatherless and unable to enter respectable English society without a stigma attached to them.   An intelligent daughter of a country gentlemen realizes that she will soon be expected to marry, even though her dowry would never attract anyone of sound character.  A brilliant young lady is sent to live with an unkind aunt, who serves at a beautiful estate that is paid for and run by slave labor.  A young matchmaker with no financial concerns discovers that she is not the lady of noble character she thinks she is.

Buy One:  Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s most revered novel, and the one I have read the most.  BUT I usually recommend Sense and Sensibility, the easiest read and the one that brings the reader right into the life of the British gentry at the end of the 18th century.  In both novels there is a strong sister relationship between the two main characters and you love them both—even though they are polar opposites.  If you have a kindle, Amazon offers a free Pride and Prejudice for download here and Sense and Sensibility for a whopping ninety-nine cents here.  You’re welcome.

Favorite Quote:  Jane Austen was as witty as Elizabeth Bennet (from Pride and Prejudice) and wrote as much as Fanny Price (Mansfield Park).  I love how she would candidly express her mind, especially when ladies were ostracized for saying such things.  About the gentry not reading modern novels, she said: “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

Trivia:  Many modern stories borrow from Austen.  Clueless is a modern version of Emma.  Bridget Jones’ Diary is a version of Pride and Prejudice, complete with the scandalous love triangle.  Bollywood did their own version and called it “Bride and Prejudice” – because that’s allowed, apparently.  From Prada to Nada is a modern Sense and Sensibility.   And everywhere, everywhere there are vampire and zombie renditions of Austen’s novels.

The Secret Betrayal:  Austen was dissatisfied with the way that society treated women.  English ladies could not earn their income and their financial support was given to them in an allowance from their husbands.  If a woman stayed unmarried, usually because she was not pretty, she was most likely to become poor.  Austen was seen as someone who disrespected the ways of the gentry by writing about the dependence of women on marriage, especially to gain acceptable social standing.  Would it be possible that many women traded their quest for love in favor of economic security? Oh, you bet!

As Austen writes in Mansfield Park, “There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.” 

Dickens

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and six pence, result: happiness!  Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result: misery!”

― Wilson Micawber, David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on  February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England.  Because of poverty, he was forced to leave school and work in a blacking factory when his father entered debtors prison, just to feed himself.  No kidding, you can’t make this stuff up.  He read constantly, escaping into books for solace and comfort, and because he craved an education.  Despite a lack of formal training, he later found work in publications in London, where he worked as an editor of a weekly journal.  He bagan to publish stories in the journal (Bleak House was published in installments and later published as a book – one that is long and difficult to piece together).  Arnold Hausser wrote that “…masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.”

He was revered by the English as a literary genius, enjoying what authors can only dream about: popularity during his lifetime.  Over the course of his fifty-eight years, Dickens wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles.  He also was an important voice, advocating reform for children’s laws, especially those of child labor.   

When We Met:  Like most English speaking children, I met Charles Dickens at Christmas.  A Christmas Carol, his most famous literary work, is a novella that tells of Ebenezer Scrooge, the dry, twisted miser who works his only clerk, Bob Cratchit to death.  Scrooge is given three ghosts in order to bring repentance (yes, the story advocates repentance and redemption) that will appear to show him why he is the way he is.  He sees that Cratchit is one noble man, typical of the working poor in London, supporting his family and rejoicing in the little blessings that life has to offer.  A Christmas Carol is woven into my heart, like fabric that makes me Janet.  It preaches the real joy of the season and true blessing of living for Christ and mankind.  After reading A Christmas Carol, I devoured Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

Why He’s Good: Because he’s Dickens.  He knows how to terrify you to your core – “He scared the Dickens out of me” is an idiom for a reason.  He creates characters that are so multifaceted that you could swear that they are real – and that you’re related to them.  I can sketch the faces of Wilkins Micawber and Mr. Dick, not just from words that Dickens has written, but because they live in my heart forever. For writers, few masters can compare to William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.  They epitomize the beautiful skill of presenting a story with the most masterful language imaginable. 

 

Plot Variations:  A young man, left fatherless, makes his way to the big city to find his Uncle in order to find support for himself, his mother and sister.  An orphan is sold on the streets because of insolence at his oppressive orphanage.  A boy is raised in a school for the unwanted, making friends that will last a lifetime.  A young writer, working as a Parliamentary reporter and a roving journalist takes over a failing newpaper and finds success in his collection of color sketches of London life.

 

A sketch from David Copperfield

Buy One:  There is no easy way to do this.  If I do recommend reading Dickens to a non-reader, I often recommend “A Christmas Carol” just to show how Dickens achieves the impossible- raising the dead to life.  To the reader, I recommend David Copperfield, the closest thing to an autobiography that Dickens has.  As you follow David through his life, all you can think is “How can this happen to a child in a first-world country?”  The answer that Dickens gives the reader is the same: “How can this happen to a child in a first-world country?” Available here for less than eight bucks.  

Favorite Quote:  There are so many, but I cannot help quoting one from Bleak House that brought me to tears when I read it.  He describes a very young girl that was forced to work (as are so many characters in Dickens’ books) just to feed her family.   “I don’t know where she was going, but we saw her run, such a little, little creature, in her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the bottom of the court; and melt into the city’s strife and sound, like a dewdrop in an ocean.”

Trivia:  Dickens had ten children, and was said to have lavished them with attention and love.  Just like Pip in Great Expectations, and many of the characters he created, he gave each of his own children their own special nickname, like  "Skittles" and "Plorn."

Why I am an English Major:  Dickens elevated language for the working poor.  He brought beauty, through words, into the world.  He gave us characters that we would give our hearts to, loved us without knowing us, and comforted us in our grief by letting us know that we are not alone.  I love him and relate to him. I leave you with a quote that is attributed to Dickens near the end of his life:

“Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.”

 ~ Charles Dickens

Mahfouz

“Always remember that the courageous soldier flies like an arrow toward his goal without questioning the one who launched it.”

― Naguib Mahfouz, Khufu’s Wisdom

My favorite picture of Mahfouz.  At his home 

Naguib Mahfouz was born on December 11, 1911 to a lower middle-class Muslim family in the medieval Fatimid quarter of Cairo in Egypt.  Mahfouz was the  baby of his large family – his parents, Abdel-Aziz and Fatimah Ibrahim had six other children before him. The Mahfouz family were extremely devout to the Islamic traditions and customs, and Naguib often spoke of his strict upbringing.  Mahfouz was a seven-year-old at the time of the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 and it had an enormous effect on him as a writer and a person, shaking the security of what was the Egypt of his childhood.  In 1930 Mahfouz was admitted to the Egyptian University, later renamed Cairo University, where he studied philosophy. After graduating, he worked in various government ministries until his retirement in 1971. Mahfouz then worked as a journalist, before his own writings received enough notoriety to feed his family and pay his rent.  He wrote prolifically, publishing thirty-three novels, sixteen short story collections, several plays, thirty screenplays, and a variety of other works of non-fiction over his 70-year career. He was an outspoken advocate of peace between Egypt and Israel, a position that made him a controversial figure in his homeland. An assassination attempt in 1994 shocked to country, when an Islamic fundamentalist stabbed him. Weakened by age and debilitated by the attack, Mahfouz was unable to write longer pieces in his later years.  He began to compose extremely brief, dream-based vignettes.

When We Met:  Another author I admired, Augusten Burroughs, was interviewed and remarked how he would have not read Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley if he hadn’t seen the cover.  Curious as a cat, I chased it down and read it.  It was amazing.  It was horrific and wondrous, challenging and poignant.   It was so well-written that I could not stop reading Mahfouz.  On a ministry trip to Cairo I bought the Cairo Trilogy and devoured all three.  The more I read, the more I wanted.  Some authors deliver more than a story – they bring a microcosm of their world in a tale.  Mahfouz is one of those. 

Why He’s Good: Mahfouz has a way of taking the complicated history of modern Egypt and making it easily digestible for foreigners. As he paints a picture of Egypt, Mahfouz patiently weaves the stories of the obviously oppressed and the not-so-obviously oppressed.  Mahfouz tells what he sees –and it is easy to understand how Egypt’s alleys can hold a myriad of tales.  Some people refer to him as the Arabic Charles Dickens, portraying characters with such intricate detail that you hope that no harm will come to them.  When you’re in that attached, heart-rendered place, something happens that takes your breath away. Mahfouz is half literary genius and half artist.

Plot Variations:  Three generations of the family of a tyrannical patriarch reveal secret lives, dreams and incorrigible self-indulgence. Citizens inside of a modern Cairo neighborhood unwittingly reenact the lives of their holy ancestors.  An orphan raised by a foster mother, is drawn into prostitution. A former thief returns home from prison only to find that his beloved wife and his trusted henchman had conspired to betray him to the police so that they could marry each other and keep his six-year-old daughter from him.

Buy One:  Since The Cairo Trilogy--Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street— is three, it cannot be on the “buy one” of Mahfouz’s list. I recommend the terrible and wonderful Midaq Alley – a tale of good and evil and a tragic heroine that is (almost) redeemed by love.

Surrounded by crime and broken hearted, Hamida, an orphan raised by a foster mother, is drawn into a life of prostitution after her true love leaves. A cafe in the alley, is a drug addict and a lustful homosexual. Zaita makes a living by disfiguring people so that they can become successful beggars. Transcending time and place, the social issues treated here are relevant today. Midaq Alley available here.

Favorite Quote:  Mahfouz had a strict Islamic upbringing. In one interview, he elaborated on the stern religious climate at home during his childhood: “You would never have thought that an artist would emerge from that family.”

Trivia:  Mahfouz was named after the Coptic physician who delivered him, Naguib Pasha Mahfouz.

Utterly ridiculous beautiful irony: Mahfouz gives us a world that cannot collapse-and then does.  He paints us a picture that is too beautiful to be destroyed, and then pulls us away as it is slashed before our eyes.  The author of many lines I remember later, in an ache, I love his staying power.  The highest compliment I can pay to any author is that they write“utterly ridiculous beautiful irony,” which Mahfouz does - every single time.

Let my example of this be from Palace Walk, the first book in the Cairo Trilogy:

“Just as he had reconciled the opposing forces of sexuality and ethics, he was also able to merge piety and debauchery successfully into a unity, free of any hint of either sin or repression.”

~Naguib Mahfouz,  Palace Walk

Achebe

“You told us with your own mouth that there was only one god. Now you talk about his son. He must have a wife, then.”

― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe was born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe in Nigeria on November 16, 1930.  His parents, Isaiah Okafo and Janet Anaenechi, lived as traditional Igbo (EE-bow) until they converted to the Protestant Church Mission Society, or CMS.  After their conversion, neither parent abandoned the beliefs or practices that were found in the Igbo traditions.  This familial environment proved to be a permanent crossroads that affected Chinua dramatically. After secondary school, he won a scholarship and studied world religions and traditional African cultures.  His short stories and poetry tell of the changing African political climate of his day, and the overriding importance of family and tradition. 

When We Met:  I started reading Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s magnum opus, when we moved back home in 2013, after living in Africa for seven years.  I fell in love with the round, natural words of Achebe, dripping with respect and formality.  His genuine love of traditional expression was not wasted on me.  I was homesick for the continent and was able to hear the conversation of my friends, as well as remember the challenge of being a missionary to tribal people.  

Why He’s Good: Think of your favorite Uncle who tells stories – then make him African.  Achebe is the quintessential African story-teller, filled with love and connection, carrying on the amazing oral tradition of his people. Achebe isn't a great African writer because he describes the colors of the African sunsets, or the roaming bok, but becasue he pulls the reader into the world of traditional African people – in most cases, the Igbo--and fills our hearts with their plight.  He writes of the long-standing feud between colonialism and traditional societies.  Themes of polygamy, masculinity, and respect come to life as Achebe deftly weaves their importance into the story.  Beneath the surface is the universal struggle to find God, significance, love, and security.  Achebe’s Post-colonial themes offer a unique perspective on modern literature, infused with politics that cannot be ignored.

Plot Variations:  A tribal leader, trying to live a life of honor and strength, falls from grace with the tribal world and later confronts aggressive Christian missionaries. A marketplace official tries to understand the smallpox epidemic that he suspects is the result of angry gods.  A hair dresser living in New Haven, Connecticut writes a popular blog in which she explores what she calls Racial Disorder Syndrome.

Favorite Quote:  Because I worked as a Christian missionary in Africa I loved how Achebe recognized God’s power and his ability to uplift people, especially women.  Even so, he recognized the shortcomings of organized, institutional religions, especially when the leaders “forgot” how to live in the love of Christ: “I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.”

Buy One:  Things Fall Apart is a bucket list book (one that you should read before you die).  If you love to read, or if you are looking for one book that explains post-colonial culture in Africa, make it this one.  The story unfolds perfectly, is told with a perfect African perspective, and concludes – perfectly.

Trivia:  Achebe's unabbreviated name, Chinualumogu, means "May God fight on my behalf", a parents’ prayer for divine protection and spiritual stability.  Chinua’s five siblings also had English and traditional names – in the spirit of embracing both cultures.

Revelation: I leave you with a powerful quote from one of Achebe’s stories that explains how the poverty-stricken African people were overtaken by globalization:

“But progress had turned [the marketplace] into a busy, sprawling, crowded and dirty river port, a no-man-land where strangers outnumbered the sons of the soil, who could do nothing about it except shake their heads at the gross perversion of their prayer.”

~From "The Sacrificial Egg" by Chinua Achebe

fourth

The Fourth of July  is:

1. ·        the day that we remember our act of high treason against the crown of Britain.
2. ·        we hang the flag in honor of our armed services who have protected our rights and liberties since the founders signed the historic document called the Declaration of Independence. 
3. ·        when Americans barbeque and blow things up. 
4. ·        All of the above

Writing the Declaration of Independence 1776
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 1900

In 1776, the American colonists were tired of being second-class citizens in the eyes of England.

They had no rights, other than the protection of the British Army and Navy.  They wanted to govern themselves and knew they could do it without a sovereign.

What the land-owning Founding Fathers had was a voice that England would be forced to listen to.   We are no different than you are – we are gentlemen ourselves.

John Adams convinced the congress to allow Thomas Jefferson to compose an official document called “the Declaration” in which the representatives of the colonies would sign their names and send it off to King George to make the treason official.  Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776.  The document was signed two days later by the colonial representatives or our “founding fathers” who were there.

John Hancock was said to have signed it first – in a grand and dark signature ---so that King George could read it without his spectacles.  To this day, his is the American benchmark of signatures.

If the Founding Fathers believed that all men were created equal, they had a funny way of showing it.

The declaration of Independence has a beautiful preamble:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Like most wealthy men of their time, the Founders were gentlemen only in theory.  Many of them owned slaves, they all would fit into the upper one percent of wealth back then.    It is important to remember that the founders were influenced by the culture and the time.   Washington and Jefferson privately expressed distaste for slavery (Jefferson once called it an "execrable commerce"), but they also understood that it was part of the political and economic bedrock of the country they helped to create.

The life, liberty and pursuit of happiness they spoke of was for land-owning men.  White men.  Not women; not slaves; not foreigners.

Congress   encouraged fireworks on the Fourth of July from the very start.  Authorizing a display on July 4, 1777, in Philadelphia, a year after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  “At night there was a grand exhibition of fireworks, which began and concluded with thirteen rockets on the commons,” reads a journal from that year.  

Another colorful display took place in Philadelphia on July 4, 1779: “In the evening a set of brilliant fireworks were exhibited, particularly excellent rockets, which, after ascending to an amazing height in the air, burst, and displayed thirteen stars.”

California fare for the Fourth of July is grilling out with the family.  Families often celebrate with picnics and barbecues. Our grilling traditions sizzle with the weather – can you believe we grill in this heat?  BTW – Southerners Bar-b-que. Westerners grill.  The difference is in the sauce.

It is a day that all of us flawed Americans  celebrate high treason, eat too much and blow things up.

 And we remember those who have fought for our beloved Independence.  After living abroad for years, I can vouch that this country is my beautiful home and still does a lot of things very well.  Do not be dismayed and do not give up praying.  Take time out to thank our armed forces once again this holiday.  

God Bless You All.  God bless us in this transition.

Lessing

“Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.”

― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler (with an "E" not an "O") in Kermanshah, Iran, on October 22, 1919.  Her parents, Alfred and Maude Tayler were both British, brave and born for adventure.  This is why the family moved to Southern Rhodesia in 1925.  Doris had one brother, Harry, and the two of them grew up in the wild and unspoilt veld, just outside of Salisbury (now Harare).  When she was fifteen, Doris began to write, overcoming many obstacles in pursuit of honing her craft.  Lessing moved to London in 1949 and stayed there for the rest of her life. Lessing received many distinctions and awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.  She died peacefully at the age of 94 in 2013. 

When We Met:  The first time I read Doris Lessing I was living in South Africa.  I read one of her short stories, as bare and gnarly as the exposed roots of a baobab tree, with fascination and appreciation.  I also  had a deeper knowledge of what she was talking about simply because I lived in Africa.  Lessing wrote with the appealing and unique voice of a white African woman, familiar with the rugged, untamable Africa.  When people ask why I love her, I tell them that she sewed my heart back together – after it had been split between two continents.

Why She’s Good: Lessing’s brilliance is in her delivery: she is brutally transparent in her descriptions of everything.  An average reader could be misled by her perfect English and Austen-esque execution, thinking she is telling a proper British story.  Within a few chapters, the reader is caught in a web of inescapable human drama.  Lessing is faithful to administer the brimstone of African truth, showing us how the world is brutal and how we all need one another to survive.  Segregation, sexism and racism were Lessing’s favorite themes, so her work was touted as radical for its time.

Plot Variations:  A black gardener saves the life and sight of his young master and then refuses to reveal what herbs he used to do it.  A young boy treks into the veld just in time to see army ants demolish a buck.  An author’s compartmentalized life is forced into one, digestible piece of literature.

A pioneer of feminist and post-modern literature, Lessing told tales of feminine struggle, politics, and family –but nothing was as astounding as her African pieces.

Favorite Quote:  Lessing was incredibly private, despite being a public author.  After The Golden Notebook was published, she was revered as a feminist leader, but reluctant to accept that role.     "I've got the feeling that the sex war is not the most important war going on, nor is it the most vital problem in our lives."

Buy One: If you were to buy only one Doris Lessing, I would suggest African Stories (1964).  An early Lessing sampler that gives you a taste of how she writes.  She evolved into a more accomplished and forgiving author as she aged, but this book is filled with the gorgeous angst that made me want to read more and more and more….  Besides, my favorite piece ever, “No Witchcraft for Sale” is in it.  Available here from Amazon.

Trivia:  In one of the most astounding blessings of my life, our friend, Keir Tayler, asked me to help him compile his memoir.  As we began work on the project, Keir told me that his father, Harry, was raised in Southern Rhodesia by British parents.  Harry’s sister was the author, Doris Lessing.  After I recovered from my heart attack, Keir and I actually completed his amazing memoir – Available here through Amazon. 

Beauty: I leave you with the touching, gorgeous, African kiss that whispers of the veld (for Americans, pronounced ‘FELT’):

“Soon he had left the cultivated part of the farm.  Behind him the bush was low and black.  In front was a long vlei, acres of long pale grass that sent back a hollowing gleam of light to a satiny sky.  Near him thick swathes of grass were bent with the weight of water, and diamond drops sparkled on each frond.”

~From "A Sunrise on the Veld" by Doris Lessing