Lessing

[poliphilo]

The only opinion that really matters is the opinion of posterity, and the Nobel committee have got it wrong as much as they've got it right. They kicked off badly by giving the first ever prize to a minor French poet called Sully Prudhomme when they could have given it to Tolstoy or Ibsen . A list of literary greats that includes Galsworthy but not Woolf is a list one might have reservations about joining.

Doris Lessing found out she'd won from the journalists camped outside her garden gate waiting for her to return from a hospital appointment. She's a very small woman with no demned nonsense about her. 

"Have you heard the news?"

"No"

"You've won the Nobel prize for literature"

"Oh Christ."

But it's the way she says it- with the utmost weariness and disdain. Well, go see for yourself

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any of her books, but that was a brilliant interview. (I liked the random shot of the man with his arm in a sling cradling a Jerusalem artichoke.) She reminds me of my prep school Latin teacher.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love it when people in the public eye don't give a damn. I love the naturalness of her reaction.