My favorite writer wins Nobel Prize!

Doris Lessing has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Finally.

Here is a link to the NY Times story. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/world/11cnd-nobel.html


Doris Lessing has influenced my development more than any other writer, and more than most people, period. Her always clear, always brave critical eye never seems content with the surface of things, but must always dive, dive, dive into the deep waters where most of us fear to swim. Her commitment to the beauty and potential of conciousness, community and love - always balanced by an equally fierce commitment to freedom and individuality have inspired me since I was a teenager.

She has challenged generations of readers to strive to be "in the world, but not of the world" and to learn to look at ourselves and the world we live in with ever more lenses, sometimes as if through a prism - dizzying and incomprehensible as it may feel to do so. Lessing introduced me to Sufism, and to the many uses of Story.

Perhaps most of all, Doris Lessing has inspired me by personal example. She did not finish high school, but reading and living voraciously - educated herself - as I did. She struggled (and continues to struggle) to live authentically in a world that often seems opposed to authenticity. Lessing has made terribly hard choices in order to live her calling - as I have. Thanks to Doris Lessing, in part, I never felt alone in my own struggles. I have always looked to her as a guide, and knew that if she could walk that path, then I could too. She embodies integrity for me.

I know she would likely purse her lips at the paragraphs above, but that's okay. I trust I have never been slavish or embarrassingly derivative in my appreciation and gratitude.

I will always remember the first time I encountered her. I was about seventeen years old and was marking time browsing the spines of 10-cent used paperbacks at a St. Vincent DePaul's resale shop in rural Wisconsin while my mother was shopping.

That turned out to be a big day in my literary life. My eyes stopped over two titles that day: the first was "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller (which I still reread now and then) and the other was "Briefing for a Descent Into Hell" by Doris Lessing.I thought, "I think the title alone is worth 10 cents!", so I bought it without even taking a look inside. And that was the beginning of a literary relationship that has continued ever since, across the whole of my adult life, and spanning (and intertwining) the worlds of art, politics, sociology, history, spirituality and much more. It has spanned from inner space to outer space and even to some of the places where both of those poles are one.

I won't even try to introduce her work in this blog - there are already volumes upon volumes of those. If you are curious, I think this is the best DL site out there: http://www.dorislessing.org/index.html

I know myself better because of Doris Lessing. I feel more empowered to be myself because of Doris Lessing. My curiosity and search for truth and meaning has been whetted by Doris Lessing. The universe, reality - all-that-is - feels more immediate and open to relationship, scrutiny and interaction because of Doris Lessing.


My life, like so many other lives, has been immeasurably enriched by her life and work, and I cannot think of a better person (just the 11th woman to do so) to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Congratulations, Doris Lessing - and thank you.