Art and Reality in "The Golden Notebook"

Abstract

In interview published in 1964 Doris Lessing stated: I got angry over reviews of The Golden Notebook. They thought it was personal -it was, in parts. But it was a very highly structured book, carefully planned. The point of that book was relation of its parts to each other. But book they tried to turn it into was: The Confessions of Doris Lessing.' Lessing had already given some clues to her intentions in The Golden Notebook on its dust jacket where she explained that novel was a combination of two projected books, a fictional work dealing with a novelist suffering from a writer's block, and a book of literary which employ various styles so that the shape of book and juxtaposition of styles provide criticism in such a way that completed work would make implicitly a statement about 'alienation.' The Golden Notebook, she says further, is an attempt to break a form; to break certain forms of consciousness and go beyond them.2 Clearly Lessing is attempting to fuse unusual content with original structure. Without its structural plan The Golden Notebook could not make comment on life Lessing desires; without content structure