Doris Lessing's eds. Alice Ridout, Roberta Rubenstein, and Sandra Singer

Abstract

Alice Ridout, Roberta Rubenstein, and Sandra Singer, eds. Lessing's The Golden Notebook After Fifty. New York: Palgrave, 2015. Pp. xi, 221. CAD $90. The introduction to Lessing's The Golden Notebook After Fifty, written by editors Alice Ridout, Roberta Rubenstein, and Sandra Singer, opens with an acknowledgement of Lessing's irritation at having her landmark novel misread by many and reviewers at time of its publication, in 1962. In 1971, Lessing famously reacted to audience's response in a preface that is included in all subsequent reprintings of The Golden Notebook. After explaining concept of breakdown as self-healing, inner self's dismissing false dichotomies and divisions, Lessing writes: But nobody so much as noticed this central theme, because book was instantly belittled ... as being about sex war (8). She asserts that the essence of book, organization of it, everything in it, says implicitly and explicitly, that we must not divide things off, must not compartmentalize (Lessing 10). Despite Lessing's instruction and her stated objections to analytical critique, contributors to compilation challenge Lessing's interpretation of her own novel, approaching The Golden Notebook from a variety of angles, even against authorial authority itself (Ridout et al. 3). Unsurprisingly, Lessing's warning against division is similarly unheeded, given novel's length and thematic and formal complexity. In Julie Cairnie's words, critics carve up The Golden Notebook according to our own proclivities (19). The collection, put together to celebrate Lessing's after five decades, is afforded [j]ust over a half-century of chronological distance from novel and its mid-fifties setting and preoccupations, which enables new geopolitical, theoretical, social, aesthetic, and autobiographical approaches through which to appreciate and reevaluate this ever-provocative text (3). Cairnie discusses sections set in Rhodesia in 1940s and their relevance to black and white Zimbabwean women writers; Ridout makes a delightful comparison between Tlte Golden Notebook and Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, and Jonah Raskin reminiscences about a day spent interviewing Lessing on a bed in an old farmhouse. In these examples alone, collection addresses vastly diverse topics, all circling Lessing and her novel, which continues to challenge, surprise, and inspire twentieth-century readers (9). The book includes a comprehensive introduction and twelve contributions from established and emerging scholars across several generations and nationalities--American, Canadian, British, Australian (3). The pieces range in topic and approach, are categorized into three parts, and clearly demonstrate that Lessing's novel still has much to offer contemporary criticism over fifty years after its creation. In Part I, Politics and Geopolitics, four contributors discuss political aspects of Lessing's novel--the African setting of black notebook (Cairnie), nuclear deterrence and Cold War as important to book's narrative (Mark Pedretti, Cornelius Collins), and a discussion of feminism and homosexuality/homophobia in (Singer)--from a contemporary viewpoint and trace implications of The Golden Notebook past time of its publication and into book's future. Pedretti's Doris Lessing and Madness of Nuclear Deterrence is one of most compelling pieces in collection. He focuses on an area that is largely ignored in previous scholarship about text: importance of nuclear bomb. …