Lessing Books

This was actually my first experience with Doris Lessing, tho I've heard of her for years. Her picture of the So. African experience was quite revealing but I got a little tired of the analysis of those who joined the communist movement. It seems that though she worked as an activist, she never really
'bought' the doctrine, to her credit. But she seems to have a need to over analyse the motives. It seems to me that most of the people were just trying to improve the social ills of the time and were taken in by the communist rhetoric. The writing was good enough to keep me reading even though I wasn't too happy with the her bohemian attitude; abandoning her children, taking successive lovers.... I respect her intellect but not her morals.
I am not inclined to look for the second installment.

Doris Lessing has led such an interesting life, and writing a diary all the time. She writes of a time completely foreign to me, living a history of the changes in Southern Afica. I find her autobiography a great read, and prefer it to her novels. Interesting and moving, and explains much about her!

This is a hard-hitting piece of autobiography. Lessing looks at her parents and their world of colonial mastery from the point of view of her younger, increasingly disenchanted self. Lessing was gathering steam in those years, to emerge as one of the prominent novelists of the post-war era. In this, the first of a two-volume autobiography, she is beginning to grow critical of her parents, colonialism, white supremacy, men - her husband in particular - and just beginning to flirt for a short time with the great experiment in group-think of the period known as Communism. She falls for it for a time, but not for long. It will take her a while, but she finally emerges along with George Orwell as the most articulate critic of this mindless, toxic form of self-imposed mental slavery. She writes of her fellow-traveling, communist-sympathizing friends as silly people, which strikes me as as good a way to think of them as any. Lessing provides, along with her political autobiography, a lovely evocation of Africa, the landscape and people, about whom she wrote as a young novelist and to whom she has continued to refer throughout her long and continuing career as a writer.

This is a candid autobiography with as main themes love, sex (good sex, as Doris Lessing calls it, is a right for everybody) and politics in South-Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) ruled by a blank minority.
It is a gripping, moving and realistic picture, wherein the author tries to find answers to personal and more general human questions: why was she so outspoken rebellious and, on the contrary, so strictly loyal to the communist movement?
Why are people fighting relentlessly each other, and on the other hand, striving for happiness?
Are the people of her generation all children of World War I? Why was her father a freemason?

This book is written like an irresistible waterfall. Not to be missed.

Under My Skin

Doris Lessing's autobiography traces her political and emotional development from her earliest childhood memories to her growing, overwhelming, disenchantment with provincial (as she saw it) small town life. "Small town" life for her was pre-WWII Salisbury in the (then) British colony of Southern Rhodesia. Salisbury was a complacent capital city of 10,000 white settlers in a country the size of Spain.
Lessing is quick to debunk the myth of the prosperous, close knit, white farming community - poverty was a real fact of life both for blacks and whites. Her most vivid childhood memories are of escaping from the family home and off into the limitless veld. The emptiness of the veld parallels her youthful emptiness and her growing convictions that the communist party represents a real hope for the world.
The book, a masterpiece of autobiographical writing, is brutally honest in parts and wilfully obscure in others. Some of her emotional mistakes are hardly glanced at (leaving her first two children, for example) but others (the joys of being part of a fast, hard drinking sect, embracing radical politics) are wonderfully engaging. Reading her thoughts you could be forgiven for thinking that the "party" was the only opposition to conservative white rule in Salisbury. This is what makes her book so appealing, her supreme skill as a novelist allowing us to enter the heady world of rushed meetings, leftist newspaper deliveries, drinks on the sports club verandah and back in time to find the cook still waiting to prepare supper. Naturally it couldn't last and Lessing is far too intelligent to think that that is all there is to life. The book ends in 1949 as she arrives in London, apprehensive and hopeful in the capital city of her parents.
This is more than a `who-did-what' from a long time ago, times and dates are (probably deliberately) rarely mentioned. It is the personalities and the ideas - most of all the ideas - sliding from youthful enthusiasm to mature realism which fuse the book with life and vitality. `Under My Skin', published in 1992, is that rare thing, a candid autobiography written by a consummate novelist with skills to spare. Doris Lessing is a national treasure.

Doris Lessing is at her best showing the habits of the ruling classes in most african countries -- mainly during the times of Martha Quest's marriage, right before the beginning of the war.
This is the second book of The Children of the Violence series and, as the others, is impossible to put down before the end.

This novel, the second in the Children of Violence series, will be thoroughly enjoyed by anyone who first met Martha Quest in Doris Lessing's first novel of the series of the same name. This is a story about a young woman about to create her own life with her own family and home, but Martha's self-absorbed indecisiveness make for a character who refuses to do what is expected from her by family and community. Yet Martha is always viewed with compassion and loved by her reader even in her darkest moments.

A central theme of the novel, set during World War II, is Martha's determination not become her mother, or any of the domineering society mother figures of colonial South Africa, but as her own baby is born she sees that circle beginning to repeat itself and rebels with all her strength against the fear of a future filled with domesticity and garden parties. Martha's subsequent actions become the proverbial ripples in a pond as she fails to learn that now that she is adult her actions have long lasting consequences. Yet this is not a typical coming of age story.

By the end of the novel, Martha's stakes out her own path after having become involved with a fledging communist party and its colorful comrades who begin to play an increasingly important role in her life to fill the gap she has created by her rejection of the society in which she was raised and the family she has created.

Any fan of Doris Lessing or any student of history will thoroughly enjoy this novel. One of the richest features of this novel is Lessing's brilliance in the development of her characters whose personalities and idiosyncrasies will echo long after the reader has finished the novel. That said, I thoroughly recommend that the reader read Martha Quest before delving into this novel or other in the series. Only by reading the series in order can one truly understand the evolution of Martha's character and life path.

Doris Lessing remains one of my favorite writers. I first fell in love with her work when I read The Golden Notebook in college, as you do. I'm still slowly working my way through her complete novels.

I really enjoyed Martha Quest, the first book in the Children of Violence. But I was deeply moved by A Proper Marriage. Take the bright young things of a Fitzgerald novel, give them sweat, hangovers and physicality and put them in a troubled country on the eve of a World War. If you can imagine that, then you have a little bit of an idea about A Proper Marriage.

There's something so smart and complicated about the way that Lessing develops Martha in this book. Her disaffection with the excesses of the left lead her into a middle class life, even as her sympathies lie elsewhere. Relationships, war, child-bearing and the colour bar are all woven together into a book that somehow manages to bear the weight of the themes while still givng the reader a very human tale.

Lessing is a simply amazing writer. She works with complex ideas and communicates them without simplifying. Her writing is always lovely and human. A Proper Marriage is one of the best examples of her work. I think that it adds richness if you begin with Martha Quest, but the book can stand on its own right.

Recommended both for fans of Lessing's work and people new to her work.

In Doris Lessing's second "Children of Violence" series *A Proper Marriage*, we discover that Martha, in marrying Douglas, becomes even more torn in her quest to attain full stature as a woman. Martha, in this story, not only has to reconcile her self to the causes she believes in, to her marriage with Douglas Knowell, and to motherhood, but also to the townspeople with whom she becomes entwined. Another delight of this novel for me is the way Lessing has Martha look at both individual and group dynamics throughout the story, providing seductively keen insight. Lessing's writing promises tension, suspense, and wonder for the engaged reader. *A Proper Marriage* sequels *Martha Quest* in which many of the delights in the first of the series continue on to the second, including the beautiful way Lessing mirrors Martha's interior life with the exotic and varied African natural and elemental landscape. I would recommed reading *Martha Quest* first in order to more fully appreciate *A Proper Marriage.*

At heart, this book is about how people see themselves and each other. The form of the story is a first-person journal, written in a deliberately academic tone.

The content, though, is one person's total change of her place in her world. The writer's initial view looks down on the world around her, as filled with inferior beings. After some time and much confusion, she learns to look up towards the higher qualities she might aspire to.

The crucial moment in the book may be the phrase, "They should be treated as they treat others." Of course, the author (at that point) can not say "I should be treated ..." From then on, the author's broadening of view accelerates. Lessing may romanticize personal advancement, but is brutally honest about the costs that it can entail.

Lessing carefully paces the book to end at the highest point of the story. It's a pleasant change from authors who run out of things to say 50 or 100 pages before reaching the back cover. A small accident of history mars the book only slightly. Many years after the book was written, a new sleep medication was put on the market: Ambien, the name Lessing coincidentally assigned her protagonist. This book has a few slow moments, when that accident of name seemed apt. Still, this is an excellent book for unhurried reading.

This was the first Doris Lessing book I ever read. Because the protagonist is a dry technocrat, the writing is written in that style. Nevertheless, I found the book gripping. Lessing gives a fascinating and enlightening perspective of the development of human society as a whole. Of course, the awakening that takes place in the protagonist's mind as she works with the Canopeans has its own gems of wisdom buried in it. Of the five books in Canopus in Argos: Archives, this one is my favorite.

The Empire of Sirius, formerly the enemy of Canopus, has now for some time been its uneasy and mistrustful ally. Though highly advanced technologically, and despite being sophisticated social engineers, the Sirians are suffering some upheaval because of the many members of their population who feel that their life lacks a worthy purpose. Ambien II, a member of the Five who govern the Empire, is befriended by Klorathy, an agent of Canopus, in the course of their mutual dealings upon and around the planet Rohanda. Ambien II's education in the means and motives of Canopus, and her eventual realisation that, doubtless unique in the history of galactic diplomacy, Canopus means what it says and does what it promises, is the major subject of The Sirian Experiments. Doris Lessing has written, "I could like Ambien II better than I do;" which is a pity, for Ambien II, along with Rachel Sherban in Shikasta and the incensed innocent Incent in The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire, is one of the most appealing characters in the quintet. Her growth from efficient, obedient social scientist (who deplores the changing of our planet's name from Rohanda (Fertile) to Shikasta (Wounded) as showing "a mixture of poeticism and pedantry typical of Canopus") into willing pupil, sometime rescuer, and eventually into that amazing paradox, the clear-headed visionary, is a triumph of characterisation. Her report - careful, thorough, just and drily humorous - betters Shikasta in its fusion of the personal with the cosmic, and contains one of the most spectacular set-pieces in the whole series, as well as some of its most poignant personal encounters. The ending is quietly ironic, without the sense of definite progress which was present at the end of the previous two books - the major breakthrough here takes place inside Ambien II herself, though further, exterior victories may just possibly be on the way. This book (not to mention the quintet as a whole) is the kind of thing science fiction was meant to be all about.

The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English provides a wide array of supplementary reading material to accompany lecture notes or for students to grasp overall concepts of a particular work, author, or literary movement.

Those two authors share space in this magnificent reference volume on English Literature. The sturdy, oversized Guide presents over one thousand pages of information on authors, novels, poetry, drama, and literary terms. There are interesting biographies of prominent writers and obscure ones, from Mrs. Humphrey Ward to William Faulkner.

Good plot summaries are provided for a wide range of novels. If you are a fan of Anthony Trollope, you will find no less than twenty five of his books discussed. You have to be careful, however, if you are reading the plot of a book in order to decided whether or not you want to read it - the ending is always given away. The Cambridge Guide explores many literary terms: Meter; the Bloomsbury Group; positivism; and post-structuralism. There are also entries on Literary Journals - yes, the New York Review of Books is here as well as Granta.

The Cambridge Guide is written for the average layman and avoids academic jargon. I decided to try the entry on "deconstruction" as the extreme test of explaining difficult concepts. It's hard to say: either they failed the test, or I failed it.

This book has become one of my prized possessions, and I would have been willing to buy it at twice the price charged.

Peter R. Erspamer, The Elusiveness of Tolerance: The "Jewish Question" from Lessing to the Napoleonic Wars, reviewed by Dr. David T. Murphy, Professor of History at Anderson University, in German Studies Review, Vol. XXII, No. 1, pp. 116-117

The title of Peter Erspamer's study of early German literature concerning what became known as the "Jewish question" is well chosen, in two ways: Not only have the goals of legal toleration and cultural acceptance for eligious and ethnic minorities in Germany and the West proven elusive, but, as this study makes abundantly clear, agreement upon the meaning of the term "tolerance" itself has turned out to be equally difficult to attain. In Germany during the Enlightenment and Revolutionary eras, for example, "tolerance" could and did signify a range of meanings. While the term evoked a narrowly conceived sense of permission or "sufferance of evil" to some, for a smaller group of others it suggested a much broader notion of freedom of convictions.

Erspamer's revised dissertation provides a competent introduction to the early decades of the literary debate over the proper status of Jews in Germany. Taking as his starting point Lessing's Nathan the Wise of 1779, a work whose impact upon public understanding of the struggle for Jewish rights led George Mosse to describe it as the "Magna Carta" of German Jewry, Erspamer follows the reactions which Lessing's philo-Semitic drama provoked among a number of German audiences over the next several decades. The author gives particular attention to the views of Prussian officialdom, as expressed in the writings of Christian Wilhelm Dohm, the responses of Germany's various Jewish communities themselves, the emergence of a short-lived school of emancipatory drama and of course, the beginnings of the more enduring anti-Semitic backlash against the drive for emancipation.

Among the strengths of this monograph is its insightful attention to nuance in the response of Germany's Jews to the public debate about emancipation as it was carried on both within the Jewish community and in the larger Gentile culture. Contrary to widespread Christian perceptions, German Jewry of the period constituted a highly fragmented and heterogeneous group, embracing the reform-oriented Maskilim of the Jewish Enlightenment, the considerable community of "Taufjuden", or converted Jews, and the German orthodox community. The diversity of Judaism conditioned a wide range of responses to the drive for emancipation, from the almost Deistic Judaism of Moses Mendelssohn, the most famous Jewish proponent of emancipation, to the involved struggle toward self-identity of the remarkable converted Jew Rahel Varnhagen.

Erspamer also does a nice job of explicating the emerging anti-Semitic ideology which began to be elaborated in response to demands for Jewish emancipation. At this time, the remarkably durable Judeophobic religious prejudices of the Middle Ages began to merge with the clearly racial anti-Semitism of theorists such as Ernst Moritz Arnt, crystallizing and then disseminating what Erspamer describes as popular "myths of ethnic homogeneity." The author's understanding of the paradoxical ideological appeal of anti-Semitism as both the tool of an authoritarian state as well as a form of political expression of an oppressed people is perceptive.

While this work is well edited in regard to technical matters, it is burdened by a few stylistic shortcomings, including unnecessary repition of key concepts and sometimes of almost complete sentences in the early portions of the book. Clumsy neologisms like "dialecticizing" also crop up occasionally, though that is perhaps unavoidable in a contemporary work of literary criticism. Taken as a whole, however, this is a study whose virtues considerably outweigh its defects and which provides valuable insight into the dynamics of the evolution of ideas.

The Elusiveness of Tolerance: The "Jewish Question" from Lessing to the Napoleonic Wars, by Peter R. Erspamer, reviewed by Erlis G. Wickersham, Professor of German at Rosemont College, in: Choice, July/August 1997--Vol. 34, No. 11/12, pp. 182-83

In this interesting, well-conceived study, Erspamer considers the tolerance debate in Germany and Austria from the publication of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise (1779) to the end of the Napoleonic era. Erspamer makes excellent use of sources, presenting a balance of documents for and against the Enlightenment ideal promulgated by Lessing and influenced by the leading figure of the Haskalah: Moses Mendelssohn. He discusses both authors in fresh, insightful ways, while providing a balanced view of historical criticism. He analyzes pamphlets engendered by Lessing's book from writers like Pfranger, Dohm, Ascher, and Diez, and dramas with Jewish themes by writers like Reinicke, Bischof, Lotich, and Ziegelhauser. In such chapters as "Emancipatory Drama after Lessing" and "Myths of Homogeneity: Anti-Semitic Literature after 1800," he traces the devastating effects of nationalistic sentiments inspired by the Wars of Liberation. He illuminates the polemics of antisemitic Romantics like Achim von Arnim and Fichte, using well-chosen quotations in German. Despite quirks of style, Erspamer provides an integrated view of a seminal era for German-Jewish relations, needed materials, and valuable insights. Extensive bibliography, notes, and index. Recommended for all collections.

Dr. Lessing's commentary on Jonah is a wonderful blend of scholarly research presented with a pastor's compassion for the lost. He skillfully shows us how the narrator of Jonah draws the reader into God's heart with the goal the we, like Jonah, will share God's mercy and seek to share the Gospel with a fallen world. But this is no "fluffy" devotional book. Dr. Lessing guides us through intense scholarship and a detailed exposition of the original Hebrew text, with the joyful result that we can see clearer the "Gospel" intentions of the narrator of Jonah. Yes, I know the Gospel is the message of Jesus Christ, hundreds of years after Jonah but, Dr. Lessing shows so clearly how God is calling Jonah to the same compassion for humanity that impelled Christ's sacrifice at the cross that the reader sees the same Divine hand working salvation throughout both the Old and New Testament.

I highly recommend this commentary for those looking for a scholarly and pastoral look at Jonah coming from a theologian with a high regard for scripture.

This truly is a welcome addition to the growing commentary series published by CPH, this being the first of the Minor Prophets. Easily, as the author relates, Jonah stands out in its dissimilarities with the other prophets, so this is vital contribution.

Lessing sees Jonah as valid, inspired Word of God. He sees it as a clear example of factual, narrative history. This makes it unique among prophetical writings, loaded as it is with irony and satire. Lessing believes this is its strength and usefulness to us if mined with correct exegesis: "the better our understanding is of the artistic workings of Jonah, the better will be our grasp of the historical subjects it depicts."

What does Lessing make of the "great fish?" He provides pertinent commentary of the great fish and the qiqayon plant as Yahweh's grace to bring Jonah and Ninevites to salvation. This usage of God of plants and animals is a theme of OT texts, showing obedience of such and service to God, e.g. Is. 1:3; Numb. 22; Dan.6. Believing that factually this happened, the author provides much for the consideration of this, with a wonderful Excursus on the Sign of Jonah and its relevant typology to Jesus and the NT church.

While some would want only to focus on the Great Fish Story or on Yahweh's soverign power, Lessing rather sees the theology of this Biblical book as: "the greatness of Yahweh's grace ... Throughout the narrative, Yahweh is the God who delivers. ... In summary, although strict justice would demand that the idolatrous sailors, the evil Ninevites, and even the prodigal Jonah should perish, over and over Yahweh's mercy prevails and grants new life. "Salvation belongs to Yahweh." Indeed, 'Mercy and forgiveness belong to the Lord our God (Dan 9:9), and not to Jonah or anyone else to dispense or to withhold according to their whim and will."

Thoroughly engaged in the philogy and other related fields, this is a most engaging, energized expose of this vital Biblical book. For most it will provide significant new exposure to this book's historical usage and understanding of the text, e.g. the Midrash Jonah explaining the switch of masculine and feminine terms for the fish in 2:1 is new and fascinating.

Well done! A blessing to read and use for the life of the church!

I bought this book knowing relatively little about German Lit and reading this book made me feel like an expert. Bennett's book is incredibly well done, and it crosses the boundaries of genre and national literature like few others of its kind. A great book for the drama enthusiast of any age, and it will certainly appeal to specialists.

Benjamin Bennett is professor of German at the University of Virginia and one of the finest Germanists in the country. This book may be his magmum opus.

Deikman compassionately analyses the psychological mechanisms by which we can become enmeshed in cult thinking. The sobering conclusion is that none of us are immune: we are all vulnerable and, to some extent, already enmeshed in a number of "cults" ("If you're not with us, you're against us" -- sound familiar?). The key is to understand how the relevant psychology works, and recognize its action in ourselves and others, lest we allow it to "get behind us" and influence decisions that ought to be rational.

Deikman never despises the people he studies, nor does he reduce them to being helpless victims and/or evil oppressors. Rather, he presents a clear and compassionate view of complex truths, backed up by solid evidence from modern psychological and sociological data. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in religion, politics, or modern society.

Them And Us: Cult Thinking And The Terrorist Threat by Arthur J. Deikman (Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California - San Francisco and a recognized expert on cult psychology) is a close and compelling study of human tendencies that can be (and have been) drawn into extreme variants that promote horrific human behaviors. Belittling others, clamping down on dissention, relying too heavily on an inspiring leader, are all common traits that, if embraced with no checks or balances, can readily lead to such nightmares as the loss of life at Waco or the September 11th attacks. Them And Us is commended as a particularly thought provoking, scholarly, and chillingly in-depth psychological study.

THis is a collection of the best of Doris Lessing's short stories and a couple of novellas all set in her native Africa. From Rhodesia to Kenya and such we see many different stories and perspectives. We meet colonial Boers, English farmers, native legends, native peoples, miners, scholars, women, children, men, hunters, animals- just about everything!
Her stories begin in the early part of the 1900s and as they progress into the 1950s and 1960s the political tone changes with the times without being a political narrative. The focus is on people and storytelling. It is no wonder Doris Lessing is known as one of the best writers in English fiction- this book is amazing!

This was an amazing thriller. It kept me reading until the end. I do not usualy like thrillers, but Miss Alcott makes it very interesting, mysterious with the slightest bit of romance. I would highly recomend it.