Doris Lessing

Your favorite books of the year.

So the ones I've written about for the books of the year are one, The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing.

Now, this came out in 1985, but it's being reprinted this month.

And it has an introduction, a blisteringly good introduction by the Irish writer Donal Ryan.

I said that, I mean, I feel that the best fiction reads like nonfiction and the best nonfiction reads like fiction.

And these are both, The Good Terrorist and Farewell to Eden, they are both ostensibly fiction, but they are clearly based on real experiences and a lot of research.

So the first one, The Good Terrorist, so it's by Doris Lessing, who won the Nobel Prize in 2007.

It's about a group of disenfranchised, young-ish people who live in a squat in North London in the early 80s.

Your favorite books of the year.

So the ones I've written about for the books of the year are one, The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing.

Now, this came out in 1985, but it's being reprinted this month.

And it has an introduction, a blisteringly good introduction by the Irish writer Donal Ryan.

I said that, I mean, I feel that the best fiction reads like nonfiction and the best nonfiction reads like fiction.

And these are both, The Good Terrorist and Farewell to Eden, they are both ostensibly fiction, but they are clearly based on real experiences and a lot of So the first one, The Good Terrorist.

So it's by Doris Lessing, who won the Nobel Prize in 2007.

It's about a group of disenfranchised young-ish people who live in a squat in North London in the early 80s.

But I think for grownups, it was really grim.

And if you read books, like if you read The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, I mean, she's not trying to present London as depressing, but by golly, her heroine's idea of a good evening out is going to hear a lecture of Stalin on linguistics.

It doesn't get any more depressing than that.

And Ted Hughes, the former Poet Laureate, described the 1950s as a tundra that we had to cross.

I remember that.

You need to see that brilliant clip when Doris Lessing won it.

And I think she was getting out a cab or something and she was just like going about her day.

That is an amazing clip.

The snow was still on the ground.

But this year I read Doris Lessing for the first time.

Her book, The Good Terrorist, which I kind of discovered by accident.

But she more or less did the kind of exact same plot as The Rise and Fall of Chaz Oregano.

It was a craze.

Doris Lessing didn't do that to me.

It was an absolute craze.

It's like vaping is now.

Um, but yeah, it's, it's not surprising.

Um, she, I think, gives Doris Lessing vibes, which I appreciate.

All the fun pictures.

Yeah.

so docker.

[laughs]

That, that clip, the clip of, of Doris Lessing winning and being like, "Oh..." What does she say? Like, "Oh, Christ," or whatever.

Yeah.

Um, I think she becomes disillusioned with this idea the further she gets away from anarchism and the further she gets away from her 20s.

But there does seem-- and even when I read, like I've been reading a lot of Doris Lessing at the time, right now-

Yeah

... which is like a, a woman who, you know-

And actually in his letters he mentions not only he wants to identify with his characters, he feels them in his soul, but even the trees, the forest, the leaves, you know, the soil, everything around them as they go through this forest, he wants to visualize and he somehow identifies with almost like you're leaving your own self.

Maybe this is what Doris Lessing used to talk about.

I love that she calls it unselfing.

And I think we need to make that journey as often as we can while we're writing a story.