Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook is next on our list! This novel explores the life of Anna Wulf. Like Lessing, Anna is a writer, but the similarities between author and character don’t end there. Although Anna lives in the UK, her memories take us to southern Africa and her imagination to the USSR. Across the book, she grapples with such diverse themes as colonialism, communism, the life of writing, and what it means to be a “free” woman in the 1940s and 50s. What holds these varied themes – and the related parts of Anna’s life – together is The Golden Notebook‘s fascinating form.
Inspired by Lessing, we have attempted a small formal experiment and shaped this episode around contributions from three expert guests. First up is Alice Ridout, Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film at Algoma University. Alice, who has published widely on Lessing, highlights The Golden Notebook‘s enduring social and historical significance.
Then, at the heart of this episode, we hear from Roberta Rubenstein on certain crucial ways that this novel’s form contributes to its literary value. She is Professor Emerita in Literature at American University, and among her numerous publications on Lessing is a full monograph on form.
To round things off, we interview Susan Watkins, who is a Professor in the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities at Leeds Beckett University. She draws on her expertise in Lessing’s genre-crossing oeuvre, but also in feminist theory, to discuss whether The Golden Notebook truly is a feminist novel.
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Sources
Hanford, Jan. “With Her Cats.” Doris Lessing: A Retrospective, http://www.dorislessing.org/cats.html.
Howe, Irving. “On Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.” The New Republic, 2013, https://newrepublic.com/article/115287/doris-lessing-rip-golden-notebook-review-irving-howe. Originally published in The New Republic, 1963.
Lessing, Doris. On Cats. HarperCollins, 2008.