There exists a big difference between reading well regarded technical papers and renown literary work. They surely, exercise different muscles. Well-regarded technical papers are almost always written in an accessible easy-to-read fashion. Clarity facilitates better communication of new concepts, reducing the chances of them being misunderstood. In contrast, path-breaking literature can “afford” to be abstruse, even frustratingly opaque, often through the adoption of a deliberate literary device. The Golden Notebook is one such book. Reading The Golden Notebook is an opaque, swirling, self-referential experience like watching Mulholland Drive.
The Golden Notebook is a feminist classic that a data scientist should read. I am certainly glad that I have read it.
The book is often listed among the top 100 books of the century (Time), or top 100 written in the English language (Guardian). It is also a well-known feminist classic, its enduring appeal exemplified in this lovely review. Doris Lessing was the oldest person to receive a Literature Nobel. Her world-weary, curmudgeonly response to hearing the news of her winning the Nobel is almost charmingly other-worldly.
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I am on the older side of 40 now, and what follows is a collection of my own thoughts.
The themes of the book are all encompassing. Lessing tackles feminism, imperialism and Stalinism, sex and sexlessness, absurdity in publishing and movie business, writer’s block, marriages and relationships (mostly broken), ennui and mania, the ugly tropes of racial and colonial asymmetries. The main character is not sympathetic. To be sure, I think she neither offers sympathy nor asks for it, even in those lonely moments in companionship when she prides herself for “giving pleasure”. As one trudges through the Anna’s deepest thoughts and her craven unlikability (she reads private diaries), Lessing’s brilliant characterization of a deeply burnt, pent-up and distressed person simmers up. Is Anna Wulf really free? What’s freedom for her? I suppose that her defiant struggle and search for herself is the freedom.
This book is an “inner-personal” literature. It explores deepest recesses of human mind — feminine mind — unknown, commonplace and mysterious. Even in those chapters written in the third person, it almost reads as if written in the first person. This stark attention to innermost thoughts startles and shocks us as Anna substitutes her own past, present and future in her characters.
I also think that the book is about our deepest neuroticism. It is an anti-Bildungsroman. What does one do after growing up? It is about a maddening descent into hopelessness. The more we self-examine ourselves, the more we don’t like the person we are. Like Anna, we must hate ourselves if we make that abominable descent into abyss.
I think that the book’s length is a minor weakness. At 630+ pages, and an elaborate design (nonlinear interspersing blue, black, red and yellow books) and the observations of `free women” — Golden Notebook required continued commitment. Lengthy books rely less on climactic “payoff” and more on continual payoff of slow-burn.1 The pleasure of long books is in the progression of the book itself, but I am not sure that process in the Golden Notebook is pleasurable. Mostly, I felt as if I was swimming in yogurt pudding, interminably stuck. The writing here is deliberately(?) humorless. Definitely, there are flashes of hilarious sections about publishing world and Cy Maitland (oh boy!).
Will I read more Doris Lessing? I am not so sure. Lessing reminds me a lot of Le Guin — high concept, deep difficult exploration of thoughts littered with occasional stodgy prose. I am enjoying the “quite inner spaces” in Elena Ferrante’s writing now. Just within the English language writers, there is more of Muriel Spark, Susanna Clarke, Angela Carter, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood and Grace Paley to read. Perhaps, I will return to Lessing’s other notably different works (her SF work – Canopus in Argos). But, I am glad that I read the Golden Notebook. Like all great works, it challenges you. It cleared the cobwebs of my mind.
1. In dynamic programming terms, reliance should be on per-period utility and not expected utility to-go.