RIP Doris Lessing (1919-2013)

Doris Lessing was arguably the greatest author of the 20th Century.  I know Many of you will disagree, but if so: go now and read The Golden Notebook and the Martha Quest series, stack it up against anything else written in the 60s-80s, and tell me if you can honestly say it's better.  Yes, I am totally serious.

I found The Golden Notebook by accident in a bookstore at age 20-21.  As so many people, I had never heard of her, because she never ended up on any syllabi.  You who are reading this, even though she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 may never have heard of her.  That's because she was unclassifiable.  No matter what box someone tried to fit her into, like the Houdini of literature, she'd find a way out.

She particularly hated the ghetto term "feminist author."  Why do I say ghetto term?  Well, think of it, especially if you are a male human being reading this right now, if you hear the phrase "feminist author" are you running out to buy her work?  No, I didn't think so.  Also, would you guess, because of that label, that she deals equally with issues of world politics, especially war, communism, Africa, England, Big Ideas, Experimentation with Form, etc…all the subject areas of the Angry Young Men of her generation?  No, you wouldn't.  You'd have images of nice middle class women chatting about their wombs or something.

That's why she hated the term.  Because she was A Writer who Was Also a Woman (heaven Forfend). Yes, her writing had feminist implications, if by feminist you mean, a naked (in every way) female voice not intimidated by anyone (including so-called feminist)'s idea of what she Should Feel, Say, Think, Care About, etc.

As a young woman who happened upon her Golden Notebook, she changed my life.  Here was a Voice, a Female Voice, whispering to me in words in a fragmented structure, evoking feelings, sensations, suspicions, Ideas, arguments, insecurities, rages, dreams, aspirations, daring, wisdom…all from a protean, flawed, human, female protagonist that I could begin to understand - because she was Not boxed into the categories reserved - even in the mid-80s - for the derogatory, second class label: Female.

She is also, as anyone following this blog will know, in the generation of my grandmothers, about whom I am writing.  They were born in 1916, she in 1919 - close enough.  Also children of violence (as Ms. Lessing called her generation - children of the wreckage of the First World War), though American.  Only one of whom attempted an escape as daring as Ms. Lessing's, who unfortunately did not start out as early or as successfully or living as long.  But she did dare.

I encourage anyone reading this post to read any and all work of Doris Lessing.  If you want to begin to understand the great breadth and depth of the greatest conflicts in the 20th Century (especially as regards Europe, Africa and the Middle East), you must.

Don't let ornery (usually male) critics tell you she can't write or she writes too much or whatever.  They Are Wrong.  That's all there is to it.  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.  She writes in a way that allows her to say what she needs to say and how she needs to say it.  If there were no Doris Lessing, there would be no room in publishing/media for Lena Dunham or Mary Karr or Joan Didion or Margaret Atwood…the list of her descendants is long…So, respect.  A life well lived for which we are all better off because she so lived it.

Strange days

I am still going to bed late and getting up late, which used to be my schedule but hasn't been for a while so feeling a bit discombobulated.  Did my writing first again today, which is good news.  However, it's the horrendous editing bit so is about as much fun as splitting rocks.  It's a short story I wrote, edited and sent out and know in my heart of hearts is too bloated so paring it down to re-send out.  I don't know why I should be doing this now, but so far that feels right.  Really want to be working on first draft of grandmother book, and will get to that but know I need to work on my editing chops...so wish me luck.

About to listen to Joan Didion on WNYC, so maybe will learn something - again - from the master.  Speaking of which, I'm reading Mary Karr's Lit now and damn that woman can write.  But it's more than that, there's soul, too and stuff I can basically understand in terms of coming to Ivy League-like places from white trash type places - along with the psychosis of having a mother who wants her to succeed and felt trapped in Texas.  I gave this book to many people over Christmas, for good reason.  Her story resonates with so many of us...too many of us, but that's OK.  At least she wrote it.  No small thing.

Didion is talking about Blue Nights, her book about her daughter's death.  She says it is not a narrative but more a meditation, a reflection.  Her brutal honesty with herself is always astonishing to hear and gives me courage.  These two magnificent women make me feel what I am attempting is possible, even if I'm not sure precisely how I will pull it off on my end.  So, thanks Mary Karr and Joan Didion, once again for showing us how it's done.

Saw two friends from college, Bennett - who is visiting from LA - and Cobina - who lives in NYC but because we both teach can't ever find time to see each other during school term.  We were all directors and now two of us write and teach/make theater and Bennett makes work and is a creative director at an e-card company.  Tonight we were at Cobina's house with her extraordinarily precocious children and lovely husband.  I see through their teenage eyes how much older we are now. But somehow it doesn't bother me, because when I meet kids like this who are so great, I feel that all is well with the world somehow and perhaps our generation at the very least is doing a pretty good job as parents.  The funny thing was reminiscing about times we spent together 25 or so years ago in front of the teens, knowing they must have been rolling their eyes internally (too polite to show it of course), though they did seem interested, too.  They adore 'uncle Ben' who is quite entertaining (and is Sister Unity Divine as a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence in LA but wears LL Bean clothes on most days...but never stops being fun and wildly-kid-friendly - that is if you have been raised to be queer-friendly, which they have...so that was nice to see, too - a new generation not freaked out by gay people - hooray!)

However, sometimes (not tonight but at other times) I will see a particularly cute small person, like at St Marks last night and just start crying, because if I had not miscarried I would have a 4 year old right now, and sometimes that just hits me full force.  I never know when this will happen.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to let that one go entirely.  I feel better around kids now than I ever did, though, and I am glad of this.  I suppose I'll just be whacky aunt/friend Julia...not to mention the teaching...but sometimes I'll be honest it makes me really sad that it doesn't look I'll ever get to be a parent.

Speaking of which, below is a full picture of Ugo the Rescue Cat (and substitute child/boyfriend - yes it is that sad).  I managed to transfer this picture from my phone to computer.  Hopefully you can see how lovely he is.

OK, so why did I title this post strange days?  Because they are strange.  My last post was picked up by Poetry Project and others, so many people looking at it.  Glad there is so much interest in Jonas Mekas, that is heartening.

The anniversary of my father's death is coming up and I find myself noting the age of many of these folks (poets, writers, artists), and so many, like Joan Didion who is 75 and Jonas Mekas who is older, are in the same age-range as my father if he had not died.  He also loved avant-garde artists and writers, so I get these emotional twinges seeing these people who are also ageing - but also have a body of recognized work...and wishing, wishing, wishing my father had stuck with his artistic work rather than frittering his talents and energies away on pot, drinking and taking self-righteous stances against this and that.  But that in the end is crazy-judgemental of me, because I was not him and his journals I have read like a litany of confusion and pain.

I think this desire is partially my own pride.  I wish I had had a father I could look up to or rely on or something.  He wasn't a bad man but he just couldn't do anything really or commit to anything or anyone, not really, and that just seems so profoundly sad.

So as this anniversary is arriving - on January 7 - I find myself still not sure what to do but don't want to do what I did last time, which was work myself silly through it.

There are lots of practical things I need to get done and find I have zero motivation for any of them so am torn between the "just get your ass in gear" voice and the "rest - you're exhausted" voice.  I also need to be working my body more, that I know.  By that I mean yoga and stuff, not horrible driven stuff.

Weirder still, my downstairs neighbour is alternating between coughing loudly in a way that indicates he has some kind of chronic condition and singing drunkenly.  When did I get cast in a Tennessee Williams play?

I think the temporary answer to the do/rest conundrum is to wrap up this post and go to sleep earlier than last night.  Ugo is resting finally having had a case of the cat-crazies, so perhaps I should take his lead...

"The objects for which there is no satisfactory solution."

The above is a quote from Joan Didion's newest book Blue Nights.  She is referring to the many mementos she has of people and time gone by, some of which is here or there in places that make  some sense and then there are 'the objects for which there is no satisfactory solution.'

This is why she loves non-fiction.  This is also why I love non-fiction.  As she said in the interview I mentioned yesterday, "there is more space" in non-fiction.  With fiction you are compelled to follow a narrative.  And as we all 'know' narratives don't take too kindly to 'the objects for which there is no satisfactory solution.'  Those must be tossed out as unwieldy, perhaps too beautiful or too big or too small, but for whatever reason not right.

So much of life in my experience fits into this category, which is why I resist narrative so strongly.  I feel it masks more than it reveals.

Having said that, in Mary Karr's excruciating memoir of her childhood The Liars' Club (referring to the effect one of her father's tall tales, as told to his group of friends, the eponymous liars' club, who listen to his stories in particular with attentive respect, even when they know they are being lied to somehow, or should do) "I've plumb forgot where I am for an instant, which is how a good lie should take you. At the same time, I'm more where I was inside myself than before Daddy started talking, which is how lies can tell you the truth."

So perhaps it is living on this line that's important - when writing 'non-fiction' knowing it is always to some extent fictional, contingent, subjective (Didion says when she started placing herself in her journalistic stories it was not the done thing but she felt it was necessary to allow the reader to know "who that was at the other end of the voice") and when speaking or writing fiction knowing it can penetrate to someone's core, but perhaps only if the recipient knows it's a lie.  In the section Karr is describing, it's the first time she is complicit with her father and knows he's lying.  Perhaps it is that knowledge that allows her the other feelings?

When referring to the other men in the liars' club Karr says "Daddy never fessed up to the lie that I know. It stayed built between him and the other men like a fence he'd put up to keep them from knowing him better."  So without knowing the truth of the lie, something is lost.

Didion was so clear that memory is a liar, that all we remember is what we do not want to remember.  I think she's right in the end.  If a memory is painful, we'd rather not have that, but sometimes, too, good memories can bring us closer to the lack of whatever moment/time/place/person that was.  She is obsessed in Blue Nights with "how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here."  She then repeats the phrase: "How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is another thing I could not afford to see."

She reads these phrases, says these things, sitting on a chair looking like an oversized, very calm exotic bird - quite thin, quite beautiful, thankfully allowing her skin to be wrinkly in that same exquisite way that Louise Bourgeois' face became carved with all her life's suffering and laughter mapped on it for all to see.  These women look heroic to me, like statues prior to death.  I imagine that is not how they feel or in Bourgeois' case felt, but to a woman like me (of a certain age...) these women are heros.  They have carved out their writing and art into the world, which finally appreciates it/them.  They have suffered huge losses, but they survived.  They see so keenly.  They are the wise ones.

Doris Lessing wrote about the 'wise ones' in one of her books, I think it was the Golden Notebook, and she speaks of these people as those who will walk through and over whatever is necessary to survive, not give up, give in, shy away.  She was writing that in her 40s I believe, in a bid to become one of the wise ones, which she of course has become.  Is.

Mary Karr is in her 50s and is walking the same path, is probably already a wise one, but I have no doubt will continue in this walk and become even wiser.  I hope she too survives well into her dotage so we can benefit from her words.  I hope I can live that long, too, so I can finish all the projects I so want to write and create.  I am not sure I can possibly finish them all, but I am lucky, I realize writing this, so lucky: to have so many ideas.  To want to create that badly and to have time (I hope) to do so...

My teaching for the semester ends on Thursday.  Once I have finished marking and get some paperwork into Hunter for the acting class, I will be able to focus on the writing and such for a blissful 6 weeks.  Well, that and all my shit from London arriving in a couple weeks and deciding where on earth to put it all. There will be many objects for which there is not satisfactory solution.  That will take about a week, then holidays, etc...but I promise myself as a solemn oath to take big chunks of time to write and do my own work.

I want to be one of the wise ones, too, which means I need to be more ruthless with my time and energy than I am.  This makes me wonder if I will ever be truly wise or perhaps more like my meditation practice (which I refer to as 'dumbass meditation' because I don't even attempt not to think, which is like impossible anyway - I just sit there, eyes shut, coffee cup to my left and breathe for about 25 minutes with coffee sip intervals - but 15 years of that every day!).  Perhaps, then, the best I can aspire to is dumbass wise.  Somehow that seems more probable and like attainable...

So, now to preparing my last review for this semester of the Fundamentals of Interpersonal Communication, God help us all and especially my students...I do my best.