Birthday Book Recs 24/50 : The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Birthday Book Recs: 24/50
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Can’t stop, won’t stop: I took these pics a couple of days ago and was going to slow down the pace on these (because what in the world am I doing??), but in the wee hours of the morning I was reading a newsletter penned by someone who runs a very large literary event, and she wrote that she hadn’t read any Doris Lessing before but was going to tackle The Golden Notebook this year. So in my attempt to be au courant (or maybe rather: always behind the trend), here we go.
The basic premise of this 1962 novel is that protagonist Anna Wulf keeps four notebooks, all with a different purpose. (One holds her reflections on her experience with the Communist Party, one of her time living in what was then known as Southern Rhodesia, one that’s a novel-in-progress [so yes, that’s a bit meta], one that’s just a personal journal.) But of course all strands of a life meet and intertwine — somehow — and Lessing explores feminism, motherhood, political movements…whew! A fifth notebook — gold colored, hence the title — is where she tries to piece it all together.
It’s been a while since I’ve read The Golden Notebook, but what has always stuck with me is how writing helps us makes sense of things. I’m a serial notebook-user. In the past, it’s been one for client work, one for random writing and ideas I want to explore, one for the literary events I produce. (OK, these aren’t quite as weighty, subject-wise, as Anna’s color-coded notebooks.) Sometimes there’s a traditional journal thrown in there. But I’m toying with keeping just one because for now, all this stuff is sort of mushed together for me — part of the point of The Golden Notebook. (And btw my only New Years Resolution is to improve my handwriting because I was rifling through a notebook just now and liked some of what I wrote a few months ago but couldn’t decipher it all! Truly, my handwriting is atrocious, but nonetheless, if this isn’t a low-bar goal then I don’t know what is…)
{Scroll down to see a clip of Lessing upon learning of winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s a good one!}
You can find all my 50th Birthday Book Recommendations HERE.
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