<![CDATA[Jezebel: doris lessing]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png <![CDATA[Jezebel: doris lessing]]> http://jezebel.com/tag/dorislessing http://jezebel.com/tag/dorislessing <![CDATA[Lessing Is More]]> The Golden Notebook Project went live yesterday, and it involves seven female intellectuals and writers discussing Doris Lessing's seminal novel. Contributors include Laura Kipnis, Nona Willis Aronowitz, and Naomi Alderman, and each woman is blogging about the novel as she reads it. Basically it's an internet book group for super smarties. As part of their mission statement, the women say the Golden Notebook Project is "part of a long-term effort to encourage and enable a culture of collaborative learning." A lofty and noble goal, indeed. Doris Lessing would probably approve in theory, but only after she yelled at everyone for letting the internet rot their brains. [Golden Notebook Project]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5083324&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Lessing Is More]]> Doris Lessing: Nobel Prize winner, badass mama jama, friend to animals, writers and Commies. She tells the Times of London: "It’s lovely to have money to give away—that’s the bonus of winning the Nobel. I support Oxfam, Shelter and Centrepoint. I’ve also got a fondness for a local cat-and-dog home and an organisation to help writers. I was much too proud to write begging letters when I was broke. Miraculously, two people I’d never met said they’d heard I was hard up and enclosed some money. They were communists and told me that when I had enough I should pass on the money to somebody else who needed it. I’ve been doing it ever since." [Times of London via Esquire]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5067921&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Lessing Is More]]> Gloriously salty bitch and Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing gave an interview to Time and she was hilariously cranky as usual. "As you get older, you don't get wiser," she says. "You get irritable." Click on Doris' mug to read more zingers.

Doris on her Nobel win: "If I may be catty, Sweden doesn't have anything else. There's not a great literary tradition, so they make the most of the Nobel."
Doris on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe:"He's a monstrous little terror."
Doris on being called the "epicist of the female experience": "Well, they had to say something…I can just see somebody sitting there thinking, 'What the hell are we going to say about this one? She doesn't like being called a feminist so what'll we say?' So they scribbled that."
Doris on Doris: "I tend to speak my mind, which is not necessarily a good idea. I do not think I am the soul of tact."
[Time]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5021973&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Our favorite salty old lady Doris Lessing...]]> dorrislessing51108.jpgOur favorite salty old lady Doris Lessing is still all grumpy about having won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature, calling it a "bloody disaster." She says that all the attention has been less than constructive, "All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed." The 88-year-old also says that she's no longer writing because she no longer has the energy. Or maybe she's simply just fed up with it all, after her latest work Alfred and Emily, a fictionalized biography of her parents, received mixed reviews. [BBC, Telegraph]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=389533&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[ It must be really awesome to be so old and...]]> It must be really awesome to be so old and admired that you can say whatever the fuck you want. Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, a Jezebel favorite, told a Stockholm paper that she believes Obama will be assassinated if he is elected president. The 88-year-old pistol said, "[Obama] would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would kill him." Lessing continued, "It would be best if [Clinton and Obama] ran together. Hillary is a very sharp lady." [The Independent]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=354929&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[ Nobel Prize winner and official Jezebel...]]> Nobel Prize winner and official Jezebel hot bitch Doris Lessing is too sick to attend her Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm. We're hoping for your speedy recovery, Doris!

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=327486&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[ Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing really...]]> Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing really does live by the Jezebel mantra "fuck discretion." In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Lessing took aim at the most taboo of subjects: 9/11. "September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible," Lessing said. "Some Americans will think I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They're a very naive people, or they pretend to be." [Telegraph]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=314407&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Doris Lessing Says Fuck Discretion, Writes About Pits]]> Our admiration for Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing grows with each passing day. Not only is she amazingly forthright, she also fought American publishers for the right to describe a woman's armpit hair in minute detail. In addition, she thoroughly relished writing about pubes! The American Prospect quotes from Lessing's memoir, Under My Skin:

When I wrote [classic novel 'The Golden Notebook'], for a long time I hesitated about describing the [heroine's] joy in her pubic hair, young and glossy, and growing in three perfect little swirls. But I knew there would be a fuss and if this was a question of principle, then it wasn't my principle.



Later, in the 1970s, I wrote a story called One off the Short List, and in it a woman is described as having golden fringes of underarm hair. An American publisher, and then magazines, would not print the story because of that hair. Yet in America you might describe any killings, tortures, rapes, horrors of war, cruelties. Not underarm hair in a story about seduction and sex. But I insisted, for by then, it was a matter of principle.
Jezebels will always applaud standing up for your principles, Doris. Especially when it involves saying fuck discretion.

When Writing the Personal Was Revolutionary [The American Prospect]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=312998&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[ Looks like we're not the only ones on the...]]> Looks like we're not the only ones on the internet who think Doris Lessing is a hot bitch. Since she was declared the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, Lessing's MySpace profile has been inundated with friend requests. Though Doris does not maintain the page herself, her extant stats include: age (87), status (Divorced), and Zodiac sign (Libra). Up next: LOLessings. I can has nobell praze? [New York Times]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=310796&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[It's Official: Doris Lessing Really Is Our Fave Bitch Of The Day]]>
Today, the press greeted Golden Notebook author Doris Lessing as she arrived at her home in a taxi. In the clip above, they tell her she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and her response is, "Oh Christ. I couldn't care less." She's the saltiest! What's not seen in the clip is that reporters then tried to elicit a more printable quote from Lessing, and when one of them reminded her about the $1.5 million cash prize she said, "I'm already thinking about all the people who are going to send me begging letters — I can see them lining up now."

Video [Yahoo News via FourFour]
Lessing Not Impressed by Nobel Prize [AP]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=309980&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Doris Lessing is an awesomely salty old bitch....]]> Doris Lessing is an awesomely salty old bitch. This morning when she was told about her Nobel Prize win, Doris's first reaction was, "Oh Christ! ... I couldn't care less." Lessing continued, "I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise. I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off." She also said that the awards process is "graceless" and it "doesn't mean anything artistically." Doris, will you be my grandma? Or at least have a scotch with me and tell me to piss off? [Yahoo News]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=309938&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[ Doris Lessing, the author of feminist mainstay...]]> Doris Lessing, the author of feminist mainstay The Golden Notebook, was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature today, the 11th woman to receive the honor. Lessing, who was attacked as "unfeminine" when The Golden Notebook debuted in 1962, responded by saying: "Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise." The 88-year-old Lessing's most recent novel, The Cleft, hit stores in July. [NY Times]

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