IN PURSUIT OF DORIS LESSING Also by Claire Sprague REREADING DORIS LESSING: Narrative Strategies of Doubling and Repetition CRITICAL ESSAYS ON DORIS LESSING (co-editor) VIRGINIA WOOLF (editor) VAN WYCK BROOKS: The Early Years EDGAR SALTUS HAMLET: Enter Critic (co-editor) In Pursuit of Doris Lessing Nine Nations Reading Edited by CLAIRE SPRAGUE Visiting Professor of English, New York University, and Professor Emeritus of Brooklyn College, The City University of New York Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-20756-5 ISBN 978-1-349-20754-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20754-1 ©The Macmillan Press Ltd 1990 Editorial matter and selection © Claire Sprague 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-49292-5 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1990 ISBN 978-0-312-04713-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data In pursuit of Doris Lessing: nine nations reading I edited by Claire Sprague. p. em. ISBN 978-0-312-04713-9 1. Lessing, Doris, 1919- -Criticism and interpretation. 1. Sprague, Claire. PR6023.E833Z7 1990 823'.91~c20 90-8106 CIP Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on the Contributors viii Introduction-Doris Lessing: 'In the World, But Not of It' Claire Sprague 1 1 Reading Doris Lessing's Rhodesian Stories in Zimbabwe Anthony Chennells 17 2 The Quest and the Quotidian: Doris Lessing in South Africa Eve Bertelsen 41 3 Doris Lessing in Pursuit of the English, or, No Small, Personal Voice Clare Hanson 61 4 From Supermarket to Schoolroom: Doris Lessing in the United States Ellen Cronan Rose 74 5 Cultures of Occupation and the Canadian [Con]Script- [ion]: 'Lessing Changed My Life' Virginia Tiger 89 6 Doris through the French Looking-Glass Nicole Ward Jouve 102 7 The German Doris Lessing: A Mixed [B]Lessing Mona Knapp 113 8 Doris Lessing in the Mi[d]st[s] of Ideology: The Spanish Reading Fernando Galvan Reula 128 v vi Contents 9 A Case of Chronic Anachronisms: Doris Lessing and the USSR Lorna M. Peterson 142 Index 158 Acknowledgements All of us who have written about Doris Lessing have learned from one another. My thanks to that exceptionally collaborative community. For this volume I wish to thank all of the contributors and especially Lorna Peterson, Virginia Tiger, and Ellen Cronan Rose for their help in various phases of its preparation - finding the right title, reading my introduction, and talking through the usual minor and major aches that accompany the making of a book. As always, my son Jesse participates in my work in ways both mysterious and self-evident. In the choice of the cover photograph, his eye was truer than mine. My very special thanks to Dee Seligman who first used that perfect title, 'In Pursuit of Doris Lessing', in print and who has graciously permitted me to use it again for this volume. vii Notes on the Contributors Eve Bertelsen, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town, completed her doctorate at the University of London. She has edited Doris Lessing, no. 5 in the Southern Africa Literature Series (Johannesburg, 1985) and also written a book on Charles Dickens as well as articles on Lessing, D. H. Lawrence and other writers. In her appearances in the South African press and over South African television, she has talked about women, advertising and African literature. Anthony Chennells was born in Zimbabwe and has lectured for many years in the Department of English at the University of Zimbabwe. He has made a comprehensive study of Southern Rhodesian settler novels and has published on these and other aspects of Southern African writing. Fernando Galvan Reula is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain). His latest publications include an edition and translation of Graham Greene's The Quiet American (Madrid, 1987) and Formas nuevas en la ficci6n britanica contemporanea: David Lodge, Ian McEwan y Salman Rushdie (La Laguna, 1988). The November 1988 issue of the Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, of which he is the editor, is dedicated to recent British fiction. Clare Hanson is Senior Lecturer in English at the College of St Paul and StMary, Cheltenham. She has worked on the short story and on Katherine Mansfield. Her books include Short Stories and Short Fictions, 1880-1980 and The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield. She has published on a variety of women writers and on feminist theory and is currently preparing a book on Virginia Woolf for the Macmillan Women Writers Series. Nicole Ward Jouve is French and now lives in England. She has written fiction (Shades of Grey), criticism in English (Colette and Baudelaire), essays on Lessing, Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf, and a study of a mass murderer ('The Streetcleaner': The viii Notes on the Contributors ix Yorkshire Ripper Case on Trial). She is Professor of English and Related Literatures and Women's Studies at York University. Mona Knapp has a PhD in German literature and is the author of Doris Lessing (New York, 1984), and of monographs and articles on modern German and Commonwealth literature, as well as textbooks and reviews. She currently teaches German at a private school and is the associate editor of the Doris Lessing Newsletter. Lorna M. Peterson is associate coordinator of Five Colleges, Incorporated (Amherst, Mass.) about which she has written a brief history, Glancing Backward: Twenty Five Years of Cooperation (1984). She has taught courses on contemporary women's fiction and women in Russian literature. She holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature from Yale University. Ellen Cronan Rose teaches English and Women's Studies at Drexel University. A former president of the Doris Lessing Society, she has published The Tree Outside the Window: Doris Lessing's 'Children of Violence' and articles on Lessing. With Carey Kaplan, she has edited Doris Lessing: The Alchemy of Survival and Approaches to Teaching Lessing's 'The Golden Notebook'. Claire Sprague is a Professor Emeritus of Brooklyn College, CUNY, and a Visiting Professor at New York University. Her most recent book is Rereading Doris Lessing: Narrative Strategies of Doubling and Repetition (1987). She has served as president of the Doris Lessing Society (1980-2) and editor of the Doris Lessing Newsletter (1982-8). Her other published work includes Critical Essays on Doris Lessing· (co-editor), Virginia Woolf (editor), and books and articles about various American writers. She is currently general editor of G. K. Hall's series on the impact of feminist theory on the arts and sciences. Virginia Tiger is a Professor of English at Rutgers University (Newark) where she directs the Graduate English Program. She has written articles and reviews about contemporary British and American literature. Her books include William Golding: The Dark Fields of Discovery and Everywoman. She is also the co-editor of Critical Essays on Doris Lessing and a frequent contributor to the Doris Lessing Newsletter.