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The Golden Notebook: A Novel (Perennial Classics) Kindle Edition
"The Golden Notebook is Doris Lessing's most important work and has left its mark upon the ideas and feelings of a whole generation of women." — New York Times Book Review
Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna resolves to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.
Lessing's best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.
- Length
593
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English
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- PublisherHarper Perennial
- Publication date
2013
May 14
- File size2.5 MB
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Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna resolves to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.
Doris Lessing's best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.
--Saturday Review --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Golden Notebook
A NovelBy Doris LessingHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2008 Doris LessingAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061582486
Chapter One
Free Women: One
Anna meets her friend Molly in the summer of 1957 after a separation
The two women were alone in the London flat.
'The point is,' said Anna, as her friend came back from the telephone on the landing, 'the point is, that as far as I can see, everything's cracking up.'
Molly was a woman much on the telephone. When it rang she had just inquired: 'Well, what's the gossip?' Now she said, 'That's Richard, and he's coming over. It seems today's his only free moment for the next month. Or so he insists.'
'Well I'm not leaving,' said Anna.
'No, you stay just where you are.'
Molly considered her own appearance--she was wearing trousers and a sweater, both the worse for wear. 'He'll have to take me as I come,' she concluded, and sat down by the window. 'He wouldn't say what it's about--another crisis with Marion, I suppose.'
'Didn't he write to you?' asked Anna, cautious.
'Both he and Marion wrote--ever such bonhomous letters. Odd, isn't it?'
This odd, isn't it? was the characteristic note of the intimate conversations they designated gossip. But having struck the note, Molly swerved off with: 'It's no use talking now, because he's coming right over, he says.'
'He'll probably go when he sees me here,' said Anna, cheerfully, but slightly aggressive. Molly glanced at her, keenly, and said: 'Oh, but why?'
It had always been understood that Anna and Richard disliked each other; and before Anna had always left when Richard was expected. Now Molly said: 'Actually I think he rather likes you, in his heart of hearts. The point is, he's committed to liking me, on principle--he's such a fool he's always got to either like or dislike someone, so all the dislike he won't admit he has for me gets pushed off on to you.'
'It's a pleasure,' said Anna. 'But do you know something? I discovered while you were away that for a lot of people you and I are practically interchangeable.'
'You've only just understood that?' said Molly, triumphant as always when Anna came up with--as far as she was concerned--facts that were self-evident.
In this relationship a balance had been struck early on: Molly was altogether more worldly-wise than Anna who, for her part, had a superiority of talent.
Anna held her own private views. Now she smiled, admitting that she had been very slow.
'When we're so different in every way,' said Molly, 'it's odd. I suppose because we both live the same kind of life--not getting married and so on. That's all they see.'
'Free women,' said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinising glance from her friend: 'They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.'
'Well, we do, don't we?' said Molly, rather tart. 'Well, it's awfully hard not to,' she amended, hastily, because of the look of surprise Anna now gave her. There was a short pause, during which the women did not look at each other but reflected that a year apart was a long time, even for an old friendship.
Molly said at last, sighing: 'Free. Do you know, when I was away, I was thinking about us, and I've decided that we're a completely new type of woman. We must be, surely?'
'There's nothing new under the sun,' said Anna, in an attempt at a German accent. Molly, irritated--she spoke half a dozen languages well--said: 'There's nothing new under the sun,' in a perfect reproduction of a shrewd old woman's voice, German accented.
Anna grimaced, acknowledging failure. She could not learn languages, and was too self-conscious ever to become somebody else: for a moment Molly had even looked like Mother Sugar, otherwise Mrs. Marks, to whom both had gone for psycho-analysis. The reservations both had felt about the solemn and painful ritual were expressed by the pet name, 'Mother Sugar'; which, as time passed, became a name for much more than a person, and indicated a whole way of looking at life--traditional, rooted, conservative, in spite of its scandalous familiarity with everything amoral. In spite of--that was how Anna and Molly, discussing the ritual, had felt it; recently Anna had been feeling more and more it was because of; and this was one of the things she was looking forward to discussing with her friend.
But now Molly, reacting as she had often done in the past, to the slightest suggestion of a criticism from Anna of Mother Sugar, said quickly: 'All the same, she was wonderful, and I was in much too bad a shape to criticise.'
'Mother Sugar used to say, "You're Electra," or "You're Antigone," and that was the end, as far as she was concerned,' said Anna.
'Well, not quite the end,' said Molly, wryly insisting on the painful probing hours both had spent.
'Yes,' said Anna, unexpectedly insisting, so that Molly, for the third time, looked at her curiously. 'Yes. Oh I'm not saying she didn't do me all the good in the world. I'm sure I'd never have coped with what I've had to cope with without her. But all the same . . . I remember quite clearly one afternoon, sitting there--the big room, and the discreet wall lights, and the Buddha and the pictures and the statues.'
'Well?' said Molly, now very critical.
Anna, in the face of this unspoken but clear determination not to discuss it, said: 'I've been thinking about it all during the last few months . . . now I'd like to talk about it with you. After all, we both went through it, and with the same person . . . '
'Well?'
Anna persisted: 'I remember that afternoon, knowing I'd never go back. It was all that damned art all over the place.'
Molly drew in her breath, sharp. She said, quickly: 'I don't know what you mean.' As Anna did not reply, she said, accusing: 'And have you written anything since I've been away?'
'No.'
'I keep telling you,' said Molly, her voice shrill, 'I'll never forgive you if you throw that talent away. I mean it. I've done it, and I can't stand watching you--I've messed with painting and dancing and acting and scribbling, and now . . . you're so talented, Anna. Why? I simply don't understand.'
'How can I ever say why, when you're always so bitter and accusing?'
Molly even had tears in her eyes, which were fastened in the most painful reproach on her friend. She brought out with difficulty: 'At the back of my mind I always thought, well, I'll get married, so it doesn't matter my wasting all the talents I was born with. Until recently I was even dreaming about having more children--yes I know it's idiotic but it's true. And now I'm forty and Tommy's grown up. But the point is, if you're not writing simply because you're thinking about getting married . . . '
'But we both want to get married,' said Anna, making it humorous; the tone restored reserve to the conversation; she had understood, with pain, that she was not, after all, going to be able to discuss certain subjects with Molly.
Molly smiled, dryly, gave her friend an acute, bitter look, and said: 'All right, but you'll be sorry later.'
'Sorry,' said Anna, laughing, out of surprise. 'Molly, why is it you'll never believe other people have the disabilities you have?'
'You were lucky enough to be given one talent, and not four.'
'Perhaps my one talent has had as much pressure on it as your four?'
'I can't talk to you in this mood. Shall I make you some tea while we're waiting for Richard?'
'I'd rather have beer or something.' She added, provocative: 'I've been thinking I might very well take to drink later on.'
Molly said, in the older sister's tone Anna had invited: 'You shouldn't make jokes, Anna. Not when you see what it does to people--look at Marion. I wonder if she's been drinking while I was away?'
'I can tell you. She has--yes, she came to see me several times.'
'She came to see you?'
'That's what I was leading up to, when I said you and I seem to be interchangeable.'
Molly tended to be possessive--she showed resentment, as Anna had known she would, as she said: 'I suppose you're going to say Richard came to see you too?' Anna nodded; and Molly said, briskly, 'I'll get us some beer.' She returned from the kitchen with two long cold-beaded glasses, and said: 'Well you'd better tell me all about it before Richard comes, hadn't you?'
Continues...
Excerpted from The Golden Notebookby Doris Lessing Copyright © 2008 by Doris Lessing. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
From the Back Cover
Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna resolves to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.
Doris Lessing's best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Amazon.com Review
This largely autobiographical work comprises Anna's four notebooks: "a black notebook which is to do with Anna Wulf the writer; a red notebook concerned with politics; a yellow notebook, in which I make stories out of my experience; and a blue notebook which tries to be a diary." In a brilliant act of verisimilitude, Lessing alternates between these notebooks instead of presenting each one whole, also weaving in a novel called Free Women, which views Anna's life from the omniscient narrator's point of view. As the novel draws to a close, Anna, in the midst of a breakdown, abandons her dependence on compartmentalization and writes the single golden notebook of the title.
In tracking Anna's psychological movements--her recollections of her years in Africa, her relationship with her best friend, Molly, her travails with men, her disillusionment with the Party, the tidal pull of motherhood--Lessing pinpoints the pulse of a generation of women who were waiting to see what their postwar hopes would bring them. What arrived was unprecedented freedom, but with that freedom came unprecedented confusion. Lessing herself said in a 1994 interview: "I say fiction is better than telling the truth. Because the point about life is that it's a mess, isn't it? It hasn't got any shape except for you're born and you die."
The Golden Notebook suffers from certain weaknesses, among them giving rather simplistic, overblown illustrations to the phrase "a good man is hard to find" in the form of an endless parade of weak, selfish men. But it still has the capacity to fill emotional voids with the great rushes of feeling it details. Perhaps this is because it embodies one of Anna's own revelations: "I've been forced to acknowledge that the flashes of genuine art are all out of deep, suddenly stark, undisguiseable private emotion. Even in translation there is no mistaking these lightning flashes of genuine personal feeling." It seems that Lessing, like Anna when she decides to abandon her notebooks for the single, golden one, attempted to put all of herself in one book. --Melanie Rehak
From AudioFile
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About the Author
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"The Golden Notebook is Doris Lessing's most important work and has left its mark upon the ideas and feelings of a whole generation of women." -- Elizabeth Hardwick, New York Times Book Review
"No ordinary work of fiction...The technique, in a word, is brilliant." -- -- Saturday Review
"The most absorbing and exciting piece of new fiction I have read in a decades; it moves with the beat of our time, and it is true." -- --Irving Howe, New Republic
--This text refers to the audioCD edition.Product details
- ASIN : B00C4TK33Y
- Publisher : Harper Perennial (May 14, 2013)
- Publication date : May 14, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 2606 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 593 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #436,486 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,430 in Classic American Literature
- #1,611 in Romance Literary Fiction
- #2,056 in Women's Literary Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Doris May Lessing CH (née Tayler; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–69), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).
Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Elke Wetzig (elya) (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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I was impressed however by Lessing's description of the failure of Communism. I appreciated the disillusionment and despair so many true believers felt as they ignored horror stories from Stalinist Russia. It was heartbreaking. They hoped that our Original Fallen State could be overcome with better organization and motivation.
There are many Americans who still believe "education" can overcome drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and suicide. Their optimism is not very different from that of communist sympathizers. They deny the reality of concupiscence, that innate tendency to sin which corrupts every human endeavor. The effort itself is corrupt.
The book ends when Anna Wulf gives up her quest to be an artiste and assumes her quotidian duty to mother her daughter. She surrenders her individuality and becomes a person at last. It would be wonderful if she learned through the experience to be a person who writes.
Doris was, as I understand it, disappointed that the book was seized upon and claimed as a feminist tract. Indeed. For it's subject matter is much bigger than that.
Top reviews from other countries
As a document of the '60s, where philosophy, politics and the ideal of 'free love' were in full flow in London, the novel is priceless; as is its evocation of the communist life in both Rhodesia and Britain itself. In fact, further than that, most of the novel's sections are impressive - even Anna's 'everyday' section of the notebook, shows in fascinating detail a woman grappling with the major questions of her age, and of the freedom of women in modern western society. The novel is undoubtedly heavy-going at times, and certain issues in Anna's life are stretched too far by Lessing, to the point that the novel becomes boring and repetitive at points. Equally, her encounters with certain characters such as Molly's husband Richard, seem to be more diatribes from the author than an attempt to show human relationships. These sections are worth bearing with for some of the superbly insightful sections in the book; and ultimately, for the brilliant amalgamation of the notebooks which is the 'Golden Notebook' itself.
Lessing's novel is considered as one of the classic works of its era, and rightly so. Despite often being heavy going, sometimes frustrating, and too often overclouded by polemic viewpoints, this is a fascinating portrayal of the struggle for women in '60s Britain to assert their place, to understand their emotions and convictions, and to try to change themselves and the world around them a little for the better.
At the novel's opening, the life of Lessing's central character - (ex-)novelist Anna Wulf - seems hopelessly fragmented. Afflicted by writer's block, Anna pours the narrative of the various traumas of her life into four quite separate compartments: the Black Notebook relates to her "work life" as a writer; the Red Notebook her "political life" as a lapsed and disillusioned member of the British Communist party; the Yellow Notebook her (lightly fictionalised) love life; and the Blue Notebook her everyday existence. In all four areas, things grow increasingly desperate until Anna's mental health seems in serious question. However, it is only after what amounts to a "breakdown" followed by re-synthesis of her life as a whole in the eponymous Golden Notebook that Anna can really achieve mental and moral wellbeing.
It is a startlingly honest book, particularly for its time, and it is easy to empathise with Anna's plight. Lessing writes beautifully (particularly in the dark-hued and intensely nostalgic African sections of the Black Notebook), and throws off ideas and philosophical digressions like fireworks.
The book has undoubtedly dated a little, particularly in the ever-thorny area of sexuality and gender politics. As noted by another reviewer below, Anna's attitude to her gay lodgers is a tad dubious: it's fair enough to criticise them for being bitchy and misogynistic (they are!), but surely not for failing to be "Real Men"? Similarly, Anna not infrequently expresses (via her fictional alter ego in the Yellow Notebook) a somewhat unreconstructed craving to be sexually "Swept Away" by a "Real Man" (whatever one of those is) - while she clearly doesn't mean some sort of macho schmuck, this does jar a little nowadays. In part this is connected to Lessing's fascination at the time with a rather mystical version of Jungian psychoanalytical theory, with its ideas of "animus and anima": this was very trendy at the time (it crops up in the writing of Robertson Davies and Iris Murdoch, for instance) but seems less relevant nowadays. It is also worth remembering that Lessing was writing in the very early Sixties, well before the days of Shere Hite and Nancy Friday, and that her views on sex and sexuality were in fact very progressive and unexpectedly honest for the book's era. The novel's central theme (the need to live life as a whole) remains startling and compelling, and overall there is no question that this is a five-star read.
The central character is best-selling novelist Anna Wulf. The events of Anna’s ‘real’ life and those of her actress friend, Molly, are told in sections entitled “Free Women”. These script-like narratives are interrupted by extracts from four notebooks that Anna uses to record her life. The Black Notebook records her experiences in Rhodesia before and during WWII, on which her best-selling novel is loosely based, and also her rejection of proposals to film the book. The Red Notebook records her experiences as a member of the Communist Party and her sensitivity to international conflicts. The Yellow Notebook is a fictionalised account of the recent breakdown of Anna’s relationship with her married lover. The Blue Notebook is Anna’s personal diary/journal.
In the preface to my edition Lessing notes that the most important theme in the novel is fragmentation. Anna notebooks are her attempt to separate her life into compartments – writing, politics, love, and emotions. Inevitably she is unsuccessful. Events ‘leak’ from one notebook to another; they overlap and interact. Her continuing attempts to order and segregate are both a symptom and a symbol of her mental breakdown that progresses as the novel unfolds.
After reading Anna’s notebooks Molly’s son, Tommy, blinds himself in a failed suicide attempt. He becomes an ominous presence, all-knowing and judging, like some twenty-something Tiresius. Anna’s own decline accelerates as she begins a sexual relationship with her new lodger, a schizophrenic American called Saul. Her disintegration is played out against the wider fragmentation in the book. Men and women, spouse and lover, black and white, gay and straight, conventional and bohemian, capitalism and communism, communism itself, nation and citizen, the family and the individual – art and life, even: everything is at odds, splitting and splintering into opposing factions.
The final section of the novel sees Anna reject her four notebooks in favour of a single notebook, the Golden Notebook of the title. The Golden Notebook would seem to represent her attempt to conquer her illness – to literally “pull herself together” – but her decline continues. Saul’s departure and the anticipated return of her daughter from boarding school do hold out the promise of future healing, though.
I’ll admit, I found it a hard novel to get into but once I’d tuned into the voices of the various sections, I was hooked – until I reached the final, Golden Notebook, section, that is. The title made me think it would be a reworking what had gone before in the four notebook sections, drawing together their disparate strands and making Anna whole again, somehow. Perhaps that was too simplistic an expectation, but I can’t help but feel it would been more satisfying than Anna’s acceleration into madness, which became a bit...err...(dare I say) boring.
*Reading through a list of her works, Martha Quest seems to ring a bell. But the point still stands.
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The novel is structured into third person narration sections called "Free Women": it is the late 1950s and old friends Anna and Molly, both middle aged single parents with a history in the Communist Party, have lengthy "intellectual" discussions with each other about the current states of their lives. In later sections some dramatic action does occur, in a stagey sort of way.
But the real meat of the book is in the Notebooks which come between these sections. They've been written by Anna over a long period and provide lengthy glosses, reinterpretations and bits of background to the "current" events of the Free Women sections. It is in the fragmented and self-referential stories which emerge (slowly, over the course of the novel) in the notebooks that the structure and cleverness of The Golden Notebook reveals itself.
Lessing explicitly places herself in the tradition Thomas Mann and the big discursive novel of ideas. Her language is often dated and stagy, the dialogue is more in the form of political debate than naturalistic speech and (with the exception of the flashback to Africa), there is little sensuality (you don't get a sense of place, images and sense impressions are few and far between - it really is very cerebral). But her structure is clever, and she uses it very well to construct an impression of Anna's fractured state of mind, and the fractured state of the world she's living in.