Sometimes it's nice to point out an article, or in this case a couple of articles, that feature smart women. Especially smart, accomplished women who speak their minds and don't care what anyone thinks.
Doris Lessing, a recent Nobel Prize winning writer, definitely fits the bill. How many people win a Nobel Prize and then say, "If I may be catty, Sweden doesn't have anything else."
Or this gem: "I hear girls saying, 'Oh I'm not going to bring a child into this wicked world,' which means they are going to be pregnant next week."
Both of those quotes are from a recent Time magazine interview she did (link via Gawker). There was also a piece in the Sunday New York Times Magazine where she talked about some other topics, mostly her latest work, "Alfred & Emily". The book is described as two novellas: one where she tells her mother's actual life story, then writes another one in which her mother is depicted "as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I." Something about that idea fascinated me. Sort of a "here's her life, and here's what should have happened had she been born into a better situation."
The new book will probably be her last, because, at 88 years young, she has "run out of energy completely." In the Time article she offers some advice to us younger scribes: "Don't assume you'll have it forever. Use it while you've got it, because it'll go; it's sliding away like water down a plug hole."
Now, she also said this about current conditions of Zimbabwe, where she grew up many years ago when it was known as Southern Rhodesia: "It's ruined. Under the whites it was an extremely efficient country. It could grow absolutely anything. We had railways and post offices and roads and water that worked. You can't just put that back overnight." The Gawker commenters rightly slam her for that, although its possible that there is more to what she said, since Zimbabwe is currently a bit of a mess, what with some countries claiming that Mugabe's Presidency is illegitimate. She was also, according to Gawker, "barred from South African and Rhodesia for denouncing apartheid." I'm not trying to excuse what she said, but I don't think it's in the same league as Imus' "Nappy Headed Ho's" riff.
I freely admit that I've never read a Doris Lessing novel, so I have no idea if she's "worthy" of a Nobel Prize or not. But I always appreciate it when someone says what's on her mind, especially someone who has lived a long time and accomplished a great deal. We get to hear plenty of old men talking, both wise and not-so-wise. So let's give the ladies a shot too.
image: nytimes
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