22
DORIS LESSING
all does include
Clarissa
and
Tristram Shandy, The Tragic Come–
dians
-
and Joseph Conrad.
But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give
oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For
instance, decade after decade bright young men and women emerge
from their universities able to say proudly: "Of course I know noth–
ing about German literature." It is the mode. The Victorians knew
everything about German literature, but were able with a clear con–
science not to know much about the French.
As for the rest - well, it is no accident that I got intelligent
criticism from people who were, or who had been, Marxists. They
saw what I was trying to do. This is because Marxism looks at things
as a whole and in
~elation
to each other - or tries to, but its limita–
tions are not the point for the moment. A person who has been in–
fluenced by Marxism takes it for granted that an event in Siberia
will affect one in Botswana. I think it is possible that Marxism was
the first attempt, for our time, outside the formal religions, at a
world-mind, a world ethic.
It
went wrong, could not prevent itself
from dividing and subdividing, like all the other religions, into smaller
and smaller chapels, sects, and creeds. But it was an attempt.
This business of seeing what I was trying to do - it brings me
to the critics, and the danger of evoking a yawn. This sad bickering
between writers and critics, playwrights and critics: the public have
got so used to it they think, as of quarreling children: "Ah yes, dear
little things, they are at it again." Or: "You writers get all that
praise, or if not praise, at least all that attention - so why are you
so perennially wounded?" And the public are quite right. For rea–
sons I won't go into here, early and valuable experiences in my writ–
ing life gave me a sense of perspective about critics and reviewers;
but over this novel,
The Golden Notebook,
I lost it: I thought that
for the most part the criticism was too silly to be true. Recovering
balance, I understood the problem.
It
is that writers are looking to
the critics for an
alter ego,
that other self more intelligent than one–
self who has seen what one is reaching for, and who judges you only
by whether you have matched up to your aim or not. I have never
yet met a writer who, faced at last with that rare being, a real critic,
doesn't lose all paranoia and become gratefully attentive - he has
found what he thinks he needs. But what he, the writer, is asking
