Home > The Book Page > Archives > 2007 > December > 11 > Entry
Lessing on literacy and life today
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Doris Lessing gave her acceptance speech last week for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel people posted a transcript on their website and I think the speech is a true thing of beauty.
Lessing’s speech is about many things, but it’s partly about her years in Africa, and what she saw there, and life for us in the West today. And the contrast between those two, and how it may relate to books and literacy and the future of literature.
Here are a few excerpts:
“What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked “What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?” And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc.”
“I have seen a teacher in a school where there was no textbooks, not even a bit of chalk for the blackboard - it was stolen - teach his class of six to eighteen year olds by moving stones in the dust, chanting “Two times two is…..” and so on. I have seen a girl, perhaps not more than twenty, similarly lacking textbooks, exercise books, biros - anything, teach the A, B, C in the dust with a stick, while the sun beat down and the dust swirled.”
“In order to write, in order to make literature, there must be a close connection with libraries, books, the Tradition.”
Your comments?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: News and Reviews
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Kate
December 11, 2007 9:35 PM | Link to this
I still haven’t finished reading the speech. My eyes keep filling up and I have to put it aside. The yearning for books and learning in Africa is humbling, overwhelming, heartbreaking, and hopeful. I don’t know if I have have ever yearned for anything the way that Lessing has described. I have not had to go without anything that nourishes my body or soul in my life. But reading her speech makes me feel like I have missed/taken for granted so much.
By ron
December 12, 2007 9:16 AM | Link to this
This is a good acceptance speech,but I much prefer Doris Lessing when she’s not on her best behavior.