Just a quick post to raise a few cheers for Doris Lessing getting the Nobel gong for Literature. The Golden Notebook has long been my favourite book – not because it’s feminist, which is to miss the point of Lessing – but because her acute psychological awareness, her deep understanding of that which drives the individual and collective, remains unparalleled in my experience. Her later work doesn’t touch me as much, but one of the most important pieces of advice to any young person is contained in the preface to The Golden Notebook:

You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself-educating your own judgement. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this society.”