December 10, 2007

Doris Lessing's Nobel acceptance speech. Doris Lessing, aged 88, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In her acceptance speech she recalls her childhood in Africa and laments that children in Zimbabwe are starving for knowledge, while those in more privileged countries shun reading for the "inanities" of the internet.

Oh, to be so cogent and well-expressed at 88! (We can cut her some slack on the internet remarks, surely.)

posted by rushmc 16 years ago
  • Indeed. If I could pull off reading Gore Vidal at work instead of chattering with you yobos surfing the nets, I shurely would.
  • I just tried to imagine my childhood without books, and I simply couldn't do it. Our house was full of them. I always had at least two going at once. You could get a big "mystery box" of books for a dollar at the local thrift shop, and my mother would get one every so often and we'd all dive in. Looking back, a lot of it was over my head and a lot of it was stuff that modern parents would deem wholly inappropriate, but they taught me everything I knew, and everything that I was. I can't imagine thinking, communicating, or heck, even imagining itself without the benefit of that onslaught of books.
  • That brought tears to my eyes. Beautiful and poignant and true. Thank you for the link rushmc.
  • Well said. TUM, my life would be a wilderness without books.
  • ahahaha.. typo! giggidy giggidy
  • 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 etc? My God, she's right. *logs off*