Time Bites: Views and Reviews [Hardcover]

Doris Lessing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 29, 2005

Assembled here for the first time in book form are the very best of several decades' worth of occasional writings from perhaps the best-loved and most-admired of Britain's great female writers. A selection of the very best of Doris Lessing's essays, never before collected together and published in book form. Articles on writers as diverse as Jane Austen, Muriel Spark, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Mikael Bulgakov sit alongside autobiographical looks at the beliefs that have shaped Lessing's thinking. There are adoring and adorable pieces on the beloved cats that she has allowed to share her life, insightful looks at the Africa in which she grew up, and London and England, the place where she made her home. The range of subjects, cultures and periods within these essays is huge, but the collection is utterly consistent in one key regard: Doris Lessing's clear-eyed vision and clearly-expressed prose are present throughout. There is a huge amount of wisdom and entertainment in these pages, and fans of Doris's infectiously forthright, zestful and impish spirit will love to own and read this book.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Arguably the grande dame of English letters—the list of her published works comes to 60-plus—Lessing has always been outspoken about literature, politics and social issues. The 65 essays and book reviews collected here range over those topics and others, all declaimed in Lessing's brisk, wry voice and articulated with pragmatic intelligence. Her literary reviews always amplify the book at hand; the pieces on Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen resonate with fresh insight. Her enthusiastic reconsiderations of authors who are little read today, including Olive Schreiner, George Meredith, A.E. Coppard and Walter de la Mare, may pique readers' curiosity. Another obscure book, about an American prostitute, comes to light in the fascinating "The Maimie Papers." Six essays discuss the writer Idries Shah and his books about the mysteries and consolations of Sufism, which, Lessing claims, were "like a depth charge" and fulfilled all her philosophical and spiritual needs. Not every reader will be convinced. There's a tirade against Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia was Lessing's homeland) and a coruscating indictment of American complacency before 9/11. The main theme, whether addressed overtly or underlying her literary criticism, is the indispensable place of books in the life of an educated person and an enlightened culture. Hers is a clarion call. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Lessing has been prolific for decades, writing diverse novels, short stories, plays, nonfiction, and autobiographies. She is also a superb essayist: lucid, wise, knowledgeable, and witty. Most of her conversational, fast-moving, often wry inquiries into literature, politics, and ethics were originally published in England, hence little known in America, a lack redressed in this generous and pleasurable collection. Knowing books as intimately as she does, and caring deeply about reading and writing, Lessing pens critical essays that are vibrant and illuminating, with quotable lines on every page. She writes of cats, censorship, Sufism, the exhilaration of rereading Stendhal, "book hunger" in African villages, and the nature of memory. Lessing revs up readers'love for books, observes that "the voices of common sense are always softer than the noisy rhetorics of extremism," and, in one of her more contemplative pieces, "Problems, Myths, and Stories," considers how intrinsic storytelling is to humanness, even as education loosens its connection to great literature, and the art of reading is altered by new technologies and expectations. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First Edition. 1 in number line edition (November 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060831405
• ISBN-13: 978-0060831400
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,528,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lessing on Your Mind, July 17, 2007

By 

David Schweizer "Almawood" (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Time Bites: Views and Reviews (Paperback)

I am old enough to remember a time when every self-respecting woman had a copy of the "Golden Notebooks" on her shelf. I am not sure that books are important to today's hip woman, but I have been a life long reader of hers, and she continues in her 80s to be a great humanitarian if not quite the great writer she used to be. "Time Bites" which could just as well be called "tidbits" is not much in the way of a book. These are not even proper essays really, certainly not prize winners, but they are 'occasional pieces' which is a respectable genre in itself. She writes appreciations of writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, she addresses what she calls the stupidity of political correctness which, correctly, she says has destroyed American universities, she reminds us of the insanity of the American left, but also of the lunatic right, she speaks in her old age of moderation, shares her love of animals, and speaks yet again to the tragedy of Zimbabwe, her former home country. The voice of sanity is rare these days, so I highly recommend this collection, which includes dozens of short, probing, gently critical pieces. Lessing, one feels, cares far more about the world than about herself. How's that for a recommendation?

5.0 out of 5 stars Lessing's Time Bites, September 16, 2008

By 

Luis F. Anterzana "Plain Luis" (Mercer Island, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Time Bites: Views and Reviews (Paperback)

THis is a serious book because it brings you to the author's views in a number of subjects, all of them worth knowing. Her points of view are contemporary and useful as a guide for those who wonder why and how come certain things are the way they are. Her observations put light into events very clearly and in especially the events involving the Zimbabwe situation.

LUIS

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent, sensible, clear but without poetic fire or humor, January 7, 2008

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Time Bites: Views and Reviews (Hardcover)

This collection of small essays reveals to us the world of Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing. Lessing is an extremely serious writer , one with a strong moral sense. She writes here about a number of her fellow writers, D.H.Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, A.C.Coppard, Bulgakov, George Meredith, Olive Schreiner, Tolstoy- about the writer who has meant the most to her Idries Shah, and the religious philosophy he espouses, Sufism- about animals, especially cats, about being young and being old, about the changes she has seen in writers mentality and motivation in her lifetime, about Education , about the tragedy of Zimbabwe,about Opera and her connection with the composer Philip Glass, about the difference between writing fiction and writing autobiography, about the satisfaction of knowing her book 'The Golden Notebook' has been read and enjoyed by so many people in so many different places. She also writes an essay about the wisdom of 'Ecclesiastes'. She writes of its prose. "From the very first verse of Ecclesiastes you are carried along on a running tide of sound, incantantory, almost hypnotic , and it is easy to imagine yourself sitting among this man's pupils, listeningt them..... Your ears are entranced , but at the same time you are very much alert."
I would say of this collection on the whole that there are spots in it in which the reader will be made very alert and feel that they have truly learned and enjoyed. But that there is not real inspiration or fire or humor in it. A decent work.