"The Good Terrorist"
Doris Lessing published "The Good Terrorist" in 1985. All her previous books had been acclaimed but this one bombed. Why?
Till then Lessing had been the darling of the left-wing intelligentsia. She had been married to the German political activist Gottfried Lessing who had immigrated to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where Lessing grew up on her father's farm. (He later became the German ambassador to Uganda and was accidentally killed in the 1979 revolt against Idi Amin.) Her husband had convinced her to join the Communist Party and she became a pariah in Rhodesia. She divorced him and went to live in England in 1948.
Her first book, "The Grass Is Singing," was published in 1949 and was immediately banned in South Africa because it dealt with inter-racial sex between a white farmer's wife and her black male servant. Years later when I was a teen I managed to get hold of a contraband copy and then read all six books in her "Children of Violence" African series which were published between 1952 and 1969.
In 1962 "The Golden Notebook" was published and she was hailed as the greatest feminist author since Simone de Beauvoir, the French communist and Sartre's lover. Lessing continued writing novels (many with feminist themes) but she had become disillusioned with communism and feminism. Lessing later said about her canonization by the feminists:
What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, "Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more." Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I've come with great regret to this conclusion.
In 1974 "Memoirs of a Survivor" was published. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, this was Lessing's first foray into the fantasy/sci-fi genre. (It was later made into a movie starring Julie Christie.) In 1979 she turned almost exclusively to writing fantasy and science fiction in the "Canopus in Argos" series. These five novels were based on her new religion, Sufism, and, though I tried hard to read them, I found them boring, pretentious and tedious.
Then she returned to writing about politics and in 1985 "The Good Terrorist" was published. Her fans were excited, thinking that it was sympathetic to "progressivism" but it actually turned out to be a very unflattering look at leftist "activists."
It's the story of a group of communists who set up a "squat" in London. For me, reading it was like was reading a chapter out of my own life. I had lived in a "squat" in London in the early 1970s. The commune that I was involved with were "flower children" much given to sex, drugs and rock-n-roll but the commune in the "squat" next-door were hard-core Marxist/Maoists who regarded us as decadent. They believed that we should postpone our life of pleasure until after the Revolution. Years later, after I had moved on from hippiedom, I found out that many members of the Maoist "squat" had been caught plotting acts of terrorism and had been imprisoned.
From "The Good Terrorist:"
...skilled people watched, and waited, judging when people...were ripe, could be really useful. Unsuspected by the petit bourgeois who were in the thrall of the mental superstructure of fascist-imperialistic Britain, the poor slaves of propaganda, were these watchers, the observers, the poor people who held all the strings in their hands. In factories, in big industries...in the civil service...in the B.B.C., in the big newspapers - everywhere in fact was this network, and even in little unimportant places like these two houses, Nos 43 and 45, just ordinary squats and communes. Nothing was too small to be overlooked, everyone with any sort of potential was noticed, observed, treasured...
The protagonist, Alice Mellings, is "The Good Terrorist" who sees herself as a committed revolutionary but is really just another hippie chick. She thinks that she's a smart activist because she knows how to confront officials, spray paint slogans and march in protests but she is completely naive when it comes to understanding her communist companions in the squat. Alice is the ultimate "useful idiot" and of course is shocked when her companions turn out to be real terrorists who are responsible for bomb attacks.
I knew many "Alices" in my hippie days - they all grew up to be Cindy Sheehan clones. I also knew quite a few real communists in South Africa, London and San Francisco. I don't mean "useful idiot" communists. The real communists are not even the angry hateful misanthropes who use bombs. Even the eco-terrorists are "useful idiots." The real communists don't do the heavy lifting. They just manipulate the "useful idiots" from behind the scenes and provide the funding. They are the people who "watch and wait." One day I will write about them.
Till then Lessing had been the darling of the left-wing intelligentsia. She had been married to the German political activist Gottfried Lessing who had immigrated to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where Lessing grew up on her father's farm. (He later became the German ambassador to Uganda and was accidentally killed in the 1979 revolt against Idi Amin.) Her husband had convinced her to join the Communist Party and she became a pariah in Rhodesia. She divorced him and went to live in England in 1948.
Her first book, "The Grass Is Singing," was published in 1949 and was immediately banned in South Africa because it dealt with inter-racial sex between a white farmer's wife and her black male servant. Years later when I was a teen I managed to get hold of a contraband copy and then read all six books in her "Children of Violence" African series which were published between 1952 and 1969.
In 1962 "The Golden Notebook" was published and she was hailed as the greatest feminist author since Simone de Beauvoir, the French communist and Sartre's lover. Lessing continued writing novels (many with feminist themes) but she had become disillusioned with communism and feminism. Lessing later said about her canonization by the feminists:
What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, "Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more." Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I've come with great regret to this conclusion.
In 1974 "Memoirs of a Survivor" was published. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, this was Lessing's first foray into the fantasy/sci-fi genre. (It was later made into a movie starring Julie Christie.) In 1979 she turned almost exclusively to writing fantasy and science fiction in the "Canopus in Argos" series. These five novels were based on her new religion, Sufism, and, though I tried hard to read them, I found them boring, pretentious and tedious.
Then she returned to writing about politics and in 1985 "The Good Terrorist" was published. Her fans were excited, thinking that it was sympathetic to "progressivism" but it actually turned out to be a very unflattering look at leftist "activists."
It's the story of a group of communists who set up a "squat" in London. For me, reading it was like was reading a chapter out of my own life. I had lived in a "squat" in London in the early 1970s. The commune that I was involved with were "flower children" much given to sex, drugs and rock-n-roll but the commune in the "squat" next-door were hard-core Marxist/Maoists who regarded us as decadent. They believed that we should postpone our life of pleasure until after the Revolution. Years later, after I had moved on from hippiedom, I found out that many members of the Maoist "squat" had been caught plotting acts of terrorism and had been imprisoned.
From "The Good Terrorist:"
...skilled people watched, and waited, judging when people...were ripe, could be really useful. Unsuspected by the petit bourgeois who were in the thrall of the mental superstructure of fascist-imperialistic Britain, the poor slaves of propaganda, were these watchers, the observers, the poor people who held all the strings in their hands. In factories, in big industries...in the civil service...in the B.B.C., in the big newspapers - everywhere in fact was this network, and even in little unimportant places like these two houses, Nos 43 and 45, just ordinary squats and communes. Nothing was too small to be overlooked, everyone with any sort of potential was noticed, observed, treasured...
The protagonist, Alice Mellings, is "The Good Terrorist" who sees herself as a committed revolutionary but is really just another hippie chick. She thinks that she's a smart activist because she knows how to confront officials, spray paint slogans and march in protests but she is completely naive when it comes to understanding her communist companions in the squat. Alice is the ultimate "useful idiot" and of course is shocked when her companions turn out to be real terrorists who are responsible for bomb attacks.
I knew many "Alices" in my hippie days - they all grew up to be Cindy Sheehan clones. I also knew quite a few real communists in South Africa, London and San Francisco. I don't mean "useful idiot" communists. The real communists are not even the angry hateful misanthropes who use bombs. Even the eco-terrorists are "useful idiots." The real communists don't do the heavy lifting. They just manipulate the "useful idiots" from behind the scenes and provide the funding. They are the people who "watch and wait." One day I will write about them.
posted by Joubert at 9:50 AM
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