Doris Lessing

I have just finished Doris Lessing's novel "The Golden Notebook". No wonder she won the Nobel Prize for literature. Here is an important, for me, quote from the introduction:
" it is not only childish of a writer to want to see what he sees., to understand the shape and aim of the novel as he sees it - his wanting this mean that he has not understood a most fundamental point. Which is that the book is alive and potent and fructifying and able to promote thought and discussion only when its plan and shape and intention are not understood, because that moment of seeing the shape and plan and intention is also the moment when there isn't anything more to be got out of it.
And when a book's pattern and the shape of its inner life is as plain to the reader as it is to the writer - then perhaps it is time to throw the book aside, and start again on something new."

Funeral Music

The accompanist of the Castleford Choral Society (where Kath and I have been singing for about 30 years) is a fine organist and often is asked to play at weddings and funerals. She told us that she was asked to play at a recent funeral "Smoke gets in your eyes". The funeral was followed by a cremation.