At the time of the death of Norman Mailer, a writer under
whose influence, both in terms of literature and in terms of culture, I came of
age, I posted this angry piece on Rodak Riffs. I thought at the time that the
Nobel Prize committee had made a terrible unforced error in choosing Doris
Lessing over Mailer for the literature prize. I am no longer so sure of that.
The reason for my tentative change of heart is that I have
begun reading Lessing’s Canopus in Argos:Archives, a sequence in which the first novel is Re: Colonised Planet 5 Shikasta. I have begun reading Shikasta as a
result of a conversation on Facebook involving my reading of Philip K. Dick’s
Exegesis. This led me to Lessing’s novel sequence. I am about one-third of the
way through the first book, having borrowed the first three from the library,
and I am very impressed. The following brief excerpt from the Wikipedia article
on Lessing will give you enough background on the nature of the sequence to
save me the trouble:
When asked about
which of her books she considers most important, Lessing chose the Canopus in
Argos sequence. These novels present an advanced interstellar society's efforts
to accelerate the evolution of other worlds, including Earth. […] Using Sufi concepts, to which
Lessing had been introduced in the mid-1960s by her "good friend and
teacher" Idries Shah, the series of novels also owes much to
the approach employed by the early 20th century mystic G.
I. Gurdjieff in his work All and Everything.
So what we basically have in the Canopus sequence is a
“chariot of the gods” scenario, with Shikasta—the fallen planet—representing
Earth; Canopus standing in for “heaven” and the evil planet Shammat and its
agents representing “hell” and the demonic forces.
It has been insights like the one below concerning the
evolution of religion that have made Shikasta so rewarding for me, thus far:
During the
entire period under review, religions of any kind flourished. Those that
concern us most here took their shape from the lives or verbal formulations of
our envoys. This happened more often than not, and can be taken as a rule:
every one of our public cautioners left behind a religion, or cult, and many of
the unknown ones did, too.
These
religions had two main aspects. The positive one, at their best: a
stabilization of the culture, preventing the worst excesses of brutality,
exploitation, and greed. The negative: a priesthood manipulating rules,
regulations, with punitive inflexibility; sometimes allowing, or exacerbating,
excesses of brutality, exploitation, and greed. These priesthoods distorted
what was left of our envoys’ instruction, if it was understood by them at all,
and created a self-perpetuating body of individuals totally identified with
their invented ethics, rules, beliefs, and who were always the worst enemies of
any envoys we sent.
These
religions were a main difficulty in the way of maintaining Shikasta in our
system.
They have
often been willing agents of Shammat.
This passage expresses succinctly and precisely what I had
already come to believe concerning the nature of professional priesthoods and
organized religion.
So I have reevaluated Lessing’s contribution to literary
culture and her body of work. If my enthusiasm for this series continues to
grow, I intend to go back and read more of her work. I read The Golden Notebook
way back in my Ann Arbor days and liked it. And I have read a few of her novels—The Fifth Child comes mind—since; but not many. That may now change.
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