Doris Lessing: The Diaries of Jane Somers

Cover Page

Title Page The Diaries of Jane Somers Doris Lessing

Preface

I THE DIARY OF A GOOD NEIGHBOUR

2 IF THE OLD COULD …

About the Author

By the Same Author

Read On

The Grass is Singing

The Golden Notebook

The Good Terrorist

Love, Again

The Fifth Child

Copyright

About the Publisher

I have been thinking about writing a pseudonymous novel for years. Like, I am sure, most writers. How many do? It is in the nature of things that we don’t know. But I intended from the start to come clean, only wanted to make a little experiment.

The Diary of a Good Neighbour got written when it did for several reasons. One: I wanted to be reviewed on merit, as a new writer, without the benefit of a ‘name’; to get free of that cage of associations and labels that every established writer has to learn to live inside. It is easy to predict what reviewers will say. Mind you, the labels change. Mine have been – starting with The Grass is Singing : she is a writer about the colour bar (obsolete term for racism) – about communism – feminism – mysticism; she writes space fiction, science fiction. Each label has served for a few years.

Two: I wanted to cheer up young writers, who often have such a hard time of it, by illustrating that certain attitudes and processes they have to submit to are mechanical, and have nothing to do with them personally, or with their kind or degree of talent.

Another reason, frankly if faintly malicious: some reviewers complained they hated my Canopus series, why didn’t I write realistically, the way I used to do before: preferably The Golden Notebook over again? These were sent The Diary of a Good Neighbour but not one recognized me. Some people think it is reasonable that an avowed devotee of a writer’s work should only be able to recognize it when packaged and signed; others not.

Again, when I began writing my Canopus series I was surprised to find I had been set free to write in ways I had not used before. I wondered if there would be a similar liberation if I were to write in the first person as a different character. Of course, all writers become different characters all the time, as we write about them: all our characters are inside us somewhere. (This can be a terrifying thought.) But a whole book would be a different matter, mean activating one of the gallery of people who inhabit every one of us, strengthening him or her, setting her (or him) free to develop. And it did turn out that as Jane Somers I wrote in ways that Doris Lessing cannot. It was more than a question of using the odd turn of phrase or an adjective to suggest a woman journalist who is also a successful romantic novelist: Jane Somers knew nothing about a kind of dryness, like a conscience, that monitors Doris Lessing whatever she writes and in whatever style. After all there are many different styles, or tones of voice, in the Canopus series – not to mention Briefing for a Descent into Hell and Memoirs of a Survivor – and sometimes in the same book. Some may think this is a detached way to write about Doris Lessing, as if I were not she: it is the name I am detached about. After all, it is the third name I’ve had: the first, Tayler, being my father’s; the second, Wisdom (now try that one on for size!), my first husband’s; and the third my second husband’s. Of course there was McVeigh, my mother’s name, but am I Scots or Irish? As for Doris, it was the doctor’s suggestion, he who delivered me, my mother being convinced to the last possible moment that I was a boy. Born six hours earlier, I would have been Horatia, for Nelson’s Day. What could that have done for me? I sometimes do wonder what my real name is: surely I must have one?

Another influence that went to make Jane Somers was reflections about what my mother would be like if she lived now: that practical, efficient, energetic woman, by temperament conservative, a little sentimental, and only with difficulty (and a lot of practice at it) able to understand weakness and failure, though always kind. No, Jane Somers is not my mother, but thoughts of women like my mother did feed Jane Somers.

I and my agent, Jonathan Clowes, decided in our plan of campaign that it would be fair to submit The Diary of a Good Neighbour to my main publishers first. In Britain these are Jonathan Cape and Granada. Cape (not Tom Maschler personally) turned it down forthwith. Granada kept it some time, were undecided, but said it was too depressing to publish: in these fallen days major and prestigious publishers can see nothing wrong in refusing a novel in which they see merit because it might not sell. Not thus, once, were serious literary publishers. I saw the readers’ reports and was reminded how patronized and put-down new writers are.

Michael Joseph, who accepted my first novel all those years ago, has now twice published me as a new writer. On taking The Diary of a Good Neighbour , they said it reminded them of Doris Lessing, and were taken into our confidence and entered with relish into the spirit of the thing. The redoubtable Bob Gottlieb of Knopf in New York said at once, Who do you think you are kidding? – or words to that effect. Interesting that these two great publishing firms, crammed with people and the possibilities of a leak, were able to keep the secret as long as they wanted: it was dear friends who, swearing their amazing and tested reliability, could not stand the strain.

Three European publishers bought Good Neighbour : in France, in Germany, and in Holland. My French publisher rang up to say he had bought this book, had I perhaps helped Jane Somers, who reminded him of me?

This surely brings us back to the question: what is it that the perspicacious recognize, when they do? After all, Jane Somers’s style is different from Lessing’s. Each novel or story has this characteristic note, or tone of voice – the style, peculiar to itself and self-consistent. But behind this must sound another note, independent of style. What is this underlying tone, or voice, and where does it originate in the author? It seems to me we are listening to, responding to, the essence of a writer here, a groundnote.

We – that is agent, publishers and I – believed the reviewers would guess at once. But not one did. A few people, not all reviewers, liked The Diary of a Good Neighbour. It was mostly women journalists in women’s magazines who reviewed it, because Jane Somers was described on the dust jacket as a well-known woman journalist. (It was enough, it seems, to say it for people to believe it.) This neatly highlights the major problem of publishing: how to bring a book to the attention of readers. The trigger here: the phrase woman journalist. (Some potential reviewers, male, were put off by it.) It is this situation that has given rise to all these new promotional schemes in Britain: The Best of Young British Novelists, The Best Novels of Our Time, the razzmatazz prizes, and so on. The problem can only exist, it seems to me, because so many good novels are being written. If there were only a few, there would be no difficulty. Ever more loudly shrill the voices, trying to get attention: this is the best novel since Gone With the Wind , War and Peace and The Naked and the Dead! Overkill earns diminishing returns and numbed readers return to former habits, such as relying on intuition and the recommendation of friends. Jane Somers’s first novel (first serious novel – of course she had written those romantic novels which were not reviewed at all, but sold very well!) was noticed, and got a few nice little reviews. In short, it was reviewed as new novels are. And that could easily have been that. Novels, even good ones, are being published all the time that have what publishers call ‘a shelf life’ (like groceries) of a few months. (Once they used the phrase as a joke, sending themselves up, but now they use it straight. ‘The shelf life of books is getting shorter,’ you’ll hear them say. ‘It’s down to a few weeks now.’ As if it all had nothing to do with them. And it hasn’t: the mechanisms for selling dominate their practices; the tail wags the dog.) A first novel can be remaindered and out of print and vanish as if it had never been, if unlucky enough not to win a prize or in some way attract a spotlight such as the admiration of a well-known writer who cries (see above), ‘This is the greatest novel since Tom Jones. ’ Or, making accommodation to the times, ‘More exciting than Dallas !’