Word: lessinger
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Two other stories are worth mentioning-as assaults, the one astonishingly good, the other astonishingly awful, on the reader who otherwise would be in serious danger of falling asleep over this lame and longwinded assemblage of "short" (if only they were shorter) stories. The first of these, "Mrs. Fortescue" succeeds...
The other story, "Report on the Threatened City" is simply idiotic, and for a writer of Lessing's age and status, unpardonably sophomoric. Extra-terrestrial visitors-from Mars, no doubt-have this to say of planet earth": the young take to drugs, the old to convention, in five years the...
The other stories in the book, while more or less mediocre, demonstrate along with the story of the boy and the ancient prostitute, a certain ability for the particular and an insight into the quixotic. Although the over-riding characteristic of Lessing's writing-which is extremely uneven from story...
There are other criticisms one could make from a literary point of view. Very few of Lessing's characters get off without one or another dehumanizing analysis of their personalities. Lessing has an annoying habit of randomly doing away with articles and pronouns. She occasionally writes a very bad sentence...
With examples like Doestoevski or Orwell dangling before the mind's eye of the literary student of politics or the political student of literature, one could hardly argue for the blanket incompatibility of art and politics. The trouble with Lessing is that her fiction is not its own end, but...