Reductio ad genitalia

[bibliogramma]

The Cleft, Doris Lessing


Cleft, n.
1. A crack, crevice, or split.
2. A split or indentation between two parts, as of the chin.
Cleft, v.
A past tense and a past participle of cleave

Cleave, v.tr.
1. To split with or as if with a sharp instrument. See Synonyms at tear1.
2. To make or accomplish by or as if by cutting: cleave a path through the ice.
3. To pierce or penetrate: The wings cleaved the foggy air.
Cleave, v.intr.
1. Mineralogy: To split or separate, especially along a natural line of division.
2. To penetrate or pass through something, such as water or air.

One cannot accuse Lessing of an excess of subtlety in selecting the name of her latest novel, which is also the name of the people in the novel who live by the sea and live playfully edenic lives, reproducing casually through some parthenogenic process until the time of change when the strangely deformed children called Monsters, and later Squirts, start being born.

The Clefts live near a giant crack, crevice, or split in the rocks, which blooms read with algae once a month (just in case you didn't understand the image the first time you read it), they have a split or indentation between two parts in their bodies, from which issue more Clefts, and the mutated Squirts who change everything, and through this peculiar mutation, they are split or separated into two peoples (along a natural line of division, perhaps), and learn a new method of procreation, in which they are pierced or penetrated by the strange, new, and somewhat monstrous squirting organs of the Squirts, who do the kinds of things that no Cleft has ever done, such as making weapons that pierce or penetrate other animals to kill for eating, boats that pass through water as if by cutting... Eh, I could go on, but there's enough cleavage here already.

AS you may have gathered, I am not impressed.This was not a book I had intended to read, not after coming across Ursula K. Le Guin's review of the book. But my partner's mother gave it to me, and I thought to myself, Doris Lessing is, after all, the author of The Golden Notebook, can this really be as bad on so many levels as Le Guin suggests? As it happens, it is.

It's a misbegotten origin fable, bred in some overheated fumbling together of Desmond Morris' Naked Ape and Elaine Morgan's aquatic Eve, that proposes a misogynist essentialism in which women are sluggish, mindless, purposeless, timeless bearers of young and men are the bold, the daring, the innovators, the adventurers, the improvers, the creators of science and engineering and civilisation. In short, it's sexist crap. There is a framing story, that of a rather self-satisfied retired Roman gentleman historian who has gathered together the accounts of this origin tale, and presents it to the reader, complete with observations of his own. Is Lessing trying to tell us in some oblique fashion that it's only due to the male voice of history that we see this fall from shore-mammal grace as a bad thing? Are the Romans - the parents of western civilization - the children only of the Squirts, with anything that might have been good about the way of life of the Clefts lost in the prelapsarian mists? That's the best interpretation I can find to put on this, and it's a stretch.

My advice - don't bother with The Cleft, especially if you have any respect for Doris Lessing and her work.

Comments

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

It's not every day that a renowned female author gets accused of peddling misogynist sexist crap.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Sad, isn't it?

But try as I might, I couldn't find much that could redeem this. Now I may have suddenly lost my ability to interpret what I read, or maybe Lessing in her age and wisdom has become too sublimely subtle for me, but... She isn't saying anything about perceptions of men and women, or their roles in human history (or pre-history) that hasn't been said by generations of male-centred writers. And if her framing story is intended to tell us that it's because history is written by men - and there is a clear indication that she is looking at how history is remembered, recorded and interpreted - it doesn't seem to say anything in particular about this essentialist, biological-determinist imagining of an origin myth.

If there's an ironic voice here, it's also a voice of extreme pessimism - the fables may be wrong, but no one will ever know.

[mishaslair.livejournal.com]

That just sounds horrible.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

It really is. And I liked a lot of Lessing's earlier work, too.

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

REALLY? Glad to get this from you then. I've been interested in reading Lessing's work, but clearly, this is not the one to read...

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

No, it's not.

I'd start with one of her earlier books - my personal favourite is The Golden Notebook. She's also written some science fiction, notably the Canopus in Argos: Archives series - the first book is Shikasta. I'm not as appreciative of her science fiction as I am of her mainstream writing (at least the earlier part of her career), but she does address some interesting ideas in those books as well.

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

Have you read SHELTER? That's the other one of hers I've been interested in looking at...

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't read that one. Sorry.