Christie, Lessing, and the Movies
When it was announced today that the Briton Doris Lessing (left) had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I didn’t think: “The Golden Notebook,” which is the 1962 feminist-classic novel singled out by the Nobel committee. And I didn’t think “Children of Violence,” her largely autobiographical series about Africa, where the 87-year-old author grew up. I didn’t even think “politics” — the novelist’s Communist Party activism in the 1950s, or her militancy against apartheid in South Africa or against nuclear weapons. No, my first thought this morning was “Julie Christie” (far left, in unmatchable “Dr. Zhivago” glory). The actress starred in a little-seen 1981 movie version of Lessing’s 1974 novel “Memoirs of a Survivor,” a bleak, post-apocalyptic tale — a book that marked the author’s transition from intense psychological works to stories concerned with the future. I remember not being very impressed by the film and only watching it because I revere Christie and because there are, curiously, so few film adapations of Lessing’s vast oeuvre. Maybe the cinematic neglect will change now that she has won the Nobel.
