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Briefing for a Descent Into Hell
A fascinating look inside the mind of a man who is supposedly “mad.” Professor Charles Watkins of Cambridge University is a patient at a mental hospital where the doctors try with increasing drugs to bring his mind under control. But Watkins has embarked on a tremendous psychological adventure where, after spinning endlessly on a raft in the Atlantic, he lands on a tropical island inhabited by strange creatures with strange customs. Later, he is carried off on a cosmic journey into space…
278 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published February 12, 1971
189 people are currently reading
4866 people want to read
About the author
Doris Lessing
466 books3,123 followersDoris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.
In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.
During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.
In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.
In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.
She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).
In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.
During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.
In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.
In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.
She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 266 reviews
April 12, 2025
This book is a stupendous achievement.
Speaking of it, Nobel Prizewinning author Doris Lessing said it is "inner space fiction - for there is never anywhere to go but IN."
Charles Watkins is a middle-aged university professor.
His manner is eccentric, his dress and demeanour sloppy. And he has experienced severe trauma.
A WWII veteran, he is picked up by London police while wandering aimlessly and muttering incoherently near Waterloo.
He remembers nothing and nobody in his life.
He is having the Great-Grandmother of nervous breakdowns.
This is a groundbreaking story of his fantastic voyage through Inner Space, and his remarkable recovery, into new and revitalized insight.
Doris Lessing had her own brushes with the mental health care system, and she once said she had learned a great deal from them.
An essential part of the learning curve today, perhaps?
Perhaps for those who have followed her. But it shows in her wisdom.
This is a whopping good yarn, convincingly and insightfully told!
A bit hard to ease into, but its superb writing will amply reward your pains: and it sure helps to know your Greek mythology if you begin. Especially The Odyssey - which this story is, in microcosm.
You see, they didn’t have proper maps back then. Neither did Virgil. Or Moses. Or, going way back, Gilgamesh.
And neither, you know, do we! We only THINK we do.
In fact, our haphazardly eclectic mind maps are useless here.
It’s Terra Incognita, this deep interior inscape, the Nightworld of Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake.
Is THIS what night - our death - will bring?
It’s the dark interior of our own Psyches...
Here's hoping we all find Light!
FIVE full stars.
Speaking of it, Nobel Prizewinning author Doris Lessing said it is "inner space fiction - for there is never anywhere to go but IN."
Charles Watkins is a middle-aged university professor.
His manner is eccentric, his dress and demeanour sloppy. And he has experienced severe trauma.
A WWII veteran, he is picked up by London police while wandering aimlessly and muttering incoherently near Waterloo.
He remembers nothing and nobody in his life.
He is having the Great-Grandmother of nervous breakdowns.
This is a groundbreaking story of his fantastic voyage through Inner Space, and his remarkable recovery, into new and revitalized insight.
Doris Lessing had her own brushes with the mental health care system, and she once said she had learned a great deal from them.
An essential part of the learning curve today, perhaps?
Perhaps for those who have followed her. But it shows in her wisdom.
This is a whopping good yarn, convincingly and insightfully told!
A bit hard to ease into, but its superb writing will amply reward your pains: and it sure helps to know your Greek mythology if you begin. Especially The Odyssey - which this story is, in microcosm.
You see, they didn’t have proper maps back then. Neither did Virgil. Or Moses. Or, going way back, Gilgamesh.
And neither, you know, do we! We only THINK we do.
In fact, our haphazardly eclectic mind maps are useless here.
It’s Terra Incognita, this deep interior inscape, the Nightworld of Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake.
Is THIS what night - our death - will bring?
It’s the dark interior of our own Psyches...
Here's hoping we all find Light!
FIVE full stars.
June 23, 2025
The idea that there is sanity in insanity, sounds insane, but could truthful lucidity really lie somewhere on the far side of madness?. No, this is not an experiment with hallucinogens, as most of Lessing's thoughts about the cultural definition of mental illness and insanity reflect or run parallel to those of Scottish Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing who wrote on chemical and electroshock methods. But this is not a paper on psychopathological phenomena, thank God, it's a novel. I say it's a novel, but not in the traditional sense, more along the lines of an imaginative experiment, rather than a flowing, smooth narrative. As entering the disturbed mind of one who has indeed gone cuckoo, this was always going to be somewhat different.
This is a story almost entirely made up of ideas, not a novel about the play of ideas in the lives of certain characters, but a novel in which the characters exist only as markers in the presentation of an idea. What gets the ball rolling is simply this: a well dressed but disheveled middle-age man is found wandering on the embankment near the Waterloo Bridge in London. He appears an amnesiac, and is taken by the police to a psychiatric hospital where, in the fact of total indifference on his part, attempts are made to identify him. He tells a crazy story in a deranged state where he is marooned on an island that is inhabited by strange creatures. He has no memories of his real life, and even believes he fell in love with a partisan fighter in the former Yugoslavia. The man in question, we find out is Charles Watkins, a professor of classics at Cambridge. Husband to Felicity, once his student. And father of two sons.
The reality Charles Watkins describes is familiar to anyone who has ever had a clammy high fever, or been exhausted to the point of collapse. Your mind starts behaving oddly, weird thoughts occur, memories become distorted. He is delusional, and spends most of the time on the verge of remembering things, before being overcome by the stories he believes are real. Lessing apparently thought the content of 'Briefing for a Descent Into Hell' so startling, that she was impelled to add an explanatory afterword, a two‐page parable about the ignorance of certain psychiatrists at large London teaching hospitals.
The blend of fantasy and realism utilized by Doris Lessing, worked well, but I felt the ending came too soon, and was clearly obvious. The early parts in the novel where Charles describes his incredible fantastical voyage, where he gets to fly on the back of a huge white bird and witness the appearance of 'rat-dogs', were enjoyable enough, and weather dealing with the real or the unreal it's all powerfully written. It may have lacked coherence in places, but some extremely long epistles concerning the subject's history to do with friends and relations fill us in on who Charles is, thus making him a character you start to feel for. Some of his narrative is actually quite moving. You just hope he will pull through his crazy episode.
Though this wasn't great, and maybe not the best place to start with Lessing, I will say I was never bored, and there is tangible evidence she is a writer I will definitely be returning to. With many positive things heard about some of her other novels, I look forward to her company again, hopefully, next time with better results.
June 11, 2024
I found the ideas from this book just as interesting as I did in 2017.
***
My thoughts after reading this book in 2017:
I don’t exaggerate when I am saying that I felt like quitting reading this book several times before I became quite enraptured by it. Alien ship appearing from the sky, animals like monkeys and ratdogs being described fighting and killing each other… all these seemed nonsense. I was expecting something different from Lessing. But hey, it’s Lessing we’re talking about here, I should have learnt to expect the unexpected.
The story seems to be banal: an individual gets in a mental hospital with total amnesia. They keep sedating him and what he remembers doesn’t reveal anything about his identity, but some story of a voyage on a sea when his mates were kidnapped by aliens. And what he says has no coherence. He keeps saying “around and around and around” countless times and he keeps babbling. He remembers getting to an island and seeing the ratdogs and monkeys that I mentioned above fighting and then he gets “to enter the crystal”. This seems so weird, right? Doctors are at a loss. We, readers, are at a loss. But do not worry, it’s not a nonsensical SF story with aliens and UFO’s. So, after teasing us the first part of the book: Doris Lessing’s genius strikes. All this is metaphoric and the metaphors she uses here are strong. Once he gets into the Crystal, he acquires a superior sense of perception: he sees humanity for what it really is from above.
“My mind moved among them like a bird on wings, and I understood that among these poor beasts trapped in their frightful necessities, some sometimes snuffed this finer air, but that most did not. Most of them were as thick, heavy and unredeemed as the bulk of stone and earth that had no crystalline air kneaded into it.” While she is talking about human beings this way as seen from above, she is the one saying that “in the great singing dance, everything linked and moved together.” Even planets and gods admit this. So they are gathering to brief some representatives to go to Earth (the Hell from the title) to redeem people, to get them to change their behavior so as not to have a negative impact on the Universe anymore. And this part of the book is brilliant, simply brilliant. Sheer genius. Trust me on this. Lessing kneads a story about Gods, planets and human beings. And she does it so well that you cannot but stand in awe of her display of erudition and talent. And the concepts she proposes are amazing. This huge metaphor she builds reflects the nowadays reality (terrorism, how destructive human beings really are and so on) and combines Greek Mythology, Christian religion, astrophysics, philosophical concepts, history, archeology and ideas about evolution with such talent that you are left speechless.
And then the story of the individual who cannot remember his past continues. He is faced with a choice: to remember what society tells him he really is or to stay the way he is. And he makes his choice. And the layers of this story start unravelling and they can be interpreted in so many ways. The silly monkeys and ratdogs from before don’t seem so silly anymore. Nor does the alien ship. You keep hoping that he won’t choose shock therapy to regain his lost memories. In the end, all the elements seem to have had each such important things to say in the story. Everything that Lessing used in this novel stands as a symbol for something, everything expresses a concept or idea, nothing is random.
And to end this in her fashion: "The important thing is this - to remember that some things reach out to us from that level of living, to here. Anxiety is one. The sense of urgency. Oh, they make an illness of it, they charm it away with their magic drugs. But it isn't for nothing. It isn't unconnected. They say, "an anxiety state", as they say, paranoia, but all these things, they have a meaning, they are reflections from that other part of ourselves, and that part of ourselves knows things we don't know.". Curious about her parallel between anxiety and what we might have experienced that we are not aware of? Read the book to find the answer: the concept she proposes is quite interesting.
***
My thoughts after reading this book in 2017:
I don’t exaggerate when I am saying that I felt like quitting reading this book several times before I became quite enraptured by it. Alien ship appearing from the sky, animals like monkeys and ratdogs being described fighting and killing each other… all these seemed nonsense. I was expecting something different from Lessing. But hey, it’s Lessing we’re talking about here, I should have learnt to expect the unexpected.
The story seems to be banal: an individual gets in a mental hospital with total amnesia. They keep sedating him and what he remembers doesn’t reveal anything about his identity, but some story of a voyage on a sea when his mates were kidnapped by aliens. And what he says has no coherence. He keeps saying “around and around and around” countless times and he keeps babbling. He remembers getting to an island and seeing the ratdogs and monkeys that I mentioned above fighting and then he gets “to enter the crystal”. This seems so weird, right? Doctors are at a loss. We, readers, are at a loss. But do not worry, it’s not a nonsensical SF story with aliens and UFO’s. So, after teasing us the first part of the book: Doris Lessing’s genius strikes. All this is metaphoric and the metaphors she uses here are strong. Once he gets into the Crystal, he acquires a superior sense of perception: he sees humanity for what it really is from above.
“My mind moved among them like a bird on wings, and I understood that among these poor beasts trapped in their frightful necessities, some sometimes snuffed this finer air, but that most did not. Most of them were as thick, heavy and unredeemed as the bulk of stone and earth that had no crystalline air kneaded into it.” While she is talking about human beings this way as seen from above, she is the one saying that “in the great singing dance, everything linked and moved together.” Even planets and gods admit this. So they are gathering to brief some representatives to go to Earth (the Hell from the title) to redeem people, to get them to change their behavior so as not to have a negative impact on the Universe anymore. And this part of the book is brilliant, simply brilliant. Sheer genius. Trust me on this. Lessing kneads a story about Gods, planets and human beings. And she does it so well that you cannot but stand in awe of her display of erudition and talent. And the concepts she proposes are amazing. This huge metaphor she builds reflects the nowadays reality (terrorism, how destructive human beings really are and so on) and combines Greek Mythology, Christian religion, astrophysics, philosophical concepts, history, archeology and ideas about evolution with such talent that you are left speechless.
And then the story of the individual who cannot remember his past continues. He is faced with a choice: to remember what society tells him he really is or to stay the way he is. And he makes his choice. And the layers of this story start unravelling and they can be interpreted in so many ways. The silly monkeys and ratdogs from before don’t seem so silly anymore. Nor does the alien ship. You keep hoping that he won’t choose shock therapy to regain his lost memories. In the end, all the elements seem to have had each such important things to say in the story. Everything that Lessing used in this novel stands as a symbol for something, everything expresses a concept or idea, nothing is random.
And to end this in her fashion: "The important thing is this - to remember that some things reach out to us from that level of living, to here. Anxiety is one. The sense of urgency. Oh, they make an illness of it, they charm it away with their magic drugs. But it isn't for nothing. It isn't unconnected. They say, "an anxiety state", as they say, paranoia, but all these things, they have a meaning, they are reflections from that other part of ourselves, and that part of ourselves knows things we don't know.". Curious about her parallel between anxiety and what we might have experienced that we are not aware of? Read the book to find the answer: the concept she proposes is quite interesting.
March 16, 2016
When Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize nearly a decade ago she found out as she stepped out of a taxi and arrived at her home swarmed with journalists. She didn’t seem to know that the announcement was to be made on that day, or didn’t seem to care, having, like many pundits and literati, long ago decided that she was out of contention. She was 88 after all. She responded which a remarkable quip, a curse, a statement of how it took them too long. The Nobel Committee, in one of their famously ambiguous statements, defined her contribution as that of the “epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
I guess that makes sense. I’ve read two previous Doris Lessing novels - The Fifth Child and The Good Terrorist. I’ve successfully avoided her masterpieces (though just which books are to be included that list aside from The Golden Notebook seems to be in contention), but have found a good, if uneven body of literature huddling in the undergrowth of her sizeable literature. In those two books Lessing certainly took on the female experience, she certainly was sceptical, she certainly had a visionary power, and she certainly scrutinized her characters and the world that they lived in.
It is harder to be certain that she is doing the same in this book, a 1971 Man Booker Prize Nominee (which she lost to fellow Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul).
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell is unlike any book that I have ever read before. It plays around with genre in a way that I’ve never encountered, and it made me feel things that I haven’t felt while reading a book before. A sense of wonder that, I suspect, is usually reserved for magical worlds and wizards and fairy tales, for sure. This is none of that - it is a world that is far from fantastical or too perfect to be true, but also far from rational, observable, explainable. It is a book that is difficult to describe.
In Briefing for a Descent Into Hell we jump into the mind of a man who is supposed to be a professor and may or may not be that professor, and the reader is invited into that debate by trying to determine who they believe - the presumed professor or the doctors who are attempting to convince the man that he is the professor. In figuring out the mystery of the professor we are taken on a journey across oceans, across continents, into the air, flying on the backs of great white animals and watching great brown ones attack each other. Quietly observing and hoping not to be attacked ourselves - and then, eventually, swept up into a crystal, drawn back to a beginning - a conference - where humanity and its fate is discussed. All done in a brilliant, beautiful manner. And then - what was that? - a birth. A birth? I think that was a birth.
I’d never been born before in literature. I think that Lessing birthed me through her literature. Is that a thing that makes sense? I’m not sure. But there is a scene here, a moment, and it is important, where something like that happens. It brings in so many questions.
In reading this book we soar through many genres, like I said. Science fiction, speculative fiction, inner space fiction, whichever you like to call it (and it might be each and every one of these separately), joins with medical drama, joins with realism, joins with a nearly legend and victorian myth making.
It is a powerful novel that is only possible because it is written, for moments, in a stream of conscience manner, for moments adopting tropes that were just developing in the late 60s and early 70s (were they developing in this manner because of Lessing?), for moments mixing in a fluid reality, for moments making all of it possible and then, at the end asking if any of it really makes some kind of rational sense of any sort. So it only accomplishes what it does exactly because of Lessing’s dedication to experimenting with form and manner, words, and sentences. But in the end it doesn’t quite work perfectly. There is a missing thread that offers some kind of conclusion - which is perhaps what Lessing wanted, of course she wants you to make the judgement call on this book - but it ultimately didn’t quite leave me satisfied.
(Does literature have to leave me satisfied? I’ll have to consider this later.)
Overall, I’d qualify this as a fantastic though not quite marvellous book. Incredibly well thought out, more than competently written if at moments a little unconvincing, and a book which grows in my estimation the more I think upon it. I suspect it is one that I’ll think on often and want to come back to again in due time. Worth reading, worth reflecting upon for making us reflect on the field of medicine and psychotherapy, worth reading for how it melts this into a means of understanding humanity, for how humanity is corrupted.
Towards the end of the book I was inclined to trust the doctors. But it was only because I wanted to trust in something of some sort, any sort, and the power of the many seemed to overwhelm to power of the single individual objectified and classified and diagnosed by the doctors, his presumed wife, his colleague, his friend, his fellow veteran. But it is a mystery. Is the man mad? I’m not sure. And if he is, what does that say about the doctors? If he isn’t, what does that say about humanity? I’m also, somehow, astonishingly, inclined to believe the patient, the professor, the individual, the victim, the man reborn, the warrior, the sailor, entirely. He doesn’t after all, really know who he is, but only knows that something isn’t quite making sense in his surroundings. Almost as though some imprint left in his brain is starting to reveal itself with remarkable magic, an imprint that allows him to see the world differently, makes it so that he can’t relate to it anymore, turns him into a benign figure just waiting to grow up and fulfill some new purpose.
Worth reading.
I guess that makes sense. I’ve read two previous Doris Lessing novels - The Fifth Child and The Good Terrorist. I’ve successfully avoided her masterpieces (though just which books are to be included that list aside from The Golden Notebook seems to be in contention), but have found a good, if uneven body of literature huddling in the undergrowth of her sizeable literature. In those two books Lessing certainly took on the female experience, she certainly was sceptical, she certainly had a visionary power, and she certainly scrutinized her characters and the world that they lived in.
It is harder to be certain that she is doing the same in this book, a 1971 Man Booker Prize Nominee (which she lost to fellow Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul).
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell is unlike any book that I have ever read before. It plays around with genre in a way that I’ve never encountered, and it made me feel things that I haven’t felt while reading a book before. A sense of wonder that, I suspect, is usually reserved for magical worlds and wizards and fairy tales, for sure. This is none of that - it is a world that is far from fantastical or too perfect to be true, but also far from rational, observable, explainable. It is a book that is difficult to describe.
In Briefing for a Descent Into Hell we jump into the mind of a man who is supposed to be a professor and may or may not be that professor, and the reader is invited into that debate by trying to determine who they believe - the presumed professor or the doctors who are attempting to convince the man that he is the professor. In figuring out the mystery of the professor we are taken on a journey across oceans, across continents, into the air, flying on the backs of great white animals and watching great brown ones attack each other. Quietly observing and hoping not to be attacked ourselves - and then, eventually, swept up into a crystal, drawn back to a beginning - a conference - where humanity and its fate is discussed. All done in a brilliant, beautiful manner. And then - what was that? - a birth. A birth? I think that was a birth.
I’d never been born before in literature. I think that Lessing birthed me through her literature. Is that a thing that makes sense? I’m not sure. But there is a scene here, a moment, and it is important, where something like that happens. It brings in so many questions.
In reading this book we soar through many genres, like I said. Science fiction, speculative fiction, inner space fiction, whichever you like to call it (and it might be each and every one of these separately), joins with medical drama, joins with realism, joins with a nearly legend and victorian myth making.
It is a powerful novel that is only possible because it is written, for moments, in a stream of conscience manner, for moments adopting tropes that were just developing in the late 60s and early 70s (were they developing in this manner because of Lessing?), for moments mixing in a fluid reality, for moments making all of it possible and then, at the end asking if any of it really makes some kind of rational sense of any sort. So it only accomplishes what it does exactly because of Lessing’s dedication to experimenting with form and manner, words, and sentences. But in the end it doesn’t quite work perfectly. There is a missing thread that offers some kind of conclusion - which is perhaps what Lessing wanted, of course she wants you to make the judgement call on this book - but it ultimately didn’t quite leave me satisfied.
(Does literature have to leave me satisfied? I’ll have to consider this later.)
Overall, I’d qualify this as a fantastic though not quite marvellous book. Incredibly well thought out, more than competently written if at moments a little unconvincing, and a book which grows in my estimation the more I think upon it. I suspect it is one that I’ll think on often and want to come back to again in due time. Worth reading, worth reflecting upon for making us reflect on the field of medicine and psychotherapy, worth reading for how it melts this into a means of understanding humanity, for how humanity is corrupted.
Towards the end of the book I was inclined to trust the doctors. But it was only because I wanted to trust in something of some sort, any sort, and the power of the many seemed to overwhelm to power of the single individual objectified and classified and diagnosed by the doctors, his presumed wife, his colleague, his friend, his fellow veteran. But it is a mystery. Is the man mad? I’m not sure. And if he is, what does that say about the doctors? If he isn’t, what does that say about humanity? I’m also, somehow, astonishingly, inclined to believe the patient, the professor, the individual, the victim, the man reborn, the warrior, the sailor, entirely. He doesn’t after all, really know who he is, but only knows that something isn’t quite making sense in his surroundings. Almost as though some imprint left in his brain is starting to reveal itself with remarkable magic, an imprint that allows him to see the world differently, makes it so that he can’t relate to it anymore, turns him into a benign figure just waiting to grow up and fulfill some new purpose.
Worth reading.
January 15, 2008
Some crazed english teacher assigned this to our class in 10th grade. I loved the book and have re-read it many times. I think this may have been one of the first adult books that turned me on to reading
July 29, 2021
My second Lessing book and what a one to pick. Who do you believe, what is real and what is a hallucination? In the end we are still left guessing is the amnesiac cured or was he a amnesiac. This book was shortlisted for the 1971 Booker Prize.
The plot revolves around a man found wandering on Embankment in London with no memory and apparently hallucinating. He is taken to a hospital for treatment by two doctors and we embark via the patients imagination a voyage at sea, space craft, abandoned cities and the viewpoints of Greek Gods. Great prose but at times difficult to read.
The plot revolves around a man found wandering on Embankment in London with no memory and apparently hallucinating. He is taken to a hospital for treatment by two doctors and we embark via the patients imagination a voyage at sea, space craft, abandoned cities and the viewpoints of Greek Gods. Great prose but at times difficult to read.
October 29, 2019
Doris Lessing pristatinėti tikriausiai nereikia, tačiau trumpai paminėsiu, kad ji yra Nobelio premijos laureatė, o taip pat apdovanota Cohen premija už nuopelnus britų literatūrai. Savo kūriniuose Lessing nagrinėja moterų klausimus, feminizmą, šiek tiek politiką ir štai ateina metais kai susidomi fantastika. “Nurodymai keliaujantiems į pragarą” yra kaip tik iš šio periodo.
Ši knyga - tai pasakojimas apie ekscentrišką Kembridžo universiteto profesorių, kuris patenka į psichiatrinę ligoninę. Knyga yra eksperimentinio žanro, tad neįprasta tiek forma tiek pateikimas. Knygoje aptinkame trijų rūšių sąveikas: gydytojų ir paciento, gydytojo ir kito gydytojo (tariamasi dėl gydymo, medikamentų skyrimo), bei profesoriaus klajonės po savo sąmonę.
Turiu pasakyti, kad “įsivažiuoti” į knygos skaitymą pradžioje sekėsi gana sunkiai. Ligonio klaidžiojimai po savo sąmonę, atrandami neegzistuojantys gyviai ir išgyvenimai yra paremti fantastika, kuri nėra mano mėgstamiausias dalykas pasaulyje. Antroje dalyje sekėsi gerokai lengviau - čia atsiranda profesoriaus draugai, žmona, meilužė, tad tas jo charakterio atskleidimas daug labiau “kabino” ir sudomino. Tarpasmeninės sąveikos tarp šių žmonių buvo įdomu.
Tekste aptinkame nemažai sąsajų su literatūra, Antikos mitais net Biblija kas suteikia tekstui svorio ir pagilina jį. Veikėjai čia neatlieka standartinių vaidmenų. Jie ne konstruoja pasakojimo, o yra tarsi idėjų vedliai. Jų pagrindinė finkcija - atskleisti idėją.
Trumpai - eksperimentinis kūrinys tikrąja to žodžio prasme. Jei norisi kažko visiškai kitokio ir mėgaujatės fantastika, tikrai pabandykit! Be to, jei norisi pajausti ir išgyventi, ką reiškia pamesti protą ir pakeliauti po savo sąmonę - taip pat griebkit ir skaitykit. Gero skaitymo
Ši knyga - tai pasakojimas apie ekscentrišką Kembridžo universiteto profesorių, kuris patenka į psichiatrinę ligoninę. Knyga yra eksperimentinio žanro, tad neįprasta tiek forma tiek pateikimas. Knygoje aptinkame trijų rūšių sąveikas: gydytojų ir paciento, gydytojo ir kito gydytojo (tariamasi dėl gydymo, medikamentų skyrimo), bei profesoriaus klajonės po savo sąmonę.
Turiu pasakyti, kad “įsivažiuoti” į knygos skaitymą pradžioje sekėsi gana sunkiai. Ligonio klaidžiojimai po savo sąmonę, atrandami neegzistuojantys gyviai ir išgyvenimai yra paremti fantastika, kuri nėra mano mėgstamiausias dalykas pasaulyje. Antroje dalyje sekėsi gerokai lengviau - čia atsiranda profesoriaus draugai, žmona, meilužė, tad tas jo charakterio atskleidimas daug labiau “kabino” ir sudomino. Tarpasmeninės sąveikos tarp šių žmonių buvo įdomu.
Tekste aptinkame nemažai sąsajų su literatūra, Antikos mitais net Biblija kas suteikia tekstui svorio ir pagilina jį. Veikėjai čia neatlieka standartinių vaidmenų. Jie ne konstruoja pasakojimo, o yra tarsi idėjų vedliai. Jų pagrindinė finkcija - atskleisti idėją.
Trumpai - eksperimentinis kūrinys tikrąja to žodžio prasme. Jei norisi kažko visiškai kitokio ir mėgaujatės fantastika, tikrai pabandykit! Be to, jei norisi pajausti ir išgyventi, ką reiškia pamesti protą ir pakeliauti po savo sąmonę - taip pat griebkit ir skaitykit. Gero skaitymo
January 19, 2020
Ieškodamas Doris Lessing romano "Nurodymai žengiantiems į pragarą" vertinimų ir interpretacijų, nustebau, kad beveik niekas (gal tiesiog nepavyko aptikti) nebando apibrėžti pagrindinės šios knygos žinutės (gal tais laikais, kai knyga buvo aktuali, vadinasi, aštuntame dešimtmetyje, nebuvo madinga visko redukuoti iki "message"). Aš tą žinutę apibrėžčiau taip: komunistai, tie Žemės keistuoliai, yra pasiųsti pačių dievų grąžinti į žmoniją harmonijos. Skamba absurdiškai, ar ne? Bet kitaip tos knygos neįmanoma suprasti. Nežinau, ar tą žinutę reikia perskaityti tiesiogiai, ar metaforiškai, ar alegoriškai, bet ji tokia. Romanas nėra fantastika, kaip jį linkstama pavadinti. Ir tik iš dalies eksperimentinis (na, argi tuo metu sąmonės srautą ar kelių žanrų plakinį dar galima vadinti eksperimentu?). Tai filosofinė siaubo pasakaitė.
Žinojau, kad Doris Lessing buvo komunistė. Bet taip pat žinojau, kad ji buvo komunizmo išsižadėjusi. Nesigilinau į jos biografiją, todėl, matyt, būsiu supratęs netiksliai - ji greičiausiai pasitraukė iš komunistinio judėjimo (1954 m.), tačiau juk tai nebūtinai reiškia, kad nebetikėjo komunistinėmis idėjomis plačiąja prasme. 1954 m. pasitraukti iš komunistinio judėjimo reiškė paprasčiausiai atsiriboti nuo sovietų politikos.
Šitą paprastą teiginį svarbu turėti mintyje, kad suprastume, kodėl romane (paskutiniame jo šeštadalyje) yra tiesiog neįtikėtinai naiviai romantizuojami ir idealizuojami Tito raudonieji partizanai komunistai, neva raudonoji žvaigždė (taip, raudonoji žvaigždė) vienintelė suvienijo serbus, kroatus, juodkalniečius, katalikus ir musulmonus. Tito visada - ir karo metais, ir po jo - kai kurių Stalino komunizmui alternatyvų ieškojusių komunistų akyse buvo išlaikęs tam tikrą savarankiškumo įvaizdį. Ir štai - Lessing romanas, apdainavęs tą raudonųjų partizanų "didvyriškumą" taip, kad jautiesi lyg skaitytum kokio raudonojo partizano kokiais 1965 m. išleistus atsiminimus.
O kad prieitum iki šitos raudonojo rojaus giesmės, turi pereiti - kaip ir pridera tokio pavadinimo kūriniui - per pusę knygos degantį mažai prasmės turinčių (neva haliucinacijos, neva regėjimas, neva nušvitimas) žodžių pragarą. Tą visą romano dalį visai neskausmingai (nes visą skausmą pasiglemžė tos dalies skaitymas) galima suvesti į tris žodžius: pulsavimas, harmonija ir visovė. Šiuos žodžius pavadinčiau Lessing komunizmo šūkiu. Individas, kaip paaiškintų knygos protagonistas, šitame pulsavime, harmonijoje ir visovėje yra nesvarbus. Jis tik kraugeriškas žiurkšunis, kenkiantis žmonijos ateities tikslams. Taip, jūs, žiurkšuniai su savo niekingai menkais egoistiniais interesais.
Tad knygą skaityti įdomu tik jos pasirodymo metų kontekste: a) rodosi, kad 68-ųjų "revoliucijų" dvasioje Lessing tarsi nori pasakyti, kad jaunieji kairuoliai neturėtų visiškai atstumti ankstesnės (karo) kartos kairiųjų, nors Naujoji kairė būtent tą ir darė; b) aštunto dešimtmečio pradžioje dar labai madingos antipsichiatrinio judėjimo idėjos, tad Lessing romanas įkūnija ir tradicinės psichiatrijos kritikos kryptį (beje, šia prasme romanas dar nepasenęs, ypač Lietuvoje, kur to antipsichiatrinio judėjimo savu laiku negalėjo būti).
Pagaliau įdomu, ar leidykla lietuviško leidimo viršeliui sąmoningai pasirinko spalvas, kurios atitinka Sovietų Sąjungos vėliavos spalvas? O iš čia ir kitas klausimas: laisvoje šalyje galima leisti ir skaityti bet ką, bet man žmogiškai smalsu, ar leidykla tikrai suprato, ką leidžia?
Žinojau, kad Doris Lessing buvo komunistė. Bet taip pat žinojau, kad ji buvo komunizmo išsižadėjusi. Nesigilinau į jos biografiją, todėl, matyt, būsiu supratęs netiksliai - ji greičiausiai pasitraukė iš komunistinio judėjimo (1954 m.), tačiau juk tai nebūtinai reiškia, kad nebetikėjo komunistinėmis idėjomis plačiąja prasme. 1954 m. pasitraukti iš komunistinio judėjimo reiškė paprasčiausiai atsiriboti nuo sovietų politikos.
Šitą paprastą teiginį svarbu turėti mintyje, kad suprastume, kodėl romane (paskutiniame jo šeštadalyje) yra tiesiog neįtikėtinai naiviai romantizuojami ir idealizuojami Tito raudonieji partizanai komunistai, neva raudonoji žvaigždė (taip, raudonoji žvaigždė) vienintelė suvienijo serbus, kroatus, juodkalniečius, katalikus ir musulmonus. Tito visada - ir karo metais, ir po jo - kai kurių Stalino komunizmui alternatyvų ieškojusių komunistų akyse buvo išlaikęs tam tikrą savarankiškumo įvaizdį. Ir štai - Lessing romanas, apdainavęs tą raudonųjų partizanų "didvyriškumą" taip, kad jautiesi lyg skaitytum kokio raudonojo partizano kokiais 1965 m. išleistus atsiminimus.
O kad prieitum iki šitos raudonojo rojaus giesmės, turi pereiti - kaip ir pridera tokio pavadinimo kūriniui - per pusę knygos degantį mažai prasmės turinčių (neva haliucinacijos, neva regėjimas, neva nušvitimas) žodžių pragarą. Tą visą romano dalį visai neskausmingai (nes visą skausmą pasiglemžė tos dalies skaitymas) galima suvesti į tris žodžius: pulsavimas, harmonija ir visovė. Šiuos žodžius pavadinčiau Lessing komunizmo šūkiu. Individas, kaip paaiškintų knygos protagonistas, šitame pulsavime, harmonijoje ir visovėje yra nesvarbus. Jis tik kraugeriškas žiurkšunis, kenkiantis žmonijos ateities tikslams. Taip, jūs, žiurkšuniai su savo niekingai menkais egoistiniais interesais.
Tad knygą skaityti įdomu tik jos pasirodymo metų kontekste: a) rodosi, kad 68-ųjų "revoliucijų" dvasioje Lessing tarsi nori pasakyti, kad jaunieji kairuoliai neturėtų visiškai atstumti ankstesnės (karo) kartos kairiųjų, nors Naujoji kairė būtent tą ir darė; b) aštunto dešimtmečio pradžioje dar labai madingos antipsichiatrinio judėjimo idėjos, tad Lessing romanas įkūnija ir tradicinės psichiatrijos kritikos kryptį (beje, šia prasme romanas dar nepasenęs, ypač Lietuvoje, kur to antipsichiatrinio judėjimo savu laiku negalėjo būti).
Pagaliau įdomu, ar leidykla lietuviško leidimo viršeliui sąmoningai pasirinko spalvas, kurios atitinka Sovietų Sąjungos vėliavos spalvas? O iš čia ir kitas klausimas: laisvoje šalyje galima leisti ir skaityti bet ką, bet man žmogiškai smalsu, ar leidykla tikrai suprato, ką leidžia?
June 22, 2020
Metų iššūkio sąraše užims vietą: "knyga, kurioje nors kartą paminėta kuri nors mėnulio fazė".
Sunki knyga, turbūt šiemet kol kas sunkiausiai pasidavusi skaitymui.
Sunki knyga, turbūt šiemet kol kas sunkiausiai pasidavusi skaitymui.
August 31, 2015
Rather variable ride. First, we're presented with a man checked into a psych ward with no memory and a pretty delusional idea of where he is. Immediately we're drawn into his (already debunked) subjective reality, which removes (the pre-debunking does, that is) much of that excitement of trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Soon, his (interior) journey takes on enough concrete detail and sense of place to teansport me despite this, at least until it starts to develop that excessively domineering allegorical sensation, perhaps with a little bit of that piercing-of-the-veil and ultimate reality that I tend to find a bit trying. The questions of what is the truer reality and who is more crazy (individual or society) begin to emerge, but these aren't exactly earth-shatteringly unique treatments of so-called insanity. Still, by the end (there are far more shifts and plot redirections than I've detailed, I'm really not spoiling anything, it has a kind of sincerity and pathos that won over my sympathies. Uneven, but thoughtful, occasional radiance (the Yugoslavis story?!) balanced with some pseudo-academic nonsense (the smart but irritating mythologies-in-space digression).
June 5, 2020
Ką mes turime atsiminti šiame pasaulyje? Ką pamiršome gimdami skausmuose, mokydamiesi, besisukdami kasdieniuose darbuose?
February 24, 2011
This was a bit of a struggle at first as my naturally ordered mind desires chapters and parts of this are stream of consciousness and hard work. The tale of a man found wandering in London having lost is memory. The first part of the book seems to be about about what is going on in his mind and is about the wanderings of a man in a fantastical world.
The roles of the two doctors and the nursing staff are interesting and they follow the psychological theories of the time.
We learn the man is an academic who teaches amongst other things Greek mythology and this illuminates the earlier part of the book (The influence of The Odyssey is strong)
In the second part of the book we meet his wife and various other friends and colleagues and learn something of his past.
Trying not to give too much away the man has a choice (via treatment) as to whether to retrieve his memory or to stay with his new reality, which is the only one he knows. Both choices are shown to involve loss.
What is it about? There are many layers of meaning; but madness is clearly seen as a social construct and sanity isn't all it's made out to be!!!
The roles of the two doctors and the nursing staff are interesting and they follow the psychological theories of the time.
We learn the man is an academic who teaches amongst other things Greek mythology and this illuminates the earlier part of the book (The influence of The Odyssey is strong)
In the second part of the book we meet his wife and various other friends and colleagues and learn something of his past.
Trying not to give too much away the man has a choice (via treatment) as to whether to retrieve his memory or to stay with his new reality, which is the only one he knows. Both choices are shown to involve loss.
What is it about? There are many layers of meaning; but madness is clearly seen as a social construct and sanity isn't all it's made out to be!!!
April 30, 2010
Doris Lessing may have won every literary award in Europe, including the Nobel Prize for Literature, but this novel is a stinker. I imagine it is supposed to combine some sort of science fiction with a psychological analysis of mental illness, but it just came across as uninspired drivel to me.
I read this book over the course of about two years because I just simply could not force my way through it. This might have affected how I feel about the book, but truthfully, had the story any merit, it wouldn't have taken me two years to read it.
A full half of the book is taken up by a stream of consciousness monologue by the main character, a man who is suffering from amnesia/schizophrenia and has been admitted to a psych ward. I have no problems with stream of consciousness, hey, I eat Naked Lunch for breakfast, but this goes nowhere.
When I finally managed to slog through to the end, I was rewarded with a...oh, I was rewarded with nothing. People in other reviews are claiming that this is a book that you either "get" or "don't get". Either I fall into the latter, or there is nothing to this work...my bet is that there is just nothing worthwhile there.
I read this book over the course of about two years because I just simply could not force my way through it. This might have affected how I feel about the book, but truthfully, had the story any merit, it wouldn't have taken me two years to read it.
A full half of the book is taken up by a stream of consciousness monologue by the main character, a man who is suffering from amnesia/schizophrenia and has been admitted to a psych ward. I have no problems with stream of consciousness, hey, I eat Naked Lunch for breakfast, but this goes nowhere.
When I finally managed to slog through to the end, I was rewarded with a...oh, I was rewarded with nothing. People in other reviews are claiming that this is a book that you either "get" or "don't get". Either I fall into the latter, or there is nothing to this work...my bet is that there is just nothing worthwhile there.
November 13, 2022
"Sometimes when you read a book or story, the words are dead, you struggle to end it or put it down, your attention is distracted. Another time, with exactly the same book or story, it is full of meaning, every sentence or phrase or even word seems to vibrate with messages and ideas, reading is like being pumped full of adrenalin"
This book ended in the first part of the spectrum of me. I was 50% into the book questioning why I am not able to make much sense of the writing before realising these are not exactly coherent thoughts of someone in an mental institution. There is a continuous sense - maybe I am missing what the author is trying to say only to realise that's what the patient is going through.
A rambling man is bought to a mental hospital without any memory of who he is or why and the first half of the book alternates between the doctor notes and his innermost thoughts that are trying to throw images and actions for the subconscious. This is maybe what the thoughts are his mind makes sense of his presence over two months of treatment to a state that is different from his reality.
When they find out who is and what he has been doing, they try to reach out to his family and friends and he gets letters from these people explaining "who he was". But his brain refuses to accept it and there is a sense of urgency - much evolved from his version of reality.
The book is brilliant study in empathy of trying to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has a disjointed sense of reality. Imagine the storywriter of Matrix, instead of making a movie, gets convinced of his story and tries to explain his theory to others in a mental institution. Who is "normal" and towards the end you start feeling sorry for the character who wants to be in the "now" except, if only he could figure out the single piece of "truth" that he feels he is very close to.
" "You'll have to take my word for it, I'm afraid."
"If I did have to, I'd be afraid. I can't take words for anything. Words come out of your moth and fall on the floor. Words in exchange for?"
(you see what I mean?)
I am being harsh here in my rating and that is only because of how exhausted I felt reading the book. As I said at the beginning - maybe if I read it in the latter frame of mine - this book would have been a 5 star.
This book ended in the first part of the spectrum of me. I was 50% into the book questioning why I am not able to make much sense of the writing before realising these are not exactly coherent thoughts of someone in an mental institution. There is a continuous sense - maybe I am missing what the author is trying to say only to realise that's what the patient is going through.
A rambling man is bought to a mental hospital without any memory of who he is or why and the first half of the book alternates between the doctor notes and his innermost thoughts that are trying to throw images and actions for the subconscious. This is maybe what the thoughts are his mind makes sense of his presence over two months of treatment to a state that is different from his reality.
When they find out who is and what he has been doing, they try to reach out to his family and friends and he gets letters from these people explaining "who he was". But his brain refuses to accept it and there is a sense of urgency - much evolved from his version of reality.
The book is brilliant study in empathy of trying to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has a disjointed sense of reality. Imagine the storywriter of Matrix, instead of making a movie, gets convinced of his story and tries to explain his theory to others in a mental institution. Who is "normal" and towards the end you start feeling sorry for the character who wants to be in the "now" except, if only he could figure out the single piece of "truth" that he feels he is very close to.
" "You'll have to take my word for it, I'm afraid."
"If I did have to, I'd be afraid. I can't take words for anything. Words come out of your moth and fall on the floor. Words in exchange for?"
(you see what I mean?)
I am being harsh here in my rating and that is only because of how exhausted I felt reading the book. As I said at the beginning - maybe if I read it in the latter frame of mine - this book would have been a 5 star.
April 30, 2009
Christ, this is not an easy book.
It contains one of the genres that I hate - the stream of consiciousness. A man is found wandering emabankment penniless and is admitted to hospital.
the first third of the book are the ramblings in his head - which have a very science fiction feel to it, as he discovers alien races, is transported on the back of giant birds and porpoises and encounters apes fighting rat dogs. All a methaphor for something, but what I dont know.
Then we get into the investigation of who he is, resolved through being introduced to his wife, lovers, friends, work colleagues. He is a professor of greek and some of his early hallucinations are linked to the histories that his friend supply.
The professors condition improves and he is off given lucid representations of his involvements in the war - all of which are dismissed by the colleagues that worked with him.
He then is faced with the choice of being moved to a new long term facility or taking electro shock therapy.... after not being allowed to run off with a young nurse, he takes the latter and dramatically improves.
So what was all that about. There are hints that its all about civilisation, gender politics, even communism but I cant really put my finger on what she was trying to get across.
Always a struggle to read, especially the eary 1/3 of the book - it had something that kept you turning the pages, and I still cant put my finger on what that was.
Suppose, I should have been concerned by the phrase experimental!
Dont know whether to read the fifth child.
It contains one of the genres that I hate - the stream of consiciousness. A man is found wandering emabankment penniless and is admitted to hospital.
the first third of the book are the ramblings in his head - which have a very science fiction feel to it, as he discovers alien races, is transported on the back of giant birds and porpoises and encounters apes fighting rat dogs. All a methaphor for something, but what I dont know.
Then we get into the investigation of who he is, resolved through being introduced to his wife, lovers, friends, work colleagues. He is a professor of greek and some of his early hallucinations are linked to the histories that his friend supply.
The professors condition improves and he is off given lucid representations of his involvements in the war - all of which are dismissed by the colleagues that worked with him.
He then is faced with the choice of being moved to a new long term facility or taking electro shock therapy.... after not being allowed to run off with a young nurse, he takes the latter and dramatically improves.
So what was all that about. There are hints that its all about civilisation, gender politics, even communism but I cant really put my finger on what she was trying to get across.
Always a struggle to read, especially the eary 1/3 of the book - it had something that kept you turning the pages, and I still cant put my finger on what that was.
Suppose, I should have been concerned by the phrase experimental!
Dont know whether to read the fifth child.
September 21, 2018
Bardzo podobał mi się styl pisania Lessing i jej koncepcja na całą książkę, jednak wiem, że to nie będzie historia, która zostanie ze mną na zawsze. Była przyjemna i fascynująca do przeczytania, ale prawdopodobnie nigdy do niej nie wrócę, nawet w myślach.
December 26, 2023
Peter Pan complex, but with smart pants on.
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell (Instrucciones para un descenso al infierno) by Doris Lessing.
Uh, a tricky one. First of all, I was complaining bitterly at the first half and was suspecting some sort of later-everything-will-click-and-make-glorious-sense. And yeah, it does, but it may be my age, grumpiness or whatever and I am less patient with brilliant displays of ideas more concerned with the shiny sparks of the story.
It is brilliant and… it didn’t age well. I know some people will enjoy the first part of the book, always take opinions like a grain of salt, but for me it was tedious and uninvolving. You can catch glimpses of plot clues along the way and see the strings of another narrative underneath… if you haven’t plucked out your eyes of sheer tedium already.
The book and the second part in form, involve a troubled person who lost his memories, lands in a psychiatric hospital and the comings and goings of doctors, family, letters from friends, lovers and such, trying to untangle the murky mind of the man in question: Charles Watkins. He is tripping balls basically and uncooperative, understandably at first, and later revolutionary for the author, but childishly for me. It is in this moment where the parts everywhere (before, after, up and down) click into a shining big bang.
The time it was written was a period of overmedication of sparky new drugs (the predecessor of valium) and a blooming in Psychiatry, both met with heavy suspicion. Psychiatry is young and has had a very bumpy ride, I am all in to be critical of things and to never forget the nasty past, the issue is putting on firmly the tinfoil hat and scream lies! at every turn. Ok, I am going overboard, on hindsight is easy to see and it is understandable to be skeptic at the time, but I don’t think it works either. You see, in the afterword she talks about a person having a different perspective than normal, not some disorder and how a couple of psychologists couldn’t match a diagnosis of the character in the book as if Psychology was some sort of séance. That idea is fine and dandy, but I think it didn’t make sense.
The very unlikeable Watkins has another perspective (give and take transcendental and metaphysical layers) but in fact, he has made the most conventional choices in his life, over and over again. He goes to war and has that baggage, study the classics, becomes a teacher (nothing wrong with that) and a mild academic figure, dates his students (yikes!), marries a girl 15 years younger (not the norm, but very prevalent in the preferences of many), has 2 children, keeps having lovers out of his students and in general being an ass. Even when he is described as strange and peculiar, it exudes a lack of originality in his life choices. Nothing wrong again in having a conventional life, but I couldn’t find his peculiarity, even his nervous breakdown, it boils to a refusal to continue with his life as he made it, to become the old Watkins and the baggage of his life, instead, he roams the edge of feeling another person, not facing himself and becoming somehow a revolutionary figure for this. It came as juvenile (for me) the peculiarity that it never was an option to… change his life? Like… change is dull? It is dull and hard work, but the character uniqueness appears as a continuous avoidance of consequences and going with the flow, cynically accepting what it is given to him with any kind of consideration or gratitude, because… special.
The book also makes a climax point of giving him a choice to regain his memories and thus, becoming the old Watkins or remaining like that. One may ponder about accepting what society says you are, being awake or sleep at the constrains of reality, but… come on… he is the same ass either way? Again, a brilliant idea, like the old-school fights for your soul, this time, reality and mind, it just didn’t work for me.
I have in mind, that living a conventional life, doesn’t equate to not having a unique way to see things, but if you are making a point of it, it was left more as an intention than anything. I truly hope that having this characteristic in life doesn’t translate as only being a jerk.
Amazing idea that works in the mechanics of the book, but it tatters in the murk of life and time. I´ll go crawl to my cave now.
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell (Instrucciones para un descenso al infierno) by Doris Lessing.
Uh, a tricky one. First of all, I was complaining bitterly at the first half and was suspecting some sort of later-everything-will-click-and-make-glorious-sense. And yeah, it does, but it may be my age, grumpiness or whatever and I am less patient with brilliant displays of ideas more concerned with the shiny sparks of the story.
It is brilliant and… it didn’t age well. I know some people will enjoy the first part of the book, always take opinions like a grain of salt, but for me it was tedious and uninvolving. You can catch glimpses of plot clues along the way and see the strings of another narrative underneath… if you haven’t plucked out your eyes of sheer tedium already.
The book and the second part in form, involve a troubled person who lost his memories, lands in a psychiatric hospital and the comings and goings of doctors, family, letters from friends, lovers and such, trying to untangle the murky mind of the man in question: Charles Watkins. He is tripping balls basically and uncooperative, understandably at first, and later revolutionary for the author, but childishly for me. It is in this moment where the parts everywhere (before, after, up and down) click into a shining big bang.
The time it was written was a period of overmedication of sparky new drugs (the predecessor of valium) and a blooming in Psychiatry, both met with heavy suspicion. Psychiatry is young and has had a very bumpy ride, I am all in to be critical of things and to never forget the nasty past, the issue is putting on firmly the tinfoil hat and scream lies! at every turn. Ok, I am going overboard, on hindsight is easy to see and it is understandable to be skeptic at the time, but I don’t think it works either. You see, in the afterword she talks about a person having a different perspective than normal, not some disorder and how a couple of psychologists couldn’t match a diagnosis of the character in the book as if Psychology was some sort of séance. That idea is fine and dandy, but I think it didn’t make sense.
The very unlikeable Watkins has another perspective (give and take transcendental and metaphysical layers) but in fact, he has made the most conventional choices in his life, over and over again. He goes to war and has that baggage, study the classics, becomes a teacher (nothing wrong with that) and a mild academic figure, dates his students (yikes!), marries a girl 15 years younger (not the norm, but very prevalent in the preferences of many), has 2 children, keeps having lovers out of his students and in general being an ass. Even when he is described as strange and peculiar, it exudes a lack of originality in his life choices. Nothing wrong again in having a conventional life, but I couldn’t find his peculiarity, even his nervous breakdown, it boils to a refusal to continue with his life as he made it, to become the old Watkins and the baggage of his life, instead, he roams the edge of feeling another person, not facing himself and becoming somehow a revolutionary figure for this. It came as juvenile (for me) the peculiarity that it never was an option to… change his life? Like… change is dull? It is dull and hard work, but the character uniqueness appears as a continuous avoidance of consequences and going with the flow, cynically accepting what it is given to him with any kind of consideration or gratitude, because… special.
The book also makes a climax point of giving him a choice to regain his memories and thus, becoming the old Watkins or remaining like that. One may ponder about accepting what society says you are, being awake or sleep at the constrains of reality, but… come on… he is the same ass either way? Again, a brilliant idea, like the old-school fights for your soul, this time, reality and mind, it just didn’t work for me.
I have in mind, that living a conventional life, doesn’t equate to not having a unique way to see things, but if you are making a point of it, it was left more as an intention than anything. I truly hope that having this characteristic in life doesn’t translate as only being a jerk.
Amazing idea that works in the mechanics of the book, but it tatters in the murk of life and time. I´ll go crawl to my cave now.
March 25, 2016
This is one of the most unusual books I've read, it covers an amazing range of ideas in under 300 pages. I've never read anything by Doris Lessing before (not sure how since I'm constantly reading, and try to focus on female authors.) I downloaded a bunch of her books and picked this one simply because I loved the title. It turns out that it falls into one of my favorite genres, the "alternate reality" because of coma/near-death/madness, etc. My favorite example of this genre is the movie Jacob's Ladder. I feel differently about works of art that fall into this category because I was in a coma for a month due to a freak illness in my 20s, and during that time lived in a futuristic cube-shaped world that technically doesn't exist, but I felt time passing, had a job, knew people there, etc. So I know what it feels like to have memories that most people wouldn't consider to have actually happened, yet those memories are more vivid than things that have happened in my "real" life. Heavy stuff, and this is one of the only books that I can think of that works with that idea (if I'm missing any books, please recommend them!) It seems to be a more common trope in movies and TV shows.
Although it's a little hard to get into at first, Lessing does a fantastic job with the description of the alternate realms the main character wanders through - they feel hyper-real rather than unreal. When he passes through the crystal portal and is able to see the solar system on an energetic level, her writing really captures the intensity of a fever dream. Even though I was reading this on the NYC subway and had places to go, I was hoping for train delays just so I wouldn't have to put the book down. I think ultimately it perfectly captures the thoughts of a man straining for universal transcendence and then just barely missing it. This book is definitely not for everyone but I highly recommend it.
Although it's a little hard to get into at first, Lessing does a fantastic job with the description of the alternate realms the main character wanders through - they feel hyper-real rather than unreal. When he passes through the crystal portal and is able to see the solar system on an energetic level, her writing really captures the intensity of a fever dream. Even though I was reading this on the NYC subway and had places to go, I was hoping for train delays just so I wouldn't have to put the book down. I think ultimately it perfectly captures the thoughts of a man straining for universal transcendence and then just barely missing it. This book is definitely not for everyone but I highly recommend it.
November 10, 2016
Having heard so much about how good this is and having my expectations raised so high, there was every chance that this could've been a let down. But it was the absolute polar opposite. Lessing has written a tale that it utterly gripping from start to finish through all the strange unusual flashbacks and visions and all the real heartfelt moments as Watkins is torn between his old and new realities. As his doctors try and cure him and his family and friends are brought in to help, the questions Watkins' raises about them, their aims and society as a whole are as poingant now as they were then, possibly even more so. Despite the weight of the story, this still flows beautifully and allows the reader time to take everything in, leaving the mind room to breathe and ponder without losing the thread of the story itself.
April 2, 2020
Profesorius Čarlzas Votkinsas praradęs atmintį papuola į ligoninę ir savo sąmonės gniaužtus. Nelengva kelionė po žmogaus sąmonę, bet įdomi. Kitoks vėjas literatūroje. Tikiuosi skaitydami šitą knygą irgi atrasite įdomių pastebėjimų, ne tik iš pirmo žvilgsnio fantastinius kliedesius. Ne viskas yra taip kaip atrodo išorėje.
https://agnebali.blogspot.com/2019/11...
https://agnebali.blogspot.com/2019/11...
July 8, 2014
I have a problem with the word ‘experimental’ because most experiments fail; it’s in their nature. When I use word ‘experiment’ here I mean a test to prove a hypothesis. In the case of a novel the word ‘experimental’ usually means: If I try this and this and this do I still have a novel? And the answer to that question is usually: Yes, but not a very good one. Certainly what we’re willing to consider a novel nowadays is different from when the word was first coined and if you want to take the word at face value what Lessing has tried to do here is certainly something novel, something new and for that reason alone the book’s worth reading but if, like me, you know nothing about the book when you pick it up then the first third will test you. All I can say is: Hang on in there, skip a few pages if you have to but watch out for the conference; that’s when they start talking about the briefing and, for me at least, things started to click into place.
There is, however, no briefing. There’s no point it seems:
In the second part of the book we learn who the patient is—Professor Charles Watkins (a professor of classics)—and the doctors attempt to aid him regain his memories. Of course he has memories, as he says to his wife when she comes to visit: “My mind is full of memories [but] I don’t remember the things you talk about.” He indeed remembers (and misremembers) many things but unfortunately he can’t remember his mission. He’s aware that he has to remember something but not what.
Much of the latter half of the book is made up of letters and memos and it does appear that within his circle of acquaintances over the years there have been others of his kind also struggling to make sense of not quite fitting into the lives they’ve been living. Could these be members of “the colonies on Earth that are the result of previous Descents”? At one point in talking to Doctor Y. he does actually deliver his message but it’s in such a compressed form—and, of course, delivered by a man in a mental hospital—that all that happens is he gets shushed and told to get some rest.
Or all of this could be the ravings of a delusional mind; the more we learn about him the more we can see his ranting as a twisted version of things that have happened to him. K-Pax it is not. It’s also not really a study of madness—I use the term loosely—but it does provide an interesting take on what many have believed for years, that the mad—mad to us—are simply those with a different level or kind of insight. Forty years on we look at individuals with savant syndrome and accept that they are differently abled even if we don’t understand how they can do the things they do. They might as well be aliens in human skins.
Not an easy read, especially some of the stream-of-consciousness sections which just go on and on but once you’ve got the gist things start to make more sense and then—I haven’t mentioned his memories of the war—maybe we were wrong. What’s probably hardest is the book keeps changing. At first it’s an adventure, followed by a hunk of stream of consciousness writing which then morphs into science fiction; then it becomes a mystery novel, then an epistolary novel, then an historical memoir. The ending, however, is poignant, a final, desperate attempt to regain that thing he's sure he’s lost.
There is, however, no briefing. There’s no point it seems:
“[T]here is to be no Briefing. How could there be? You’d be bound to forget every word you hear now. No, you will carry Sealed Orders.”Hell is Earth and these beings—extra-terrestrials of some kind, gods possibly—have volunteered to travel to Earth (and some not for the first time so there’s a hint at reincarnation here) to communicate an important message; a Planetary Emergency is apparently brewing and they need to know the truth:
Here, as some of them unconsciously glanced around for evidences of these, Merk joked: “Come, come, what do you expect? A roll of microfilm? Perhaps a manuscript of some kind, that you’d have to chew up and swallow in moments of danger? No, of course not, give me some credit—brainprints, of course.”
An ability to see things as they are, in their multifarious relations—in other words, Truth—will be part of humanity’s new, soon-to-be-developed equipment.To communicate their message—unlike Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still they don’t have flying saucers—they have to be born as humans and grow up and then, somewhere, somehow, hopefully (there is no guarantee), they will remember why they’re there:
“At the risk of boring you, I must repeat, I am afraid—repeat, reiterate, re-emphasise—it is not at all a question of your arriving on Planet Earth as you leave here. You will lose nearly all memory of your past existence. You will each of you come to yourselves, perhaps alone, perhaps in the company of each other, but with only a vague feeling of recognition, and probably disassociated, disorientated, ill, discouraged, and unable to believe, when you are told what your task really is. You will wake up, as it were, but there will be a period while you are waking which will be like the recovery from an illness, or like the emergence into good air from a poisoned one. Some of you may choose not to wake, for the waking will be so painful, and the knowledge of your condition and Earth’s condition so agonising, you will be like drug addicts: you may prefer to continue to breathe in oblivion. And when you have understood that you are in the process of awakening, that you have something to get done, you will have absorbed enough of the characteristics of Earthmen to be distrustful, surly, grudging, suspicious. You will be like a drowning person who drowns his rescuer, so violently will you struggle in your panic terror.”At this point I started to realise that the madman in the hospital who’d been raving about his experiences lost at sea and then on an island and finally after entering a mysterious Disc or Crystal which takes him on a journey probably most similar to the one David Bowman takes when he enters the Star Gate in 2001 could quite possibly be an alien—or at least an alien consciousness—struggling towards self-awareness. Was he lost at sea? Unlikely. At least not in this life. He’s discovered wandering along the River Thames.
In the second part of the book we learn who the patient is—Professor Charles Watkins (a professor of classics)—and the doctors attempt to aid him regain his memories. Of course he has memories, as he says to his wife when she comes to visit: “My mind is full of memories [but] I don’t remember the things you talk about.” He indeed remembers (and misremembers) many things but unfortunately he can’t remember his mission. He’s aware that he has to remember something but not what.
Much of the latter half of the book is made up of letters and memos and it does appear that within his circle of acquaintances over the years there have been others of his kind also struggling to make sense of not quite fitting into the lives they’ve been living. Could these be members of “the colonies on Earth that are the result of previous Descents”? At one point in talking to Doctor Y. he does actually deliver his message but it’s in such a compressed form—and, of course, delivered by a man in a mental hospital—that all that happens is he gets shushed and told to get some rest.
Or all of this could be the ravings of a delusional mind; the more we learn about him the more we can see his ranting as a twisted version of things that have happened to him. K-Pax it is not. It’s also not really a study of madness—I use the term loosely—but it does provide an interesting take on what many have believed for years, that the mad—mad to us—are simply those with a different level or kind of insight. Forty years on we look at individuals with savant syndrome and accept that they are differently abled even if we don’t understand how they can do the things they do. They might as well be aliens in human skins.
Not an easy read, especially some of the stream-of-consciousness sections which just go on and on but once you’ve got the gist things start to make more sense and then—I haven’t mentioned his memories of the war—maybe we were wrong. What’s probably hardest is the book keeps changing. At first it’s an adventure, followed by a hunk of stream of consciousness writing which then morphs into science fiction; then it becomes a mystery novel, then an epistolary novel, then an historical memoir. The ending, however, is poignant, a final, desperate attempt to regain that thing he's sure he’s lost.
January 7, 2025
"You know what they say, if you're going to have a break from reality, you might as well go all out"
- Professor Charles Watkins (probably)
An unidentified man is admitted to a mental hospital. The doctors and staff have no idea what's going on with him, but communication is difficult because he speaks in an odd manner. The man seems to be in his own world. While being examined by doctors and nurses, he babbles on about floating on a raft at sea after the rest of his shipmates were abducted by a crystalline UFO. As his two main attending psych doctors debate about whether to drug the patient silly or fry his brain with electroshock, the patient drifts along at sea, not sure if he will survive out in the ocean within the fantasy world that he thinks is real.
It just keeps getting weirder from there, at least for a while. In order to classify this book, I'd have to invent a genre name and call it a psychological fantasy. The only other work that even comes adjacent to this category would be the movie "The Fisher King", but this book is much more psychological, and much more fantastical in comparison, so it's a better example of the genre it exits alone in.
In "Briefing For A Decent Into Hell", Doris Lessing unveils a visionary inner journey that would make Terrence McKenna feel jealous, along with a lot of psychological depth surrounding the patient while he is being examined. Along the way Lessing throws out jigsaw puzzles pieces for the reader to put together in order to find a full picture of what could cause this patient to break from reality in the way that he did.
Overall, this was a fascinating journey. I only wished it would have gone into more depth about the symbolism involved in the patient's visions and how the archetypes revealed through his inner space relate to the circumstances of his breakdown. I also had some issues with aspects of his treatment and recovery, it didn't seem plausible the way it happened. It's still worth checking out for anyone who wants to read something unlike anything else they have read before.
I'd recommend this to fans of Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five", or Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
- Professor Charles Watkins (probably)
An unidentified man is admitted to a mental hospital. The doctors and staff have no idea what's going on with him, but communication is difficult because he speaks in an odd manner. The man seems to be in his own world. While being examined by doctors and nurses, he babbles on about floating on a raft at sea after the rest of his shipmates were abducted by a crystalline UFO. As his two main attending psych doctors debate about whether to drug the patient silly or fry his brain with electroshock, the patient drifts along at sea, not sure if he will survive out in the ocean within the fantasy world that he thinks is real.
It just keeps getting weirder from there, at least for a while. In order to classify this book, I'd have to invent a genre name and call it a psychological fantasy. The only other work that even comes adjacent to this category would be the movie "The Fisher King", but this book is much more psychological, and much more fantastical in comparison, so it's a better example of the genre it exits alone in.
In "Briefing For A Decent Into Hell", Doris Lessing unveils a visionary inner journey that would make Terrence McKenna feel jealous, along with a lot of psychological depth surrounding the patient while he is being examined. Along the way Lessing throws out jigsaw puzzles pieces for the reader to put together in order to find a full picture of what could cause this patient to break from reality in the way that he did.
Overall, this was a fascinating journey. I only wished it would have gone into more depth about the symbolism involved in the patient's visions and how the archetypes revealed through his inner space relate to the circumstances of his breakdown. I also had some issues with aspects of his treatment and recovery, it didn't seem plausible the way it happened. It's still worth checking out for anyone who wants to read something unlike anything else they have read before.
I'd recommend this to fans of Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five", or Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
March 28, 2011
Hell as in Hades as in the land of the living dead, a place of stasis. Change in the form or a re-imagined life, or liberation, is not an option for Professor Charles Watkins because he is in the care--at the mercy--of doctors whose perceptions are easily, readily handicapped by the vast array of labels they so easily apply to Professor Charles Watkins.
Watkins arrives at an English hospital as a lost soul, a man who has lost his memory and, therefore, his identity. As his doctors attempt to discover him that they might return him to his world, they also seek to recreate him with the aid of medications, therapies, and the recollections of friends and lovers and rivals.
Charles imagines himself one way; the doctors, another. What should be a collaboration toward healing becomes a competition as the clock ticks toward Watkins's inevitable release from the institution.
Can we be ourselves? Can we remake our lives? Can liberating change ever come? And what if we have no name with which to label this new creation?
Watkins arrives at an English hospital as a lost soul, a man who has lost his memory and, therefore, his identity. As his doctors attempt to discover him that they might return him to his world, they also seek to recreate him with the aid of medications, therapies, and the recollections of friends and lovers and rivals.
Charles imagines himself one way; the doctors, another. What should be a collaboration toward healing becomes a competition as the clock ticks toward Watkins's inevitable release from the institution.
Can we be ourselves? Can we remake our lives? Can liberating change ever come? And what if we have no name with which to label this new creation?
May 2, 2017
Well, I made it almost exactly half-way through. While I love the title and appreciated the experimental and very free-form approach, I was neither entertained nor illuminated by this. I'm glad it exists, perhaps other will enjoy its mysteries and fantasy/sci-fiesque new-aginess, but it left me cold. I was impressed it was concerned with global warming (as early as 1971!) but, when the goddess Venus called science just another human religion, well, that was that for me.
March 11, 2022
Åh det här tyckte jag om. Inte helt lättläst, eftersom en del är inifrån en "psykotisk" mans sinne (hur man nu väljer att tolka det). Men berör filosofiskt frågan om hur allt hänger ihop, vi på vår lilla jord i solsystemet, civilisation och religion, att "vakna upp" och se större samband än våra futtiga, men är det då psykisk sjukdom? Många berättelser i en, dessutom.
June 12, 2020
Uzun zamandır okumakta bu kadar zorlandığım başka bir kitap olmamıştı. Çok farklı bir tarzı var, oldukça deneysel bir psikolojik bilim kurgu gibi.(Tam olarak ne olduğuna dair halen bir fikrim yok zira.) Kitabın ilk bölümünde, karakterin iç monologunu takip ederken devamlı bir “ben ne okuyorum” sorusu soruyor insan. Sayfalarca bir deliliğin hezeyanları içerisinde kayboluyorsunuz ve bu deliliğe muazzam bir mitoloji, destanlar ve savaşlar gömülü. İkinci bölümünde okumak daha kolaylaşsa da o etkiyi tam da atamıyorsunuz üstünüzden. Eğer Doris Lessing ile hiç tanışmadıysanız bu kitaptan uzak durun derim zira yazarla tanışmadan vedalaşma ihtiyacı duyabilirsiniz. “Döne dolana, döne dolana, döne dolana..” mütemadiyen “ne okuyorum ben” sorgusuyla okuduğum ve oldukça da zorlandığım bir kitap oldu, o yüzden mutlaka okuyun tavsiyesinde bulunamayacağım. Son olarak; böylesi bir metni bu kadar akıcı bir şekilde dilimize taşıyan sevgili Niran Elçi’ye de sonsuz teşekkürler, kendisine olan hayranlığım bu kitapla daha da bir katmerlendi adeta. Muhtemelen onun çevirisi olmasa bitiremezdim bu okumayı.
July 4, 2021
Doris Lessing can never be accused of not parsing an idea to the fullest. At least in this book. It’s like a theory of mental relativity. There is some sanity existing within insanity. There’s about an 80 page stream of consciousness section that required work to get through but it’s relevant and worth it.
October 5, 2017
I guess in the time of the book, the word "neurodiversity" hadn't been coined yet. But this book, with its experimental form and somewhat taboo topic, reads like a compassionate but tragic apology for neurodiversity. It's tragic, for as we follow the hero's journey we see the Normal as it is: a kind of censor that compels us to discard the spontaneous emergence of values rooted from exactly the Normalcy itself, and the hero is at odds with this compulsion. It shows the inherent oddity of the Normal: that it is a double bind, forbidden to contravene but at the same time impossible to comply with. We survive, when we accept it as our own; but we grow, when we see it as the double bind it is.
In the former case, it means surrendering; and in the latter, evolving. And in either case, we suffer the loss of what we construct as the "identity", perhaps followed by mourning. This is the price that must be paid no matter what.
Perhaps, if we read it this way, the ending may not seem that tragic. There is some ambiguity about how the hero ultimately turns out. The text doesn't rule out a subversive reading and extrapolation.
The style is sort of close to James Joyce's Ulysses or John Gardner's Grendel. It shifts between various "genres" such as stream-of-consciousness, magic realism, play, epistolary novel, tacky Eastern-bloc propaganda war-time romance, contemplative essay, and conventional fiction with a third-person omnipresent reliable narrator. And it's not divided into chapters. I guess this is part of the amorphous metafiction parallel to the text (if you read the book you'll see what I mean by "parallel") -- to heck with the walls that divide genres, whether they're genres of literature or of humans.
In the former case, it means surrendering; and in the latter, evolving. And in either case, we suffer the loss of what we construct as the "identity", perhaps followed by mourning. This is the price that must be paid no matter what.
Perhaps, if we read it this way, the ending may not seem that tragic. There is some ambiguity about how the hero ultimately turns out. The text doesn't rule out a subversive reading and extrapolation.
The style is sort of close to James Joyce's Ulysses or John Gardner's Grendel. It shifts between various "genres" such as stream-of-consciousness, magic realism, play, epistolary novel, tacky Eastern-bloc propaganda war-time romance, contemplative essay, and conventional fiction with a third-person omnipresent reliable narrator. And it's not divided into chapters. I guess this is part of the amorphous metafiction parallel to the text (if you read the book you'll see what I mean by "parallel") -- to heck with the walls that divide genres, whether they're genres of literature or of humans.
February 4, 2014
This is the third novel I have read by Lessing. I also read The Grass is Singing and The Summer before the Dark, and found both novels to be far more accessible and enjoyable reads. Having said that, though, I rated this novel higher. While it is clearly a more challenging read, Lessing's work is incredibly brilliant. In fact, I would call this novel "genius," as it tracks the mental breakdown of Professor Charles Watkins. The beginning of the novel, when Watkins is at the height of his madness, and crippled by poorly prescribed medication, his thoughts are difficult to follow and become quite grotesque and violent at times. To have written such scenes, though, is truly a marvel, and this makes me want to read more biographical information related to Lessing. Later, some of the insights offered on education and human nature are so intelligently phrased and accurate. I quite enjoyed the very lengthy and detailed letter written to Watkins by Rosemary Baines. I highly believe that any individual going into the mental health field, or those who personally suffer from mental illness, should read this novel. For those in the profession, I found the madness of Watkins to be quite revealing. Lessing is quite revolutionary and bold, and I admire her work here.
February 21, 2014
کتاب عجیبی است. 30 صفحه اول کتاب، یک جان کندن حسابی بود و بعد هم تا صفحه های 60-70 هنوز سخت بود کنار آمدن با روندش. با اینحال، چون عادت دارم که هرکتابی که شروع کردم باید بالاخره تمام شود، تحمل کردم و خرد خرد کتاب را خواندم، تا اینکه به جاهای خوبش هم رسیدم.
باز هم می گویم که کتاب عجیبی است و تحمل می خواهد. خیلی از جاهای داستان گنگ است، به خصوص نیمه اولش، اما جالب است که به نظرم این گنگی، گنگی درستی است و اصلا یکی از مزیت های عمده کتاب است.
نظریاتی که داستان در باب جامعه و فرد بیان می کند بسیار جالب است، و ایده ای هم که به نظرم قوی ترین نقطه داستان است، بسیار قابل تامل.
در باب اسم کتاب، که ممکن است یک جورهایی بدفهمی هم ایجاد کند، همین قدر بگویم که یکی از معانی دوزخ در این کتاب، زمین است.
کتاب پارادوکسیکال و متفاوتی است... نه تنها نسبت به سایر آثار لسینگ، بلکه حتی نسبت به سایر کتاب هایی که خوانده اید. با اینحال، شاید تست خوبی باشد برای میزان تمرکزتان، و میزان تحمل تان در خواندن کتاب های سخت، ولی خوب.
باز هم می گویم که کتاب عجیبی است و تحمل می خواهد. خیلی از جاهای داستان گنگ است، به خصوص نیمه اولش، اما جالب است که به نظرم این گنگی، گنگی درستی است و اصلا یکی از مزیت های عمده کتاب است.
نظریاتی که داستان در باب جامعه و فرد بیان می کند بسیار جالب است، و ایده ای هم که به نظرم قوی ترین نقطه داستان است، بسیار قابل تامل.
در باب اسم کتاب، که ممکن است یک جورهایی بدفهمی هم ایجاد کند، همین قدر بگویم که یکی از معانی دوزخ در این کتاب، زمین است.
کتاب پارادوکسیکال و متفاوتی است... نه تنها نسبت به سایر آثار لسینگ، بلکه حتی نسبت به سایر کتاب هایی که خوانده اید. با اینحال، شاید تست خوبی باشد برای میزان تمرکزتان، و میزان تحمل تان در خواندن کتاب های سخت، ولی خوب.
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