The Great Political Fictions: The Golden Notebook Part 2 w/Catherine Taylor

About this episode

David Runciman discusses Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook with Catherine Taylor, exploring its feminist themes and relevance today.

In the second of two episodes about Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, David talks to critic and memoirist Catherine Taylor about the novel’s place in the history of feminism. Is its idea of ‘free women’ meant to be ironic? Why are the things that shocked its original readers not the things that shock its readers today? What makes Lessing so much more angry about male hypocrisy than she is about male brutality? And what else by Lessing should we all read? Read more by Catherine on Doris Lessing in this recent essay published in Aeon https://aeon.co/essays/what-we-can-learn-from-doris-lessings-experiments-in-living Join us on Friday 19th June at the Regent Street Cinema in London for the final film in our current season: a screening of Never Let Me Go followed by a live podcast recording with geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford. Tickets available now https://bit.ly/4x641XC You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus merch, events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com Next Time in Great Political Fictions: The Dispossessed Learn more about your ad choices…

People in this episode

Host: David Runciman

Guest: Catherine Taylor

Topics covered

• feminism
• literature
• Doris Lessing
• political fiction
• gender studies

Keywords

• Doris Lessing
• The Golden Notebook
• feminism
• male hypocrisy
• literary criticism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Aeon

Books & works: The Golden Notebook

Places: London

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