SOURCE: "Wor(l)ds within Words: Doris Lessing as Meta-Fictionist and Meta-Physician," in Studies in the Novel, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer, 1988, pp. 186-205.

In the following essay, Fishburn contends that Lessing's novels are highly complex, subtly self-conscious "metafictions" and that "Lessing has never truly been the realist (we) critics thought her … [she only masqueraded as one."]

—A book which does not contain its counter-book is considered incomplete.

                                Jorge Luis Borges

Although Doris Lessing is probably best known as the author of The Golden Notebook, I think it is safe to say that most critics would not characterize the bulk of her fiction as formally experimental or even up-to-date. In fact, with the possible exception of Canopus in Argos, they would probably consign her fiction to the venerable but old-fashioned school of expressive realism. Widespread as this perception of Lessing has been, I would argue that it has had the...