SOURCE: Fishburn, Katherine. “Wor(l)ds within Words: Doris Lessing as Meta-Fictionist and Meta-Physician.” Studies in the Novel 20, no. 2 (summer 1988): 186-205.

In the following essay, Fishburn identifies and discusses the work of Doris Lessing as a metafictional writer.

—A book which does not contain its counterbook 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 unforeseen consequence of deflecting critical attention away from those very qualities of her fiction that serve to...