What is Pretty Girl with Big Boobs
Nobel Laureate and writer Doris Lessing is asked the question “Looking back, how have things changed in the writing and reading world?”
If you are a young writer today, it’s very hard. The joke is you have a tough time unless you are a pretty girl with big boobs. If you’re a real writer, you’ll go on chugging at it and maybe you’ll have some luck. Nowadays writers look forward to big advances, parties and champagne. They look forward to a literary life, which to us then was quite incredible. We were very high-minded; we’d write because it was our vocation, and we did it as well as we could. Not one person had any money in those days. We weren’t thinking all the time of the rewards for writing–and I personally think that is better. For one thing there was never any temptation to alter what you’re going to write because you might get a better review if you say this or that.
You can read the Newsweek interview in full here.
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