Doris Lessing, Novel Prize Winner

Congratulations to Doris Lessing, winner of the Novel Prize at the age of 88. According to wikipedia, Lessing is "only the eleventh woman to win the prize in its 106-year history, and also the oldest person ever to win the literature award."

Among other great accomplishments of her lifetime, here is one that struck me as very meaningful. Why would someone do this?

In 1984, she attempted to publish two novels under a pseudonym, Jane Somers, to demonstrate the difficulty new authors faced in trying to break into print. The novels were declined by Lessing's publisher in the UK but accepted by Knopf in the
US.

My mother, born on October 21, 1919, would have said, "Out of the goodness of her heart."
It is quite a gesture. And good for Knopf in the US. :-)

Perhaps it was part of her Sufi ... I love this quote:

"Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten.
And seeing them... the seeker cried, ‘Great God, how is it that a loving creator
can see such things and yet do nothing about them?’... God said, ‘I did do
something. I made you.’" -- Sufi saying

It's getting near Thanksgiving. If you have been blessed, let your light shine on the corners of someone else's world, as Lessing did.

If you had been trying to get published for years, you would recognize this gesture of hers for what it is.