The Golden Notebook #2: Cynicism vs. Idealism
The Golden Notebook #2: Cynicism vs. Idealism
Capitalists, Communists, and The Timeless Problem of No-Good Choices
Daunting Classic: The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Progress: 28 Days, 136 Pages
The Golden Notebook #1: Artists Talking
The Golden Notebook so far, unlike its reputation, has been less about woman’s liberation and more about our protagonist Anna spending time with would-be communists. The second part of the novel sets up an interesting counterpoint to the first scene in which her friend’s ex-husband, Richard, comes to preach old-fashioned capitalist pragmatism to his son and is harshly shot down. Flashing back to Anna’s youth in part two, we read her “black notebook,” which details the group of idealists she was spending time with in her twenties. The Boys—Paul, Jimmy, Ted, and Willi—are largely upper-class Englishmen who have the intellectual backing for radicalism but aren’t doing anything that looks like revolution. Much like Richard is picked apart for giving into the man, in a less directly denunciatory way Anna’s first notebook shows that her former friends are largely full of it.
Anna’s group of six—Anna and incomparably beautiful Maryrose are the two women in the group—hits all of the classics of failed idealists that could be as true today as they were in the 60s: dropping their guard and saying racists/classist things given the right circumstances; aligning themselves with workers who they believe they are fighting for but who haven’t asked for their help and don’t share their beliefs; and, worst of all, always talking about what they believe without actually doing anything. Unsurprisingly, there are also plenty of hints that the loose sense of justice of The Boys doesn’t include treating the women in their group with anything approaching equality. What do they do instead? They spend time at a hotel by the beach where they start drinking early and sing late into the night.
In many ways we’ve looped back to the same place we were in Lessing’s 60s. In our age of political polarization, there are plenty of people stuck in Anna’s position, who see neither side of the spectrum as particularly worth looking up to as an exemplar of a way to move politically. The men in charge in The Golden Notebook represent these two poles pretty well. Richard, the husband, is the consummate sellout, but honest about it. He sees the status quo is too strong to fight and therefore will play along and grab all that he can for himself. Willi, the de facto leader of Anna’s young revolutionary group, is the consummate hypocrite, professing his allegiance to changing the system but never at the expense of his personal comfort or opportunities. When one of the workers at the hotel confesses that he has a child from an affair with a Black woman and feels guilty about his son who he won’t know and who will live in poverty, Willi responds callously:
“’You believe it’s your duty to take the child into your house. That means the four old people will be shocked into their graves, apart from the fact that no one will ever speak to them again. The three children will be ostracized at school. Your wife will lose her job. You will lose your job. Nine people will be ruined. And what good will that do your son, George? May I ask?” (129)
In other words, Willi sounds an awful lot like Richard when it comes down to it, advising George to protect what he has and defend the privileges he has secured for his family rather than doing the right thing. Richard and Willi from The Golden Notebook would be at home in our political environment where there is a general sentiment of “both sides are bad” in the air, especially among young people. But in a two-choice system, we’re often called to pick one of these two disappointing options. And with a decision that’s already rooted in dissatisfaction, the question tends to not be “who do you like more?” but “who do you dislike more?”. In choosing between Richard and Willi, whose approaches could easily stand in for the ethos of our two political parties, we are often choosing between which type of attitude we despise and therefore can’t abide by.
In both cases the men are destined to fail you. But the primary difference is how they will do it. The Richards will reliably fail you by fighting to keep the ills of the world the way they are to their personal benefit. A silver lining being that Richards will be more or less honest about the fact that’s what they’re doing. The Willis will fail you in unpredictable ways. Unlike the Richards, they are trying to do something good for you, but will always come up short. Willis will put the axiom on its head: overpromising and underdelivering. In the end you pick your own poison: do you have more distain for those who are callously honest or well-meaning hypocrites? Or, do you seemingly choose neither, like Anna, and observe each side, without really picking one?