The Temptation of Jack Orkney and other Stories
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- Synopsis
- In this, her first collection of stories in seven years, Doris Lessing looks into those irrevocable moments of decision when men and women are, through their own actions, either liberated from or imprisoned by the sanctions of society. An old woman, poorer than poor, keeping barely alive in a condemned house, is offered the shelter of an old people's home if she will part with her faithful cat. A little diamond cutter risks his livelihood to disconcert a modern merchant prince's daughter by making her a gift of a rare pearl. An African adventurer goes "native," to the uncomprehending horror of his fellow whites. An elderly gentleman guiltily plucks the deadheads off the geraniums in Regent's Park. Visitors from outer space, reporting on a threatened city, conclude reluctantly that society itself is anesthetized against warnings of disaster, and that only the derelicts, the criminals, the madwthe outcasts who are unable (unwilling) to conform--will have the flexibility to survive the cataclysm. Yet from time to time, even among those whose lives are worldly and "successful," the impulse to self-knowledge, to the recognition of reality, breaks through. At a crucial instant in his middle years, Jack Orkney, a complex and seasoned radical, becomes suddenly aware that he is in "a state of acute attention, as if his whole being --memory, body, present and past chemistries-- had been assaulted by a warning, a terror associ (ated with the knowledge of passing time." And an aging, once beautiful actress acknowledges in the silence that now surrounds her that "this is wh,t I was born for, this is what I am, to fight embodie, sleep, putting around it a continuing girdle light, of intelligence, so that it cannot spread slow stain of ugliness .... "
- Copyright:
- 1972
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 307 Pages
- Publisher:
- N/A
- Date of Addition:
- 07/24/03
- Copyrighted By:
- Doris Lessing
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Literature and Fiction
- Submitted By:
- earl schwab
- Proofread By:
- Dr. Kenneth Cross
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.