More reading obviously: the never-ending list. In Gratitude - Jenny Diski, The Book of Strange New Things - Michael Faber

The list is never-ending - I've given up writing down titles from the New Yorker and the Guardian book reviews, but there are books that leap out at me and I think, yes I must read this. In Gratitude is what manged the leap from review to reading, for a number of reasons. I like Jenny Diski's writing, particularly her autobiographical stuff. It's an inelegant word, "stuff", but I use it intentionally, because there is another more prurient, more "stuff" centered reason for reading In Gratitude - it's because she finally writes about her relationship with Doris Lessing, one of my most revered writers, both for her novels and writing and for her approach to politics and Sufism - it's because of Doris Lessing that I started reading Idris Shah and that gave me a way of thinking that, I think, has made me so much more critical of any ideologies or received ideas, and maybe, just maybe, has made me a more useful person that I might have been without exposure to Sufi ideas. Let's straight away dispose of any notion that I got any secret spiritual or any other enlightenment - I didn't. What I have understood from Idris Shah and Doris Lessing's writings on Sufism is that service, just plain ordinary service is what counts - forget enlightenment, forget spiritual insight - until you are of practical ordinary use in the world there is no possibility of gaining that - and in addition, even if you are of service, do practical good, there are no guarantees, no promises - you might be in the wrong car, the wrong place, at the wrong time and nothing is going to come of it.  I've always felt that this has been a useful way to look at the world if only to prevent yourself being swept up in cults, ideologies, political and campaigning groups, ways of thinking that are more about group bindings and emotional satisfaction than anything else. Other than that, on balance, I think it's caused me more pain and upset than if I had gone down these other routes in that I don't think I have been able to apply the lessons therein and I don't think I have been able to be of service except in very small limited ways - which is not self-beration, it's just a simple statement of fact, and it does not detract from the very small services that I have performed at various times.

What I read in In Gratitude about Doris Lessing was disturbing, upsetting and unsettling. You can read much of it here. The background was that Doris Lessing took Jenny Diski in as a very disturbed 15yr old girl, and allowed her to live in her house for four years, and even after that gave her an allowance to live on.  That it was a continuing act of unimaginable generosity is never in doubt, that Doris Lessing did not understand in any way how to look after a damaged 15yr old girl is, certainly from reading Jenny Diski's account, never in doubt either. 

The Book of Strange New Things needs a quick mention, - by the author of the rather disturbing Under the Skin (do I make a point of reading disturbing books all the time I wonder - is that why I have so many nightmares?) . It too is disturbing, but in a more friendly, good way - perhaps gently provoking is a better description - but I'm only a quarter of the way through, and I have no idea at all where it is headed, although it reads well and coherently so far - which is an exciting thing in a book. Maybe I'll buy his new book now. Sigh. 

Post script re In Gratitude

Of course one of the most disturbing (I know I'm using the word disturbing too much in this entry, but it seems stupid to look up synonyms just for the sake of it)  things about In Gratitude was its rather dismissive take on Idris Shah and the Sufis. That's been bothering me - but I found this letter from  Seán Gallagher in the LRB that explains it . "Shah didn’t work with other Sufis at Langton Green, his home in Kent. It would have been pointless. " he says - Shah gathered people around him to help in his endeavors, but they were not Sufis - nor did Doris Lessing claim to be a Sufi. What Shah did was gather people around him :

"What he sought was potential. Given his task of spreading Sufism at all reachable levels of society, he did indeed draw about him groups of men and women of social influence, not all of them as students, to help advance his ‘brief’. That this worked is clear from the international spread of his university lectureships and in the reach of his more than thirty published works, sold in a dozen translations and in their millions."

Letter to the London Review of Books, 7 January 2016.

This makes sense to me - particularly since I've met a few of the people who did indeed meet with Shah, and that to me did not seem "Sufis", but certainly very able in their fields, sometimes a little strange - but then who am I to judge?