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Doris Lessing effortlessly walks away with the prize. Hands down. The hastily instituted 1115 Prize for Most Irreverential Reaction to Winning A Nobel Prize. (Please note the use of the indefinite article there, which is our nod to Lessing’s reaction to this much-ballyhooed prize. She clearly thinks of it as “a” prize and not “the” prize of prizes.)

You have to love this lady, who learned of her singular honor from the reporters who were waiting at her doorstep, when she returned home (in one of London’s iconic black cabs) from an extended outing, involving a hospital (her son), Hampstead Heath, and a grocery store. She obviously doesn’t carry a cell phone, which in itself is enough to make me a lifelong fan (seeing as how I’ve never owned a cellphone in my long life).

How often these days do you get to witness a spontaneous, unrehearsed reaction to winning the Nobel Prize? I guess you do get more religious as you grow older, because the first words out of this 87-year old lady’s mouth were an invocation to her Lord and Savior. “Oh Christ” she said, “I couldn’t care less!”

But clearly the reporters wanted more, and Lessing must have felt they deserved more. For she gave them a little more:

“I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I’m delighted to win them all, the whole lot, OK?” Lessing said, making her way through the crowd. “It’s a royal flush.”

“I’m sure you’d like some uplifting remarks,” she added with a smile.

They gave her every chance to produce a conventional sound bite. She obviously doesn’t give two hoots for convention:

Asked repeatedly if she was excited about the award, she held court from her doorstep and noted she had been in the running for the Nobel for decades.

“I can’t say I’m overwhelmed with surprise,” Lessing said. “I’m 88 years old and they can’t give the Nobel to someone who’s dead, so I think they were probably thinking they’d probably better give it to me now before I’ve popped off.”

Surrounded by members of the international media in her flower-packed garden, Lessing was dismissive of the Nobel — calling the award process graceless and saying the prize “doesn’t mean anything artistically.”

Here are more reasons to love this lovely lady:

Sitting on the step outside her front door, the telephone ringing constantly behind her, the feisty 87-year-old issued a stern anti-war message and also described how she had once been told by an official that she would never win the Nobel Prize.
[...]
Lessing revealed how she was once approached by an official connected with the Nobel Prize at a formal reception in Sweden who told her she would never win the award.

“I hope their manners have changed,” she said, referring to the Nobel organizers.

“Can you imagine the scene? (With) my Swedish publisher at a very, very formal dinner … an official, he said, ‘I’ve come to tell you you will never win the Nobel Prize,’ and I hadn’t asked for it, you know,” she said.

“Can you imagine the cheek? What am I to say? ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry, why don’t you like me?’”
[...]
Lessing had a warning for younger Europeans who had not lived through war and a message for political leaders today who started conflicts.

“I hope (something) can change the minds of people who govern us, anything that will prevent any war anywhere, because we know what it’s like and you people do not know what it’s like.”

She sent the manuscript of “Alfred and Emily” to her agent recently, and he described the last 200 pages as “unbearably painful”. “Good. Let them be unbearably painful, so people know a bit what war can really be like.”

And she is, of course, also going to have the last word. So I express my undying admiration of more time, and step back:

Lessing said that “some very good people” had refused Nobel Prizes in the past. When asked if she might do the same, she quipped: “I hadn’t thought about it. Do you think I should refuse it? I’ll go and think about it very seriously now. OK?”