Nobel Laureate Downplays 9/11

Lessing: IRA violence in Ireland was worse than WTC attacks; Americans are 'naive'

By Lucas Laursen, Newser Staff

Posted Oct 23, 2007 9:03 AM CDT

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Nobel Laureate Downplays 9/11 — British writer Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature, smiles as she talks to members of the media, shortly after the announcement of the award, outside her home in north London, Thursday Oct.11, 2007. Lessing, who turns 88 in just over a week, is the oldest person to be honored... (Associated Press)

Freshly minted Nobel laureate Doris Lessing said the 9/11 terrorist assault on the World Trade Center “wasn’t that terrible” in comparison to violence wreaked by the IRA in Britain. "Some Americans will think I'm crazy," she said in an interview in Spanish daily El Pais. "Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They're a very naive people, or they pretend to be."

Lessing also applied her Nobel-cited “skepticism” and “vigor” to Bush and Blair. She dismissed Blair as “a little showman” and called Bush “a world calamity,” adding, "Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars." Lest she be taken for anti-West, she added “I hate Iran, I hate the Iranian government.” As for herself? “I have a cough, a little diarrhea, and cystitis, but otherwise very well, thanks.” (More Doris Lessing stories.)

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