Doris Lessing在为她的《金色笔记》（The Golden Notebook）1971年版写的引言里，有一段回答同学提问的话。原来，有不同国家的同学写信，请她列一个书单儿，特别是权威作者们写的关于她的书的评论，还问了很多鸡毛蒜皮的细节。作者发现，同学们关心的似乎只是档案材料之类的东西，简直像移民局的。（They also ask for a thousand details of total irrelevance, but which they have taught to consider important, amounting to a dossier, like an immigration department’s.）

她对同学们的回答是：你们干嘛花那么多年来为一本书或一个作者写东西，真是疯了！要读的书很多呀！你们没发现自己是那害人体制的牺牲品吗？别管他什么黑教授白教授！

Dear Student. You are mad. Why spend months and years writing thousands of words about one book, or even one writer, when there are hundreds of books waiting to be read. You don’t see that you are the victim of a pernicious system. And if you have yourself chosen my work as your subject, and if you do have to write a thesis — and believe me I am very grateful that what I’ve written is being found useful by you — then why don’t you read what I have written and make up your own mind about what you think, testing it against your own life, your own experience. Never mind about Professors White and Black.

是啊，同学回答说，如果不引用权威们说的话，教授就不给分儿！全世界的乌鸦都一般儿黑，This is an international system, absolutely identical from the Urals to Yugoslavia, from Minnesota to Manchester. 我们都习惯了，没看出有什么不好。

拉老师很幸运，她14岁就辍学了，没有被那个体制毒害。《金色笔记》发表后，她考察了文学批评的过程，看了数不清的文章——简直不敢相信自己的眼睛和耳朵……她提出几个问题：

Why are they so parochial, so personal, so small-minded?

Why do they always atomise, and belittle?

Why are they so fascinated by detail, and uninterested in the whole?

Why is their interpretation of the word critic always to find fault?

Why are they always seeing writers as in conflict with each other, rather than complementing each other?

…… ……

答案很简单，因为他们都是被教出来的。