Brilliant.
Lyrical. Witty. Authentic. Eye-opening.
Shining a light on what she writes, why she
writes & how she writes.
Intertextual; a love of literature.
Life in Accrington I'd known about & likewise of her time in Oxford due to ground covered in Oranges.
But the breakdown? Writing her way out of it; figuring through. That particular
chapter, The Night Sea Voyage, came up like a sharp left turn
for the reader.
Moving. Engaging. The recriminatory
conversational creature. Courageous.
The adoption papers trail; making the novel
more than ever into a compelling page-turner.
There were so many lines too, thoughts
& themes which I wanted to savour. As the above photo shows, the closer I
moved towards the ending, the more I felt struck by & wanted to
revisit.
______________________
.. In the morning there were stray bits of texts all over the yard and in the alley. Burnt jigsaws of books. I collected some of the scraps.
It is probably why I write as I do - collecting the scraps, uncertain of continuous narrative. What does Eliot say? These fragments have I shored against my ruin . . .
It is probably why I write as I do - collecting the scraps, uncertain of continuous narrative. What does Eliot say? These fragments have I shored against my ruin . . .
[41]
12. THE NIGHT SEA VOYAGE
... Life is layers, fluid, unfixed, fragments. I never could write a story with a beginning, a middle & an end in the usual way because it felt untrue to me. That is why I write as I do and how I write as I do. It isn't a method; it's me. [...]
Whenever I write a book, one sentence forms in my mind, like a sandbar above the waterline. They are like the texts written up on the walls when we all lived at 200 Water Street; exhortations, maxims, lighthouse signals flashed out as a memory and warning.
The Passion: 'I'm telling you stories. Trust me.'
Written on the Body: 'Why is the measure of love loss?'
The PowerBook: 'To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself, I stay on the run.' [156]
... Then a string of lines start replaying in my head - lines from my own books - 'I keep writing this so that one day she will read it.' 'Looking for you, looking for me, I guess I've been looking for us both all my life . . . '
I have written love narratives and loss narratives - stories of longing and belonging. It all seems so obvious now - the Wintersonic obsessions of love, loss and longing. It is my mother. It is my mother. It is my mother. [160]
... Life is layers, fluid, unfixed, fragments. I never could write a story with a beginning, a middle & an end in the usual way because it felt untrue to me. That is why I write as I do and how I write as I do. It isn't a method; it's me. [...]
Whenever I write a book, one sentence forms in my mind, like a sandbar above the waterline. They are like the texts written up on the walls when we all lived at 200 Water Street; exhortations, maxims, lighthouse signals flashed out as a memory and warning.
The Passion: 'I'm telling you stories. Trust me.'
Written on the Body: 'Why is the measure of love loss?'
The PowerBook: 'To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself, I stay on the run.' [156]
I have written love narratives and loss narratives - stories of longing and belonging. It all seems so obvious now - the Wintersonic obsessions of love, loss and longing. It is my mother. It is my mother. It is my mother. [160]
. . .
On text memorised,
I had lines inside me - a string of guiding lights. I had language.
[9]
4. THE TROUBLE WITH A BOOK . . .
At home one of the six books was unexpected: a copy of Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Mallory. It was a beautiful edition with pictures, and it had belonged to a bohemian, educated uncle [...]
I have gone on working with the Grail stories all my life. They are stories of loss, of loyalty, of failure, of recognition, of second chances. [...]
Later, when things were difficult for me with my work, and I felt that I had lost it turned away from something I couldn’t even identify, it was the Perceval story that gave me hope. There might be a second chance . . .
I have gone on working with the Grail stories all my life. They are stories of loss, of loyalty, of failure, of recognition, of second chances. [...]
Later, when things were difficult for me with my work, and I felt that I had lost it turned away from something I couldn’t even identify, it was the Perceval story that gave me hope. There might be a second chance . . .
[37-8]
So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy.
A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to say how it is.
It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.
A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to say how it is.
It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.
[40]
I looked out and it didn’t look like a mirror or a world. It was the place I was, not the place where I would be. The books had gone, but they were objects; what they held could not be so easily destroyed. What they held was already inside me, and together we would get away. [...]
‘Fuck it,’ I thought, ‘I can write my own.’
‘Fuck it,’ I thought, ‘I can write my own.’
[43]
5. AT HOME
Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and space.
There is warmth there too - a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm. I know this from the chilly nights on the doorstep.
12. THE NIGHT SEA VOYAGE
On bad days I just held onto the thinning rope.
The rope was poetry. All that poetry I learned when I had to keep my library inside of me now offered a rescue rope.
[...]
But what is really your own never does leave you. I could not find words, not directly, for my own state but every so often I could write, and I did so in lit-up explosions, that for a time showed me that there was still a world - proper and splendid.
It was a rope slung across space. It was a chance as near to killing me as to saving me and I believe it was an even bet which way it went. It was the loss of everything through the fierce and unseen return of the lost loss. The door into the dark room had swung open. [...]
The rope was poetry. All that poetry I learned when I had to keep my library inside of me now offered a rescue rope.
[...]
But what is really your own never does leave you. I could not find words, not directly, for my own state but every so often I could write, and I did so in lit-up explosions, that for a time showed me that there was still a world - proper and splendid.
[163]
It was a rope slung across space. It was a chance as near to killing me as to saving me and I believe it was an even bet which way it went. It was the loss of everything through the fierce and unseen return of the lost loss. The door into the dark room had swung open. [...]
The door had swung open. I had gone in. The room had no floor. I had fallen and fallen and fallen.
But I was alive.
And that night the cold stars made a constellation from the broken pieces of my mind.
[169]
14. THIS APPOINTMENT TAKES PLACE IN THE PAST
[185]
15. THE WOUND
All my life I have worked from the wound. To heal it would mean an end to my identity - the defining identity. But the healed wound is not the disappeared wound; there will always be a scar. I will always be recognisable by my scar.
[223]
Winterson, Jeanette. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?.
Vintage: London, 2012
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