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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
A decade ago I tried one of Winterson's novels and dismissed it as pompous and overwritten. Either a huge mistake or proof of one's tastes developing over time (or both)--I could not possibly have enjoyed this magnificent book any more than i did, on emotional, intellectual, and linguistic levels. This perfect book is a masterwork of memoir and I'm going to begin makinh my way through all the rest of Winterson's works as a result of it.
I first encountered Jeanette Winterson's work as a college freshman in a postmodern lit course. This is an unexpected genre for her, but it comes across as strikingly honest and very powerful.
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
A memoir of the author’s difficult life: adoption by religious fanatic parents, reading was forbidden, isolation, homosexuality. Her love of literature and writing were her salvation.
I always love a good story about resilience, however, I didn't find this book funny at all, and although the characters were interesting I found it to be a boring read and one that was easy to put down.
When I read e-books, I highlight the things that really resonate with me or strike me in some way; just about this entire book glows yellow.
reflective
medium-paced
p23
'The one good thing about being shut in a coal-hole is that it prompts reflection.'
Read on its own that is an absurd sentence. But as I try to understand how life works – and why some people cope better than others with adversity – I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found. Not in the me-first way that is the opposite of life and love, but with a salmon-like determination to swim upstream, however choppy upstream is, because this is your stream…
p88
I am not a fan of supermarkets and I hate shopping there, even for things I can’t get elsewhere, like cat food and bin bags. A big part of my dislike of them is the loss of vivid life. The dull apathy of existence now isn’t just boring jobs and boring TV; it is the loss of vivid life on the streets; the gossip, the encounters, the heaving messy noisy day that made room for everyone, money or not. And if you couldn’t afford to heat your house you could go into the market hall. Sooner or later somebody would buy you a cup of tea. That’s how it was.
p115
[Andrew] Marvel wrote one of the most wonderful poems in English – ‘To His Coy Mistress’… What gave me great hope were the closing lines of the poem. It is a seduction poem, which is its charm, but it is also a life poem, urging and celebrating love and desire and declaring desire as a challenge to mortality itself. We can’t slow time, says Marvell, but we can chase it. We can make time run. Think of the hourglass, the cliché of the sands of time slowly dribbling away, and all those Faust-like wishes of immortality – if only time could stop, if we could live forever.
No, says Marvell, forget that, turn it round, live it out as exuberantly as you can…
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
p162
Sometimes I didn’t go out for days, get dressed for days, sometimes I wandered around the big garden in my pajamas, sometimes I ate, sometimes not at all, or you could see me on the grass with a tin of cold baked beans. The familiar sights of misery.
p185
And I have loved most extravagantly where my love could not be returned in any sane and steady way – the triangles of marriages and complex affiliations. I have failed to love where I might have done, and I have stayed in relationships too long because I did not want to be a quitter who did not know how to love.
'The one good thing about being shut in a coal-hole is that it prompts reflection.'
Read on its own that is an absurd sentence. But as I try to understand how life works – and why some people cope better than others with adversity – I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found. Not in the me-first way that is the opposite of life and love, but with a salmon-like determination to swim upstream, however choppy upstream is, because this is your stream…
p88
I am not a fan of supermarkets and I hate shopping there, even for things I can’t get elsewhere, like cat food and bin bags. A big part of my dislike of them is the loss of vivid life. The dull apathy of existence now isn’t just boring jobs and boring TV; it is the loss of vivid life on the streets; the gossip, the encounters, the heaving messy noisy day that made room for everyone, money or not. And if you couldn’t afford to heat your house you could go into the market hall. Sooner or later somebody would buy you a cup of tea. That’s how it was.
p115
[Andrew] Marvel wrote one of the most wonderful poems in English – ‘To His Coy Mistress’… What gave me great hope were the closing lines of the poem. It is a seduction poem, which is its charm, but it is also a life poem, urging and celebrating love and desire and declaring desire as a challenge to mortality itself. We can’t slow time, says Marvell, but we can chase it. We can make time run. Think of the hourglass, the cliché of the sands of time slowly dribbling away, and all those Faust-like wishes of immortality – if only time could stop, if we could live forever.
No, says Marvell, forget that, turn it round, live it out as exuberantly as you can…
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
p162
Sometimes I didn’t go out for days, get dressed for days, sometimes I wandered around the big garden in my pajamas, sometimes I ate, sometimes not at all, or you could see me on the grass with a tin of cold baked beans. The familiar sights of misery.
p185
And I have loved most extravagantly where my love could not be returned in any sane and steady way – the triangles of marriages and complex affiliations. I have failed to love where I might have done, and I have stayed in relationships too long because I did not want to be a quitter who did not know how to love.
A beautiful memoir, as deeply poetic and temporally unstuck as you would expect from Winterson. Read "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" first, as this memoir is a refinement of that novel, a more brutal and more reflective telling.