Last night, I reluctantly braved the blustery, sleety winter evening in order to hear famed British author Jeanette Winterson read at Seattle Central Library. Due to the horrendous weather, I gave myself plenty of extra travel time, yet was surprised to find that when I arrived over an hour early, a long line of devoted fans—many with books in hand—had already formed outside the Microsoft Auditorium.
The excited, capacity crowd soon spilled into the room, giving the author a rousing welcome with enthusiastic clapping. Winterson (pictured above on the left, with me on the right) appeared at the front of the room, smiling congenially out at her audience—a slim, still-youthful-appearing figure—despite over 14 works of fiction, poetry, plays, and numerous children’s books.
That evening, she spoke passionately of many things: the craft of writing; the pursuit of love; the non-linear quality of memory, and of life; of fact, and fiction—and truth. “Part fact, and fiction,” she said, “is what life is all about.”
Despite many writers’ worries over the changes wrought by the digital age, Winterson said she embraced social media, because she liked to work across all medias—she said “we are in exciting times, where social media is exploring different ways for people to express themselves.”
She said that she read extensively, all of the time, and always liked to have fiction, poetry, and non-fiction going at the same time. But because she traveled so much, she was forced to use a Kindle—and despite her acceptance of modern media, she said the Kindle was “well, you know, I’m not in love with it, it’s good as far as it goes, but it’s kind of like phone sex—sometimes I just want to touch something real.” The audience laughed.
But for much of the evening, she read from her new book, “Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?” In the book she re-visits some territory she’d explored previously in her earliest and most popular book, “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,” a semi-fictional novel based loosely upon her grim childhood as the adopted daughter of a fanatically religious, and at times brutal, mother.
Winterson said she had not thought she had wanted to ever re-visit the topic—yet the search for her “bio-mom”—included in the newest book—forced her to take another look (though she says there are 25 years of her life missing from the book). And despite the fact that the title—“Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?” is a direct quote from her adopted mother shortly before she expelled Jeanette from the family home at 16, due to her not conforming to religious convention, Jeanette insists “it is not a memoir, not a misery memoir at all”—more a non-linear telling of life from her point of view, she said.
Yet memoir or not, there is some degree of misery there for all to see. “Mrs. Winterson,” Jeanette read “was not a welcoming woman.” As a child, Jeanette recounts how when anyone rang the bell, her mother would shove a fireplace poker through the mail slot to make the visitor go away. Jeanette said that her mother was an unhappy woman who “thought of life as a pre-death experience.” Her favorite song was “God is Blotting Them Out.” A woman of contradiction, she was a devout Pentecostal believer who forced Jeanette to go out in the streets and bang a drum for Jesus; yet she kept a loaded revolver in her dustbin at all times—ready for anything.
As Jeanette recounts it in her book, her mother also forbade any books in the house except the Bible (with the exception of “Jane Eyre”—which “Mrs. Winterson” read aloud with a fabricated, religious ending more to her liking). The banning of books in the household ultimately lead to Jeanette’s fascination with books, and the written word—soon she was smuggling books into the house and hiding them under her mattress and bed.
Unfortunately, much to Jeanette’s horror, her mother soon located her books, and one day burned them all in a big pile in the front yard.
It is a wonder that Jeanette Winterson survived this bleak, Dickensian childhood at all—let alone go on to Oxford and become an award-winning author of countless novels.
But herein lies the most remarkable part of the story: due to keen intelligence, stubborn tenacity, pure wit—and no small amount of humor—survive she did.
She said that when her mother burned her books, she had an epiphany—yes, someone can take everything away from you on the outside—but they can never take away what’s on the inside. She watched her books burn, and remembers thinking to herself: “Fuck it! I’ll write my own books.”
And thankfully for us, indeed she did.
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