Jeanette Winterson at the Boston Public Library
14 April 2005
4:02 p.m.
I almost didn't go last night--late at work, and then I missed my stop, thinking of the appropriateness of trains: train-riding to hear Jeanette Winterson speak.
Something made me need to go, though what? I couldn't tell.
Then, I was sitting high up in the back of the auditorium, shy. Shy of the women around me--the ambiance of their energy mixing with the ambiance of mine. There were academics. Laypeople, too. And writers. Readers, all of them, certainly. Twenty years ago, Winterson penned Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit. I was six, but to many in the audience, that one book opened worlds beyond their own gospel tents, allowing them a space to come out and love. (If you haven't read it, then it would be a great introduction to Winterson, but it is unlike her other works--in that all her works are unlike her other works, but they are Winterson, of course).
A petite woman, made smaller by my distance from the stage, she stood center, without a podium. The microphone stand split her body in equal halves, but she read from the whole of herself excerpts from her new book, Lighthousekeeping. Hearing her voice, the inflexions that she placed to the story she invented, made the hairs on my skin rise and tiny goose pimples spread over the terrain of me. It was the similar affect listening to Bach on cello has over me--a physical arousal that begins, wholly, aurally, in the mind (or does it begin in the soul?).
After reading, she opened the floor to questions. She was so confident, so certain: look, she said with her body, I have lived my years, and I have worked for the words on my pages. Many would call her arrogant. I would call her arrogant if I were not reading the story of a strong woman in a world of steep paths.
Her words were wise, striking that distant person within me who calls herself a writer--that person who wants to be a writer more than anything, but her words also spoke to the more uncertain parts of myself, although she spoke, mostly, of art. (But when is art not humanity?) These are some of the sentences she spoke that particularly caught my attention:
-You cannot do any creative work unless you trust yourself. -Sadly, a lot of imaginative work is an act of will, not imagination.
About Virginia Woolf: She's a place to go back to; a beginning. About Angela Carter: The raging, gorgeous thing.
And near the end: -Women writers must not go mad, commit suicide, or die young! -Mistakes are allowed to happen. Make mistakes, but hesitations are disasters. Hesitations make you mistrust who you are. -If you read yourself as fiction--you are much freer than if you read yourself as fact.
These words, of course, are only snippets--parts of a full hour devoted to one artist's views of the world--one artist's message to her readers. I was most affected by what she said about hesitation. I hesitate often. I mistrust myself often--both in my writing and my living. Perhaps that's what I needed to hear--what made me go despite a long day and a wrong T stop.
After the reading, I stood in line, waiting for her to autograph a couple of books for me: Art & Lies, in which I've found myself and a couple dear people in my life, often. And her new book, Lighthousekeeping. I went up to her, blushing, and I handed her, first Art & Lies I said, lamely, "I love this book." She thanked me. And then she looked up and asked, "So, this is your favorite?" I blushed deeper, and I said, quite softly, Yes, It's a book for the quiet times. Then, she really looked at me, into my eyes and responded just as quietly, and with so much warmth, Yes, I think it is, for the quiet times.
I leave you with an excerpt from Art & Lies:
Day and night stretch before the word, hunger and cold mock it, but the word itself is day, and the word itself is night. The word 'hunger' the word 'cold'. I cannot eat my words but I do. I eat the substance, bread, and I take it into me, word and substance, substance and word, daily communion, blessed.