Book cover love: Instructions for your discontent

Presumably the main therapeutic value of this book lies in its bright and cheery cover...

Reading the past to write the future

Yesterday I wrote about why I read. I wrote that reading saves my soul and whilst the statement itself borders on hyperbole, by and large, it's true.

For as long as I can remember I have read books to understand more about myself, who I am, how I feel. In the snippets of myself I see on a page I find the solace of shared emotion or experience. I feel understood.

In the Q&A below, Jeanette Winterson (author of, amongst other things, Oranges are not the Only Fruit) explains how for her the process of writing, too, is one of understanding, of processing the past, of forgiveness:

So if you were writing before you were reading, do you still write in order to read the world?

Yes. I write so that I'll have something to read, but I also write so that I can explain the world to myself, because writing becomes a third person - it becomes something which is separate from yourself. It's no longer you, although it's generated by you, and when it returns to you it explains things. It explains you to yourself and it explains the world. Books are always cleverer than their authors. They always contain more than the writer intended to put into them - at least they should - otherwise they become rather formulaic. I suspect creative writing school books contain only what is put into them, which is why they're so dreary.

And when you were writing Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, what were you trying to explain to yourself?

I was trying to explain where I'd come from. I was trying to make sense of a bizarre childhood and an unusual personal history. And I was trying to forgive. I don't think it's possible to forgive unless you can understand, and one of the things that writing can do - that literature can do - that all art can do, is to help you understand. It can put you in a position which is both inside and outside of yourself, so that what you get is a depth of knowledge otherwise not possible, about your own situation, and a context in which to put that situation, so you're no longer alone with feelings that you can't manage. People's powerlessness comes from feelings that they can't manage, and especially those that they can't articulate. Being able to write a story around the chaos of your own narrative, allows you to see yourself as a fiction, which is rather comforting because, of course, fictions can change. It's only the facts that trap us. I've always thought that if people could read themselves as fictions they would be much happier.

Her words so eloquently capture the essence of literature as knowledge, a 'depth of knowledge not otherwise possible'. That's why I read to save my soul, because, as Winterson says, people would be much happier if they could read themselves as fiction.


Questions sourced from Random House reading group guide to Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

The very important importance of reading

I read to relax, to laugh or to smile. I read to feel, to cry or to bristle.

I read to shut it all out, and to let it all in. I read to make sense of the past, and to imagine a future.

I read to learn and I read to teach. I read to myself, and of course, to the children.

I read to stop, escape from the day and I read to carry on, each book completed a triumph over the chaos of my mind.

I read to feed the world inside my head and I read to slow that same world down, stop it churning when it threatens to run away with itself.

I read for all of this, for comfort, for habit. Most of all, however, I read because I must. Reading saves my soul.

The man that books built

"Guilt's....

just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear."

Eat, Pray, Love (p.193)

December

December is the story of Isabelle and her self-imposed silence. As winter comes outside, her silence blows a cold wind over family life, freezing their previous happiness, making everything as fragile as ice.

It is the story of a girl whose quest for power leaves her ultimately powerless - powerless to break her own stifling rules. It is the story of her parents desperation, of their helplessness and of the crippling pain they endure at their daughter's withdrawal.

It is a story full of the seasons, art and images. It is slow and intense. A review on amazon says nothing much happens - and it's true, nothing much does, but that nothingness is captured so perfectly by the richness of the language that it comes alive with emotion.

It is the emotion of someone recoiling in horror as they inflict pain on the people they love, yet carrying on because they can't find a way to stop. It is an emotion so strong that it makes December once of the best novels I've read in a while.