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.