I was incredibly frustrated by the
most of Winterson’s book. The story left me feeling empty, I expected a story that
told me about the author but instead I feel like I got a lot of directly
explanation from the author instead. Throughout this book I felt like Winterson
was writing for herself not an audience which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but
it can be when readers feel alienated. I walked away feeling like I didn’t know
her story much at all, I knew what Winterson thought about herself but that is
not what I went into the book thinking I would learn.
I think I finally understood the
book near the end when she writes about her descent into a type of madness and
mentions her long walks she took with herself. “Her conversational style was recriminatory
(blame, fault, accusation, demands, guilt. . . Her preferred responses were non
sequiturs” (Pg. 175). The book feels
like an extension of this argument and discussion with herself. The line “Our conversations
were like two people using phrasebooks to say things neither understands” (Pg.
175) felt like a summing up of what Winterson does throughout the book. She
reflects on things from her past then converses with herself about them but the
problem is she forgets the reader is supposed to be in on the conversation as
well. This leads the reader to feel like that person who is trying to understand
strings of sentences that even Winterson is having problems making sense of.
From the very beginning she tries
to explain herself to herself. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t setting
my story against hers (Pg.5). It almost seems like she has to justify writing
this book to herself she is once again setting her story against her Mrs.
Winterson’s only now she is also setting the story against her own novel as
well trying to explain things to herself that her novel doesn’t address. The actual
events in the story can be summed up quickly; she is adopted, her mother has
issues, she reads to cope, she is kicked out of her house for loving a woman,
she goes to college and loves more women, she breaks up with someone she loves,
she falls into depression, she attempts suicide, writing brings her out of her
depression, she meets Susie, she tries to find her birth-mother, she succeeds,
she doesn’t know how she feels. The
major part of this story is not the events but the author’s reflections on how
she feels now about the events. In this way I think the adult looking back didn’t
work in this setting. She didn’t let her life speak for itself she had to speak
for it.
Maybe I am being too harsh, but I
just didn’t get as much out of this memoir as I would have liked to. I actually
hope to read her novel soon because I feel like I might get more from that
since (I’m assuming) she doesn’t comment on her own life as much in the novel
setting. I feel there could have been a better balance between reflection and
what she probably felt at the time but I only got reflection I didn’t get young
Jeanette sitting on the stoop. I wanted that Jeanette not her older self,
speaking for that Jeanette.
-Haley Tallent
Haley,
ReplyDeleteit's interesting that you make me wonder whether Winterson was ready to write this book. I didn't have your experience, but that less than satisfied feeling did come, especially when she explains a lot at the end.
e
Haley, what you've written makes me think about the the differential treatment of the characters of Winterson's mother and father, and the ways in which this reflected what she was and was not willing to give over - look inside of; which perhaps speaks to the heavy-handedness of the present-time narrator. While I really engaged with the style and the character of the narrator, I wonder too what she was withholding in using that strategy.
ReplyDeleteHaley- I agree with you on feeling less than satisfied with this memoir. Winterson's tendency to explain heavy subjects and passages rather than showing us made it hard for me to get into the thick of the book. I took from Winterson's limited scope that she did mean to write the book for herself, just based of what she said about how Oranges was semi-autobiographical and referencing how she needed to finish telling her story to survive. I think that she should have focused on writing for her readers as well, because writing for oneself is not a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Dani
I felt that Winterson's interjections were valuable because they were so honest. She tells us right away that she writes herself and her parents as characters because it is what she knows how to do and because truth is all relative when you have something to say. I like that we are let in on the intimacy of her own thought process. Maybe she wrote the book for herself more than for her readers but I think I'm ok with that.
ReplyDeleteI was totally going to write what Elmaz wrote about maybe Winterson wasn't quite ready to write this novel, especially at the end. The tone shifted and it went very fast and the world building kind of went away.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Claire though. I feel to often we, as writers, think too much about our "audience" I write for my self. It is about me, if people read it that's awesome. That said, there were so many things in her writing that were valuable. The book felt like a process and by the end of it I felt like I understood the process.