What I talk about when I talk about problems

Now that it’s the end of Jeanette Winterson week, it’s time to address some of the bad. I’ll be talking about it in terms of the three novels I’ve discussed, but really this applies to so many books and writers: you like or love something quite well, but then get to a single sentence and say, “Now damnit why’d she have to write that?” And it’s just that one thing but it’s a mar and it gives you doubts.

Unfortunately, one of those sentences happened to me at the epigraph of Sexing the Cherry. (Sidebar: is it still called an epigraph if it’s not a quotation? Whatever.)

The Hopi, an Indian tribe, have a language as sophisticated as ours, but no tenses for past, present and future. The division does not exist. What does this say about time?

Well, sinceSapir-Whorf is not that simplistic, and it’s not entirely clear how right Whorf was about Hopi time to begin with…things like this just set off alarms for me. I was worried that such a passage before the novel even begins was a bad sign, but then things went so swimmingly. Mostly. Until someone tells Jordan that Hopi “has no grammar in the way we recognize it.”

The other problem here is the interjection of sweeping statements (lists of “lies” and such) that are less objectionable in themselves but more jarring in terms of the reading experience (at least, for a normal person not especially attuned to questionable linguistic claims).

We’ve got a few similarly jarring passages in Lighthousekeeping, though again, it’s not their content that’s objectionable, just their place in a novel full otherwise of poetry and implicit meaning.

We’re told not to privilege one story above another.
…
You don’t need to know everything. There is no everything. The stories themselves make the meaning.

The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.
…
In the endless babble of narrative, in spite of the daily noise, the story waits to be heard.

Now, I’m not looking to disagree with any of this. I’m just saying that the phrase “continuous narrative of existence” is a tough one to fit seamlessly into this particular novel, written in the style it’s in, and it makes it seem like for this unusual span of two pages or so Winterson no longer trusts the reader, suddenly thinks she’s got to give it to us right out. But I missed Silver’s softness—and her storytelling.

One other thing about Lighthousekeeping: coronation chicken is served in 1851. I do not think that is part of the magical realism.

I don’t think I ran into issues like these with Weight, actually—at least not any that I marked. It makes me wonder whether, over time, Winterson begins to put more faith in the story and feel less need for those few buzzwords to send the message home. I’d have to say that in spite of all this I’ve begun to really like her work, more than I expected to, so I’m sure I’ll be finding the answer to that question sometime in the future.

Postscript: After I’d drafted this post, Sarah commented, in part: “I love all the stories she tells, but sometimes feel I’ve missed the point or that certain stories are less well thought out and told than others e.g the contemporary ones at the end of Sexing the cherry.”

I didn’t quite say this, but I agree. And that may seem contrary to what I write above, complaining she can become too explicit. If I’ve missed the point, I don’t really want to have it explicated so clearly; I want to have gotten the point. It may well be my fault when the pieces don’t connect up right for me, but I’d rather be left in the dark than break up that lyricism.