Life after the first fruit

I have always been intrigued by Jeanette Winterson, firstly by her book titles -- Oranges are not the only fruit, Boating for Beginners, Sexing the Cherry, etc -- and secondly by the fact that they are not huge tomes. Still, I have not read her. Sharon would say, that's because I don't like to read women writers. I did think about that. The last women writer I read was Diane Setterfield. I did enjoy The Thirteenth Tale. But do I consider the sex of the author before I set out to read a book? I don't think so. Surely not at the conscious level, though pseudo-Freudians may disagree.

But that's not what this is about. I was reading Jeanette Winterson's article in The Guardian earlier this month. She starts: 'It is impossible to begin at the beginning. Any scientist can tell you what happened in the first three seconds after the Big Bang, but none can say for sure what happened in the three seconds previous ... So it is with fiction.'

We glibly throw about theories on creative writing. Can it be taught, can it be learnt? I belong to the school that says it cannot be taught, but it can be learnt, given the right motivation and environment. Yes, it is about going within and pulling out that illusive rabbit, so to speak. Strangely, you only know what happens after the rabbit is pulled out. The writer will, in all probability, not be able to explain how exactly it happened, or when precisely it did. But it does not matter (except for those trying to learn your 'magic', and the harder they try the more difficult it will be for them). 'The fact is that before something happens there is no knowing what is happening ...' says Jeanette Winterson.

Jeanette Winterson says further on: in The PowerBook (2000), I wrote: "I can change the story. I am the story." This was because I had been thinking about how much better it might be to read ourselves as fictional narratives, instead of as a bloated CV of chronological events. Once we surrender ourselves to the tyranny of facts, it is difficult to re-find freewill.

I often have had people walk into the shop, bellowing pompously, declaring that they 'don't read fiction', as if it is something done by lower beings. I remain silent, but in my mind, I think, 'How sad.'

A short while ago I picked up the latest Orhan Pamuk book in English, Other Colours. Coincidently the first essay in the book, The Implied Author, is also about his life as a novelist. 'In order to be happy, I must have my daily dose of literature,' he writes. 'In this I am no different from ... (a diabetic who needs) an injection everyday (to survive) ... I have sometimes even entertained the thought that I was fully dead and trying to breathe some life back into my corpse with literature.'

But like Winterson he is unable to describe the three seconds before the Big Bang either except that 'we surrender to this mysterious captain who has no idea where he is bound.' Like Ulysses? 'For what is a novel,' he continues further on, 'but a story that fills its sails with these winds ...'

'For thirty years I have spent ten hours in a room, sitting at my desk.' It is a wonderful essay, quite worth the price of admission for the entire book if you, like Pamuk, must have your dose of literature each day in order to be happy.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2204212,00.html