The Word: Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson last night suggested that her latest novel, The.Powerbook, might also be her last

Jeanette Winterson last night suggested that her latest novel, The.Powerbook, might also be her last.

Speaking to an audience of about 100 at Shakespeare's Globe theatre, as part of The Word literary festival, Winterson said that she does not want to become "an alive dead-white-male" and revealed that The.Powerbook represents an end of a cycle and the culmination of her previous seven works. "I don't want to continue to write the same kinds of books, I have done what I set out to do. This could be The End," she added.

A relaxed Winterson began the evening by reading the story of Paolo and Francesca, one of a series of short love stories contained in The.Powerbook. The novel is a collage of stories which are woven around the central thread - the tale of the love of the email-writing narrator Ali/Alix for a married woman.

Love, gender, and the nature of time - Winterson's long-standing concerns - are approached through the metaphor of new technology - the web - while at the same time the old magic of fairy-tales is invoked through the castles, princesses, grails and knights to be found in the great tales of passion and loss she re-tells as 'cover stories'.

Reviews of The.Powerbook have been mixed, with critics tending to admire the intensity of Winterson's spare, poetic prose while arguing that she is covering old ground in her choice of material.

Winterson, in answer to a question from the audience, explained her constant focus on love and the love triangle: "Love is the only thing powerful enough to set against death. It is a renewing force but it also shatters ourselves - it penetrates the thick wall of personality... I do not fear death, only lack of love."

She described her latest work as a "book of multiples - stories, times, possibilities" and said that she continues to be interested in the intersection of fantasy and reality, and the idea that if narrative changes then the narrator changes too. She came back to the notion of changing texts later on, claiming in response to a question that "reading is a truly interactive challenge... text is flexible and the movement in it is its strength."

She ended the evening as she had begun it, with the words: "To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself I stay on the run." An enigmatic coda from an enigmatic writer, perhaps, but it is hard to imagine Winterson disappearing from the literary scene for too long, despite her own reservations.

Contributor

Michelle Pauli, Books Unlimited

The GuardianTramp

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