Supernatural. It does not deify humanity, but it understands that the values which lighten our darkness are human values, and could be no other. 7. Weare believers. We choose to believe and have faith in the values of mercy, pity, peace and love, and whatsoever things are true, honest, just, lovely and of good report. For many, God remains a potent, inspirational symbol of these values. Where God is worshipped, it is these values which are affirmed as expressions of the wholly human spirit, and thus of the spiritual life. puts a self-centred quest for individual salvation before the greater good of the whole community of humanity and all living creatures. It turns the God of our imagination into a tyrant. 10. We cherish the best in our human heritage of religious faith, tradition and practice as we cherish the best in our rich heritage of music, poetry, the arts, the sciences, and everything that gives eloquent, imaginative expression to the wholly human spirit. We made it, and because we made it we can refashion it to meet our changing needs, understandings and experience. To explore and promote religious faith as a human creation, a human recreation, a human responsibility to ourselves and to all living creatures, and as a source of delight: this is our challenge and our adventure. — [Unamended, as published July 2000] 17 SOF 44 / November 2000 ——— by Alison Webster = ® E o r rz © ® boundaries. desire “I'm looking for something, it’s true. I'm looking for the meaning inside the data. That's why I trawl ny screen like a beachcomber - looking for you, looking for me, trying to see through the disguise. I guess I’ve been looking for us both all my life.” And so Jeanette Winterson hits the computer age with her new novel The.PowerBook. And a thoroughly postmodern novel it is too. So much so that it’s not even clear that it is a novel. I read the whole thing as one “story” - albeit a multi-layered narrative that jumps between virtual reality, reality and many times, places and conceptual spaces.
The.PowerBook is just that. And its power lies in its brutal simplicity - Winterson’s raw, naked statements through her story/ies of “how things are”. With all her work, the less conventional her “plots”, the more acutely are you drawn into depth of feeling, and breadth of philosophical questioning - and the cleverest thing is that she makes those two elements completely inseparable in a way that religion rarely achieves but should.
These are the conjoined twins of Jeanette Winterson’s work: hard thinking; deep feeling.
And so she explores questions of ultimate meaning and value - like time, truth, freedom, identity, change, history and (of course) love - in a life-changing way. This book is pleasure and danger.
As ever, there are themes which repeat themselves; themes which have repeated themselves throughout the body of her work beyond this one book. She makes self-referential jokes about this in a way which some might find pretentious, but which I find entirely appropriate.
For instance, a story-writer in one of the stories which makes up the story tells of her work.
Author merges with protagonist in a brilliantly self-parodying interchange as follows: “What is it [the story] about?’ asks her companion. ‘Boundaries. Desire.’ ‘What are your other books about?’ ‘Boundaries. Desire.’ ‘Can't you write about something else?’ ‘No’.” (p. 36).
That particular exchange continues with an exploration of another familiar theme for Winterson: “You write fiction.’ ‘So?’ ‘So you won't lash me to the facts.’ ‘But I might tell the truth’.” (p. 37).
Winterson has often explored the boundaries between the “real” and the “invented”: autobiography and story, for instance. The central question is summed up later in The.PowerBook as follows: “The more I write, the more I discover that the partition between real and invented is as thin as a wall in a cheap hotel room... It used to be that the real and the invented were parallel lines that never met. Then we discovered that space is curved, and in curved space parallel lines always meet.” (p. 94).
The hardest and most beautiful truth in this book, however, is the truth about love. “My search for you, your search for me, is a search after something that cannot be found. Only the impossible is worth the effort. What we seek is love itself, revealed now and again in human form, but pushing us beyond our humanity into animal instinct and god-like success... Love never counts the cost, to itself and others, and nothing is as cruel as love. There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet.” (pp. 78-79) .
What's this? A return to Platonic forms in the midst of thoroughgoing non-realism? For one who plays with, dissolves and reconstitutes “identities” in a way which brings home the scariness of a thoroughgoing postmodern approach to life, Winterson is suddenly and shockingly absolutist and (we would say) religious, about love. Love is, perhaps, her “strategic essentialism” that centres life. It’s the foundation of everything. But just in case we begin to see this as in any way comforting or stabilising, the rug is pulled out from under us as she underlines love’s absolute necessity and complete impossibility.
So in the end we are left, again, to our own devices and desires. There is no saviour but love, and her portrayal and exploration of love makes it clear what that means. We are lashed and bound to love as the only way, but Winterson’s love is “the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it.” (p. 51).
I repeat: The.PowerBook is pleasure and danger.