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Winterson's way
Jeanette Winterson speaks out on sex, America's religious fanaticism, and her new novel, Lighthousekeeping
Jeanette Winterson speaks out on sex, America's religious fanaticism, and her new novel, Lighthousekeeping
Raised in
poverty, religious fanaticism, and intolerance, Jeanette
Winterson left home at 16 and burst on the literary scene 20
years ago with her award-winning autobiographical
novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit--the
tale of a young lesbian girl who defies her crazily
religious mother. With offbeat androgynous heroes, reworked
fairy tales, and stories within stories, follow-up
novels like The Passion established Winterson
as a European-style fabulist with an international fan base.
In the 1990s she caused a major literary
controversy with two steamy novels that barely
disguised her affair with her married female agent. In
2000 a 12-year relationship with critic and broadcaster
Peggy Reynolds ended in a "dark period"
of bad press and poor reviews of her novel The
PowerBook. Winterson rebounded in 2003 with an ambitious
Web site and a popular children's book, The King
of Capri. She recently published a second
children's book, Tanglewreck.
Now 45 and single, Winterson splits her time
between the 18th-century house she restored in
London's East End and her 18-acre farm in
Oxfordshire, where she grows her own food--part of her
passion for working to eradicate hunger in the world.
Winterson returns to her storytelling roots in
religious fanaticism and fundamentalism with her
eighth novel. Lighthousekeeping (Harcourt, $23)
is the tale of Silver, a Scottish orphan who becomes a blind
man's apprentice tending a lighthouse built by the
Stevenson family. Growing up there with the ancient
blind man's gothic tales, Silver discovers the
secrets of the former lighthouse keeper, the religious
fanatic Babel Dark, who inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to
write Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
You were a Pentecostal preacher at 7. Is
America in a religious revival?
Yes. It's marked by two things: moral fervor on
the one hand and indiscretion on the other. People are
no longer worried about what they say. Their moral
fervor gives them license to say whatever they like.
And that's when you get the return of the kind of
intolerance that we thought we were pushing back.
How did this happen?
In the Clinton era the Right were backing off a little
bit; the liberal left did have the upper hand. All
that stuff with Kenneth Starr and Monica Lewinsky was
about trying to embarrass the Left into a position
where it no longer felt it could talk about moral issues.
But an indiscretion of the president does not mean
that the liberal left is morally bankrupt. When I see
this retreating and allowing the right-wing agenda to
move forward, it's frightening. Mrs. Winterson
[JW's adoptive mother] was a religious fanatic. I
know what they are. They believe in their own mission,
and they're not going to pull back to save anybody.
How do we recognize fanatics?
Intolerance. They're always so rigid that they
can't allow anything else to come in and
contaminate their thinking. They call on God as though
God were the same as they are. We've seen this
over centuries. Everybody who wants their own way eventually
says it's God's will.
Christianity has been so co-opted.
I hate it when George Bush and his rich cronies take the
high moral ground and say this is God's way,
this is Christianity. Jesus wasn't giving tax breaks
to the rich. He was looking after single mothers and prostitutes.
Exactly.
You've got two kinds of religious fanatics
now--the right-wing Christians here and the
right-wing fundamentalists [of Islam]. And between
them they're going to blow us all up. Each of them is
as intolerant, as fervent, and as wrong as the other.
And as powerful.
And you've now got the Left apologizing for being
liberal. We're always doubting, hesitating,
asking ourselves questions. That is good, but
sometimes it saps our central belief in who we are and what
we're trying to do. Every good thing that's
ever happened in your country and mine has been the
work of the liberal left. Every reform. Every civil
liberty. Every fight for human rights.
Has anybody ever given you chapter and verse from the
Bible about your sexuality?
Not anybody close to me. Once I left the church I
didn't meet any more religious fanatics. Met a
few barmy creationists who give lectures.
Do gay sex and the Bible go together?
No. I don't think the Old Testament is credible,
not for modern society. We have to move past that. We
can't worry about not eating shellfish or
animals that chew the cud.
How can gays take back the Bible?
They can't take back the Old Testament.
There's too much in there which is oppressive
and frightening. What we can do is claim spirituality.
God is religion-proof. If God exists, if there is a forming
intelligence out there, it's not going to be one that
wants to kill gay people and persecute unmarried
mothers and take away everybody's welfare benefit.
You left home at 16. What would you say to a kid who has
to leave home today, whether by choice or because
their parents kicked them out because
they're gay?
I'd say don't do drugs or drink,
don't end up on the streets, don't sell
your body. It's going to be incredibly hard.
But you can do it. And it's worth doing it,
instead of staying in a place which will warp your
imagination and sap your energy and twist your desire.
What is the best ecstasy: food, art, or sex?
It very much depends on the person you are. I want a
life full of off-the-chart experience. I want real
food and real art, and of course I want sex, love, to
be significant. By that I mean that it should be
intense and you should really feel something. I
wouldn't quarrel with anybody who said, I find
my ultimate experience through sex--or growing
lettuce.
Stroh is a writer based in Washington, D.C. She lives with her family in the Virginia countryside.
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