The Books: “The World and Other Places” – ‘Orion’ (Jeanette Winterson)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

The World and Other Places: Stories, by Jeanette Winterson – a short story collection.

Excerpt from the story ‘Orion’.

Judging from this story and her book about Atlas, I think Jeanette Winterson should publish a whole book of Greek myths. She could be the next Edith Hamilton! She imagines herself into those old myths, puts her own spin on things, teases out metaphors and thoughts … and it’s all very Winterson-esque. What are the themes of the story of Orion? What is the theme of someone like Artemis? What can we learn from her? Depending who you are, the answers will probably be different. Winterson comes at it from her perspective, her interest in time and how it moves and curves (something that comes up in many of her books), her interest in sex and love, and also a sort of fanciful imagination that helps her flesh things out. Winterson, I think, is a very positive writer, despite some of the dark elements in her work. I don’t get a misanthropic feeling from her at all. She’s also not a humanist – she’s far too self-centered … she doesn’t write books with a million different characters in them … Only one or two or three show up. The same ones every time, only with different names. But there’s something about writing the myth stories out that sets her free. It’s like it’s a starting point, something to riff off of – and she is free to go … Perhaps because the narrative is already written and well-known, it’s a myth after all … so she can improvise. Winterson is great at improvising (when there’s a POINT to her improvisation, I mean).

Here’s an excerpt from her story about Orion (and, later, Artemis):

EXCERPT FROM The World and Other Places: Stories, by Jeanette Winterson – excerpt from the story ‘Orion’.

Every 200,000 years or so, the individual stars within each constellation shift position. That is, they are shifting all the time, but more subtly than any tracker dog of ours can follow. One day, if the earth has not voluntarily opted out of the solar system we will wake up to a new heaven whose dome will again confound us. It will still be home but not a place to take for granted. I wouldn’t be able to tell you the story of Orion and say, ‘Look, there he is, and there’s his dog Sirius whose loyalty has left him bright.’

The dot-to-dot log book of who we were is not a fixed text.

For Orion, who was the result of three of the gods in a good mood pissing on an ox-hide, the only tense he recognised was the future continuous. He was a mighty hunter. His arrow was always in flight, his prey, endlessly just ahead of him. The carcasses he left behind became part of his past faster than they could decay. When he went to Crete he did no sunbathing. He rid the island of all its wild beasts. He could really swing a cudgel.

Stories abound: Orion was so tall he could walk along the sea bed without wetting his hair. So strong he could part a mountain. He wasn’t the kind of man who settles down. And then he met Artemis, who wasn’t the kind of woman who settles down either. They were both hunters and both gods. Their meeting is recorded in the heavens, but you can’t see it every night, only on certain nights of the year. The rest of the time Orion does his best to dominate the skyline as he always did.

Our story is the old clash between history and home. Or to put it another way, the immeasurable impossible space that seems to divide the hearth from the quest.

Listen to this.

***

On a wild night, driven more by weariness than good sense, King Zeus agreed to let his daughter do it differently. She didn’t want to get married and sit out some war, while her man, god or not, underwent the ritual metamorphosis from palace prince to craggy hero. She didn’t want children. She wanted to hunt. Hunting did her good.

By morning she had packed and set off for her new life in the woods. Soon her fame spread and other women joined her but Artemis didn’t care for company. She wanted to be alone. In her solitude she discovered something very odd. She had envied men their long-legged freedom to roam the world and return full of glory to wives who only waited. She knew about history-makers and the home-makers, the great division that made life possible. Without rejecting it, she had simply hoped to take on the freedoms that belonged to the other side. What if she travelled the world and the seven seas like a hero? Would she find something different or the old things in different disguises?

She found that the whole world could be contained in one place because that place was herself. Nothing had prepared her for this.

The alchemists have a saying: ‘Tertium non datur’. The third is not given. That is, the transformation from one element into another, from waste matter into best gold is a mystery, not a formula. No one can predict what will form out of the tensions of opposites and effect a healing change between them. And so it is with the mind that moves from its prison to a free and vast plain without any movement at all. Something new has entered the process. We can only guess.