Welcome to the Future Jeanettte

“What happened to the omnicscient author?
“Gone interractive.”
-Jeanette Winterson, The Powert.book

As anyone who knows me knows, I’m a great fan of British novelist Jeanette Winterson. Well, she’s back!

She’s got a
new book! A new look on her ever-more-interractive website! And a new feature- a serial novel, a collaboration with Ali Smith, AM Homes and Jackie Kay, that will appear on Winterson’s site and on The Guardian Online.

Here’s the first chapter of 52.

I’ve been looking on Winterson’s site for further installments and was not aware that there were any until now. Here they are:
Episode 2.
Episode 3.
Episode 4.
Episode 5.
Episode 6.
Episode 7.
Episode 8.

There, now you’re all caught up!

I’m all caught up myself. Episodes 7 & 8 were a bit slow but the first six were fun. My favorites were 3 & 4– the band and that strange child. Imagine Alice in Wonderland if she was really a boy dressed as a girl and was being raised by his deceased mother’s lover who is entering into a marriage of convenience;

“”Whose side are you on?” the dwarf wants to know.

“Pardon?”

“Do you belong to the bride or the groom?”

“In the end I am all alone,” the boy laments. “My mother died and left me like a parting gift with her lady lover, but now that she is about to wed there is no place for me. I ask myself: can I stop this ceremony? I long believed she should wait and marry me; she should love me as she did my mother. For so long I have slept in her bed and all she now says is: ‘You won’t be this age forever’, but little does she know . . . The man she is marrying is desperate to remake me into the man he never was and will never be. And me, I am not so simple as that, to be spun and then spun round again. Tricky me.” The flower girl stops for a pee, lifting the front of his dress.

“You’re not a girl,” the wedding cake exclaims.

“Never claimed to be.”

The new episodes are in The Guardian each Sunday.

Here is Episode 9. This one is definitely JW. I loved this passage:

“I’d like to get married,” I said.

“You’re young, you should, it’s a good idea,” said Polly. “Love without commitment is love that takes no risks, and . . .”

“And?”

“What you risk reveals what you value.”

Yep, definitely JW.

And finally,Episode 10, and Episode 11.

~ by erc2008 on July 20, 2008.