The World And Other Places: Stories (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
“All of one’s life is a struggle towards that; the narrow path between freedom and belonging. I have sometimes sacrificed freedom in order to belong, but more often I have given up all hope of belonging.” “I live in the space between chaos and shape. I walk the line that continually threatens to lose its tautness under me, dropping me into dark pit where there is no meaning. At other times the line is so wired that it lights up the soles of my feet, gradually my whole body, until I am my own beacon, and I see then the beauty of newly created worlds, a form that is not random. A new beginning. I saw all this in him and it frightened me.” “What is there to say about love? You could sweep up all the wolds and stack them in the gutter and love wouldn’t be any different, wouldn’t feel any different, the hurt in the heart, the headachy desire that hardly submits to language. What we can’t tame we talk about.” “Today we have reached the middle, the point of no return. Today the future is nearer than the past.” “Is compassion possible between a man and woman? When I say (as I have not said), ‘I want to take care of you’, do I mean ‘I want you to take care of me’? “But the truth is other as truth always is. What holds the small space between my legs is not your artistic tongue nor any of the other parts you play at will but the universe beneath the sheets that we make together.” “Come again, she asked? Yes tomorrow, under the sodium street lights, under the tick of the clock. Under my obligations, my history, my fears, this now. This fizzy, giddy all consuming now. I will not let time lie to me. I will not listen to dead voices or unborn pain. ‘What if?’ has no power against ‘What if not?” The not of you is unbearable. I must have you. Let them prate, those scorn-eyed anti-romantics. Love is not the oil and I am not the machine. Love is you and here I am. Now.” “They were quiet then because Sappho hadn’t learned a language. She was still two greedy hands and an open mouth. She throbbed like an outboard motor, she was as sophisticated as a ham sandwich. She had nothing to offer but herself, and Picasso, who thought she had seen it all before, smiled like a child and fell in love.” “What we were we were in equal parts, and twin souls to one another. We like to play roles but we know who we are. You are beauty to me. Not only sensuous beauty that pleases the eye but artistic beauty, magnificently ugly and you frighten me for all the right reasons.” “The future is still intact, still unredeemed, but the past is irredeemable. She is not who she thought she was. Every action and decision led her here. The moment had been waiting, they way the top step of the stairs waits for the sleep walker. She had fallen and now she is awake.” “No safety without risk and what you risk revels what you value.” “When the can hardly see we are most likely to fall in love…” “There are times, when I am on my own, fixing a drink, walking upstairs, when I see the door waiting for me. I have to stop myself pulling the bolt and turning the handle. Why? On the other side of the door is a mirror, and I will have to see myself. I’m not afraid of what I am. I’m afraid I will see what I am not.” “In my city of dreams the roads lead nowhere; that is, they lead off the edge of the world into infinite space. Under my feet the road itself that carried me forward, until there is nothing under my feet but air. Where to now, without tarmac and map? What direction do I take now that all directions can be taken? “Only here, only now, what is between us is true. You and I, this honesty we make.” “The planets are bodies in the solar system and so are we. You and I in elliptical orbs circling life. It is life we want, but we daren’t come too close for fear it might burn us away, this life in its intensity. ..When I hold you in this night-soaked bed it is courage for the day I seek. Courage that when the light comes I will turn towards it. It couldn’t be simpler. It couldn’t be harder.”In this little night covered world with you I hope to find what I long for; a clue, a map, a bird flying south, and when the light comes we will get dressed together and go.” “What I fear I avoid. What I fear I pretend does not exist. What I fear is quietly killing me. Would there were a festival for my fears, a ritual burning of what is coward in me, what is lost in me. Let the light in before it is too late.” ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask myself in the mirror most days." ‘Myself. I want to be myself.’ “I no longer knew which way I wanted to go. Pursuit or retreat. In life, ordinary lifetime life, it is so easy to march down the road until your legs finally give way and everyone crows round the coffin and declare you did your best. You didn’t though did you? The road was marked and you took it. Never mind that it was a ring road circling the heart.”
In questa raccolta di racconti brevi, la Winterson mostra tutta la sua abilità nel costruire, anche in poche pagine, storie che stanno in piedi; scrivere novelle è sempre difficile e non è detto che tutti ci riescano.La Winterson c'è riuscita. Si passa dalle atmosfere di un amore nato durante un viaggio, su una nave, a quelle fantasiose di un mondo fatto di isole, di elementi, di persone che si fissano negli occhi e vedono tutto ciò che è stato; si passa da un mondo in cui non si dorme e in cui il protagonista lavora dormendo per sognare ciò che agli altri non è permesso al mondo incantato della novella del titolo, "Il mondo e altri luoghi", in cui vediamo un pilota d'aereo alle prese con i suoi sogni di volare dove nessuno è mai stato, sogni accarezzati fin da bambino nei giochi con la sua famiglia. Vediamo poi un uomo che al luna park ha un'avventura con una zingara; e poi un ricco signore la cui casa ha stanza che si perdono, porte che vengono chiuse e poi spariscono; una rivisitazione del mito di Orione e poi la meravigliosa novella d'apertura, ideale per gli amanti degli animali, che descrive il rapporto di una persona con un cucciolo di cane che la sconvolge più di quanto avrebbe pensato.E poi, come non parlare di "The poetics of Sex"? In una novella nata dalle domande che i giornalisti le hanno rivolto riguardo alla sua omosessualità, o comunque dai luoghi comuni che riguardano le donne omosessuali, l'autrice ricostruisce la perfetta naturalità di un amore che da altri viene concepito come "diverso", "sbagliato", "manchevole": il sesso descritto in maniera esplicita ed implicita, le emozioni e i sentimenti, la capacità di questo amore di dare come solo l'amore può fare, come è normale che un amore faccia, qualunque esso sia. In una azzeccatissima metafora con la pittura (l'amante viene definita "Picasso"), vediamo questo rapporto dipingere sulla voce narrante dei nuovi orizzonti, e scopriamo che sono gli stessi orizzonti che sono stati dipinti su di noi dai nostri amori; vediamo come l'amore non ha sesso (concetto descritto anche in "Scritto sul corpo", considerato il romanzo capolavoro della Winterson), è semplicemente amore. Commovente e toccante.E tutto, come sempre nella Winterson, ci viene descritto come se fosse perfettamente naturale, con uno stile impeccabile che si adatta a meraviglia ai contesti raccontati, sempre delicato e mai volgare.Una citazione, tanto per invogliare alla lettura? "Love is not the oil and I am not the machine. Love is you and here I am. Now."
What do You think about The World And Other Places: Stories (2000)?
The past couple Jeanette Winterson books I've read have not been my favorite...I feel like I read her most popular and well written novels first and now I'm starting to see why these others aren't as well loved. This collection of short stories wasn't awful, it was just that they weren't consistent. Some of them were awesome and then others were just ok. I still love how she writes, how she can turn a phrase and it cuts you down while you're reading it. No one else can do that to me the way she can.
—Emily
Jeanette Winterson crafts an eerily soothing set of tales in this volume. Opening with the a woman's decision to adopt - and then return - a puppy over the course of 24 hours, Winterson's tales are filled with a sad kind of hope and longing. A shopgirl's encounter with a fairy in her bedroom leads to the most subtle of wishes, a poetical essay on a lesbian couple mixes sex and wordplay, and the tale of Orion the Hunter is shared from the view of the goddess he raped. Overall, a good read that transports you to those titular "other places" in the world.
—M
In much the same way as Kate Bush can get away with singing about the number Pi, Jeanette Winterson can write about pretty much anything and you know it will be well done, professionally. The question is: How interesting would it be? It’s why I don’t buy every new book by an author I’ve enjoyed in the past. I do not doubt their ability to write, it’s simply that the subject matter might not be to my taste. The stories in The World and Other Places are variable, not in quality, but in style. In "O`Brien`s First Christmas" a woman is visited by a fairy for Christmas and is given new blond hair which bolsters her confidence. That reminded me of a play I saw many years ago where a prostitute is visited by the real Santa Claus. “Newton” describes a Stepford-Wives-esque town from the point of view of a “screwball”, Tom. “Psalms” narrates the brief life of a tortoise with an unusual name and would have worked as a subplot to Oranges are Not the Only Fruit. All these worked for me.The ones I struggled with were “Turn of the World” with its quasi-mythological descriptions of four islands, “Orion”, again a tale rooted in mythology and “The Poetics of Sex” which meandered a bit too much for my tastes. What some people won’t like is how little background she provides, characters are barely described, if at all; Dickens it certainly is not. Personally I prefer that and I’m not dependent on plot to enjoy a story either; none of these stories has much of one.What did bother me was the realisation that I had read it before and virtually none of it had stuck; I was a bit sad about that as all her novels have been quite memorable.
—Jim
