It took me months to read Shylock Is My Name. When I finally sat down and read another in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, The Gap of Time, I knocked it out in two days.
There were a couple of reasons for that. One, I started it on Thanksgiving, so I had time alone (recluse that I am, it isn't unusual for me to slip away at large family gatherings and keep my anxiety lower) to read it; and two, I am less familiar with The Winter's Tale from which the book is pulled, so the reading felt a little fresher.
But I'm not certain that's entirely the case, as I think about it. Perhaps it was the book was shorter, had more white space, or some other psychological trick. Additionally, the copy I purchased off of Amazon last year (instead of buying it, like a good boy, from the shelf of a bookstore--an independent one, if there were one close by) is actually an uncorrected proof (Not For Sale). This didn't really click in my head until I realized what I was holding: The other three titles of the Hogarth Shakespeare series are in hardback (with a price tag to match). This one was already in paperback? Then I realized that I had bought what I ought not to have: An ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of an ARC.
It showed. The table of contents has place holders for the pages of the different sections of the book. There were a lot of grammar errors--more than a book normally has. There were a couple of ***** spots (I'm not editing anything; that's what was on the page) and notes for continuity.
Part of the reason I liked reading this one, I believe, is because it felt a little like I was peeking behind the curtains of a professional writer, reading what I shouldn't have read, and enjoying the illicit (almost voyeuristic) thrill of it. This made me feel (a little) better about my own inadequacies as a writer. Though the phrase "Everyone feels that way" doesn't usually make me feel better, it is reassuring to know that even someone with the reputation and resume as Jeanette Winterson (whom I've never read before) has similar tricks as I do for getting through a draft.
And the book itself? Well, like Shylock Is My Name, there's a lot of ambiguity. It ends much "happier" than Jacobson's book. There's a lot more sex in it, but less self-loathing (note: not no self-loathing); more swearing, but less introspection. It doesn't put the Other into as uncomfortable a focus, though both have characters rife with casual antisemitism, which is alarming and probably true to life.
There are a couple of moments that are fourth-wall bending, though nothing on par with Jacobson's set up. Shakespeare is invoked a little more frequently, but never in a way that feels like a shoehorned approach. That is enjoyable--I don't know if I would have the restraint, were I to write a book like this, not to put in more direct call backs to the Bard. Indeed, every book I've written has something from him, a piece I've deliberately selected to include.* Sometimes I have to rely on verbiage that he's given us ("in a nutshell" or "foregone conclusion"), which I always write with a smug smirk on my smarmy face, knowing that most will read it as cliche while I mean it as allusion. But Winterson's prose takes a less open approach, which I liked.
I feel as though I understand the characters of the play having read this "cover story" of Shakespeare's work, and that's positive. Especially Winterson's ending, which stops a bit abruptly (I think it was a page thing; I needed more white space to know that we were shifting gears), I felt. But there's a postscript, as it were, that gives a fascinating approach to Shakespeare in general--and The Winter's Tale specifically--that I really enjoyed. It is the concept of forgiveness. Shakespeare spent his career crafting stories about people who would not forgive: Ambition, fear, vengeance, lust, or wounded pride all provided the fodder for their obstinacy. But by the end of his career, Winterson notes, Shakespeare begins to revisit older motifs and explores them with the concept of forgiveness. Maybe (and this is me talking) William Shakespeare had supped long enough on terrors and sought the balm that only forgiveness generates. Prospero has every right to despise his usurping brother, but he forgives. Hermione, by all rights, ought to reject Leontes for his barbaric treatment of her, but she chooses the harder path. And Cordelia? Born better than her father deserved, she died without rancor. These examples had never stood out to me until Winterson made that observation. Sadly, her characters don't go through the same metamorphosis that her analysis of Shakespeare does.
As with the other book in this series, Shakespeare did it better.
But that isn't why the novels were written. It isn't a competition, nor is it homage. It's an internalization of what Shakespeare put on stage, embracing the power and benefits of being written on the page. That should come as no surprise, I think. The surprise is, for me, how much this type of interpretation has pushed me in my own understanding of the source material. If, for no other reason than that, I plan on reading on.
---
* Since almost everything I write is fantasy, this can be a little tricky. I give him a direct shout out in a sci-fi book I wrote, and once I quoted him directly when a character was visiting a bizarre other-world. In one book, I took the idea of Jack Falstaff's original name, Oldcastle, and fused the names together, giving me Fulcastle.
There were a couple of reasons for that. One, I started it on Thanksgiving, so I had time alone (recluse that I am, it isn't unusual for me to slip away at large family gatherings and keep my anxiety lower) to read it; and two, I am less familiar with The Winter's Tale from which the book is pulled, so the reading felt a little fresher.
But I'm not certain that's entirely the case, as I think about it. Perhaps it was the book was shorter, had more white space, or some other psychological trick. Additionally, the copy I purchased off of Amazon last year (instead of buying it, like a good boy, from the shelf of a bookstore--an independent one, if there were one close by) is actually an uncorrected proof (Not For Sale). This didn't really click in my head until I realized what I was holding: The other three titles of the Hogarth Shakespeare series are in hardback (with a price tag to match). This one was already in paperback? Then I realized that I had bought what I ought not to have: An ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of an ARC.
It showed. The table of contents has place holders for the pages of the different sections of the book. There were a lot of grammar errors--more than a book normally has. There were a couple of ***** spots (I'm not editing anything; that's what was on the page) and notes for continuity.
Part of the reason I liked reading this one, I believe, is because it felt a little like I was peeking behind the curtains of a professional writer, reading what I shouldn't have read, and enjoying the illicit (almost voyeuristic) thrill of it. This made me feel (a little) better about my own inadequacies as a writer. Though the phrase "Everyone feels that way" doesn't usually make me feel better, it is reassuring to know that even someone with the reputation and resume as Jeanette Winterson (whom I've never read before) has similar tricks as I do for getting through a draft.
And the book itself? Well, like Shylock Is My Name, there's a lot of ambiguity. It ends much "happier" than Jacobson's book. There's a lot more sex in it, but less self-loathing (note: not no self-loathing); more swearing, but less introspection. It doesn't put the Other into as uncomfortable a focus, though both have characters rife with casual antisemitism, which is alarming and probably true to life.
There are a couple of moments that are fourth-wall bending, though nothing on par with Jacobson's set up. Shakespeare is invoked a little more frequently, but never in a way that feels like a shoehorned approach. That is enjoyable--I don't know if I would have the restraint, were I to write a book like this, not to put in more direct call backs to the Bard. Indeed, every book I've written has something from him, a piece I've deliberately selected to include.* Sometimes I have to rely on verbiage that he's given us ("in a nutshell" or "foregone conclusion"), which I always write with a smug smirk on my smarmy face, knowing that most will read it as cliche while I mean it as allusion. But Winterson's prose takes a less open approach, which I liked.
I feel as though I understand the characters of the play having read this "cover story" of Shakespeare's work, and that's positive. Especially Winterson's ending, which stops a bit abruptly (I think it was a page thing; I needed more white space to know that we were shifting gears), I felt. But there's a postscript, as it were, that gives a fascinating approach to Shakespeare in general--and The Winter's Tale specifically--that I really enjoyed. It is the concept of forgiveness. Shakespeare spent his career crafting stories about people who would not forgive: Ambition, fear, vengeance, lust, or wounded pride all provided the fodder for their obstinacy. But by the end of his career, Winterson notes, Shakespeare begins to revisit older motifs and explores them with the concept of forgiveness. Maybe (and this is me talking) William Shakespeare had supped long enough on terrors and sought the balm that only forgiveness generates. Prospero has every right to despise his usurping brother, but he forgives. Hermione, by all rights, ought to reject Leontes for his barbaric treatment of her, but she chooses the harder path. And Cordelia? Born better than her father deserved, she died without rancor. These examples had never stood out to me until Winterson made that observation. Sadly, her characters don't go through the same metamorphosis that her analysis of Shakespeare does.
As with the other book in this series, Shakespeare did it better.
But that isn't why the novels were written. It isn't a competition, nor is it homage. It's an internalization of what Shakespeare put on stage, embracing the power and benefits of being written on the page. That should come as no surprise, I think. The surprise is, for me, how much this type of interpretation has pushed me in my own understanding of the source material. If, for no other reason than that, I plan on reading on.
---
* Since almost everything I write is fantasy, this can be a little tricky. I give him a direct shout out in a sci-fi book I wrote, and once I quoted him directly when a character was visiting a bizarre other-world. In one book, I took the idea of Jack Falstaff's original name, Oldcastle, and fused the names together, giving me Fulcastle.
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