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The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
"When I was asked to choose a myth to write
about, I realized I had chosen already. The story of Atlas holding up
the world was in my mind before the telephone call had ended. If the
call had not come, perhaps I would never have written the story, but
when the call did come, that story was waiting to be written.
Rewritten. The recurring language motif of Weight is 'I want to tell
the story again.' My work is full of cover versions. I like to take
stories we think we know and record them differently. In the retelling
comes a new emphasis or bias, and the new arrangement of the key
elements demands that fresh material be injected into the existing
text. Weight moves far away from the simple story of Atlas's punishment
and his temporary relief when Heracles takes the world off his
shoulders. I wanted to explore loneliness, isolation, responsibility,
burden, and freedom, too, because my version has a very particular end
not found elsewhere." -- from Jeanette Winterson's Foreword to Weight.
Comment: The second in eries, see 'A Short History of Myth' (in this issue) for more information.
None available.
This information about Weight was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born in Manchester, England, Jeanette Winterson is the author of more than twenty books, including the national bestseller Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and The Passion. She has won many prizes including the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the E. M. Forster Award, and the Stonewall Award.
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