Jeanette Winterson - author HARDtalk

championship title for three years in the 1970s. Now it is time for

HARDtalk. This is HARDtalk on the BBC. Jeanette Winterson was a

twenty-something literary sensation in the 1980s. 'Oranges Are Not The

Only Fruit' was a raw, taboo- busting semi-autobiographical novel

about being abused, and being a lesbian. She also railed against

those who asked her, how much is true, how much happened? Now she

answers Haroun question. She just published her own memoir. She says

To 20 unsung welcome to HARDtalk. Pinky. You burst onto the literary

scene at the age of 26 with the semi-autobiographical novel,

'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit'. About a poor goal adopted into end

northern England house. She's kicked out of home. Now we have a

man were, because you say the real version of events is even more

painful. -- memoir. Before we gets into the memoir, let's get one

thing straight. Is this pure, unadulterated fact now? The facts

are facts. The truth is always changing. That is what I try and

address in the book. I don't understand the difference. Facts

are not always true, and truth is not always in the facts. The book

is accurate. My depression, about find my birth mother, is true. Was

I tried to deal with the book is how we always change the way we

read a harrowing circumstances which alters the absolute truth. It

is not in a tabloid newspaper, it is a state of mind. That is what

fiction handles very well, States of mind. And the way we handle the

past changes us as readers. The past is not fixed, the past is in

your head. It is to do with form, some of what to do is put speech as

in quotation marks. You have a librarian, who is central to

education, who has the most extraordinary speeches which seemed

to be a little bit too perfect. If you call this the truth, you call

it NM wire, people have to trust that this is the rule version of

facts as is possible. -- memoir. Fact sound better in real life.

That exchange with the librarian which took place when I was 16, I'm

sure I don't remember verbatim. I remember the situation. I'm a

writer and that was in my diary. It must be immediate. His every word

here exactly in the order it was said to you? The answer would be

none. It was a painful, the real story, why did she decide to

revisit it? I didn't it decided to we visit me. I never it wanted to

find my real mother. I thought I was completely in control of how I

understood the past and I was writing about my own life. Then I

had a period when it was a big personal breaks down. A huge

depression. It was a terrible time. From that, as I began to emerge,

language as ever was the thing that pulled me out. Like dropping a rope

down the well, and I was trying to drop it. I told stories to myself,

just like when my mother locked me in the coal shed. I had 15,000

words and there was a real drive behind that stories and it was a

book that I had to write. It was not a diary for myself. It was not

just the depression or the pain, you wrote in your for words in a

1991 book, but to serve up the lukewarm remains of yesterday's

dinner is profitable and popular, but it is also wrong. The juicier

that this was the party were trading? -- did you Taffia. I knew

it made no difference. I knew I could write this. If I had the

necessary energy and I thought that this would move other people rather

than myself than I was prepared to go forward with it. You have to

have your own is recut and integrity that is the only

benchmark of writers. The central characters of your booking 'Oranges

Are Not The Only Fruit', apart from you is your mother. She is an

enormous, monstrous figure in many ways. In the Christian

fundamentalists, in her lovelessness, in her very size.

Also, she's a wonderful vehicle for some of your great British

understatement. There is a great line when Mrs windows and parades,

Lord let me die. That would be harder my dad. -- Mrs Winter Sun.

There is that working-class real wit. A lot of language which is

Clear in that book. It is an oral tradition not a bookish tradition.

It is very Alan Bennett's the way they talk to each other and make

the most marvellous dramas that have little situations. She always

used to do that. Life was a pre- debt experience. It was never mum?

No, we had that particular kind of relationship and that was no

windier the relationship I had with her. He said that she was this

monstrous figure, you're almost display a sense of gratitude,

unwittingly, she mortgage you into the person you are? Yes, she did.

When I wrote 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit', is a novel that I use

myself as a fictional character. I was also been very defiant about my

background and my mother, as it were Terry my life. That has

changed over the years. She died in 1990 and that changed over the

years. It's that the state during now? Yes I love her now because I

understand it. When you understand someone you feel a sense of

connection. Then you care more for them. You can see them for what she

was, instead of a daily threat to my survival, which is what she felt

like at the time. Now look at her, this fabulous intelligent woman

squashed into her life. Of clear she wanted his life, these operatic,

dramatic life. That would never be the case for her all those women in

the 1950s he had nothing. One of the big revelations is that she

decided to track down your birth mother eventually, successfully. He

previously said that you disparage tracking down your mother? That's a

good question. I thought it was a crazy idea and never wanted to do

it. I had no sense of family life or belonging. I did not want a

biological identity. I have made my own identity and think of myself as

suffered invented, a lot of adopted kids do.S self-invented. I was

clearing out my father's bungalow and I thought to is this child, he

was adopted in 1960 on these ancient looking pieces of paper. It

had a huge emotional impact. I would like to follow the story a

little bit and see what happens. You can never follow a story a

little bit, you have to go to the end. It took me a year to do it. It

was shocking and scary. It was not a traditional joyful reunion two I

don't think they artificially joyful. I think we get caught up in

bespoke happy Hollywood endings. -- father happy. When 50 years have

passed you leave very different and separate lives. I want people to

feel less guilty about what they don't feel in the circumstances.

You talk about your sense of remoteness and guilt that she did

not want to be absorbed into your birth mother and her pre- existing

large family? She had a very large family. But that this was awful.

There was hundreds of them out there. I thought I cannot do this.

I do not want to do this. Then you feel guilty because they treat you

think there is something wrong with you. You you said your first

meeting we car was a disaster, that you can argument? DG talked to her

about how you wrote about her in an open way? Mrs Winterson said that

she did not like the way he portrayed her? Khadija birth mother

react to the way you portrayed her? -- how did your. It was very

faithful. I do not remember what the librarian said, but remember

what happened last year very clearly. I rated down afterwards. I

wanted that to be absolutely accurate. How does she feel about

this, been in print? The reason I haven't given her forename, it is

that she does not want the Daily Mail turning up on her doorstep she

was to carry on in the Pan Alley and privately. She is content with

the fact that it is my story. What I have not done, is to go further

than they did in the book. I did not explain about the arguments we

had. No you did not. You had a tremendous line, I have no idea

what happens next. So I once asked you what happened next. -- so why

weren't. Les Stocker that your mental breakdown. -- let's talk

about your. White you need to write about this? We talk about a

physical in pacification of illness? It's like being in a

haunted house. Things or write today. Then an invisible force

blows you. It is you, it is in your head. It feels like something that

is outside of you. I could do nothing. The trains came and I

could not get on them. You are humiliated. The temptation is to go

to the doctor and take pills, or get out of these. I was very clear

that I had to go through with it. But then a wire had that clarity.

Underneath all the horror, I the time I see this through. If I kill

myself, that is the end. That is better than leaving some put

together, false life, which is what would happen to me if I took

medicine and tried to stop these. I felt sure of that. You expose these

in the book. This makes it a compelling read. It is not a

comfortable read. That sits very comfortably with your approach to

writing. You want to shake people. You want people to be grabbed by

their lapels when they are reading and be confronted with something

that is awkward. I never got over that gospel tone. To say they saw

that is not for Jesus anymore. That literature is there to make a

difference. It should affect the way you think and feel. It should

stick your perspective. What you can do with language when you write

about something that is difficult, the language itself acts as a

container, a safe place we can put the unbearable things. That allows

the reader has to read it and feel the emotion and drama. And not be

overwhelmed by it, but use it for themselves therapeutically. Do you

think that women writers have a hurdle to some doubts in terms of

trying to shake up the expectation of what it is to provide what they

write on the written page two no, it is not a problem for women who

write. He said in the past was. It is a problem for men who read. They

expectations come from the outside. There is still an idea that if a

man writes about personal things it is because he is very sensitive and

if a woman does it is because she's writing a confessional. It's good

that I use myself in my novels because it's like a biography. It

is met a fiction. There is part of you that is using a form of punchy

sentences, tough brutal language. It is probably to confront people,

but it speaks to you or all of your in engulf. You would like to punch

the infuriating person to the ground. People never commit murder

There is clearly a rage state within year. IMA Northern career. I

still have a temper. I think I always will. What I am not is

somebody who bears grudges or present seeks revenge later. If we

have a fight, we have a fight and it is over and done with. I think

that is better than being a mean- minded hypocrite who says it behind

your back. Maybe it is a style issue. You have taken that

publicity into your own fight over what counts as literature, most

recently buying into the argument over Britain's top literary prize,

which you feel that readability has taken precedence over good

literature. Explain to me what you feel is the dichotomy there? This

year, it was a disappointing list. There is no reason why literature

should not be readable. It is meant to be envious. People are now

afraid of what looks elitist or anything that says that it is not

all entertainment or at the same level. All I have tried to do is a

bad literature depends on language. The language has to be powerful.

You cannot write a sentence in any old way and say it is literature. I

am trying to talk about language has a real thing. Is this not

creating a false dichotomy between what is high art and what is

readable? No, because there isn't a dichotomy. I think high art is

readable, but we are nervous about things. If you get something that

you do not understand, you blame the book or the writer. Do you

think part of this is you reacting to part of the criticism that has

been levelled at your writing? I AM thinking that of one review of your

board, one tends to approach it with more than a small amount of

heart sing. I think it is probably my simplest pauper. -- pork. The

thing about being a writer is you have to write a thing that you

believe matters and find your own voice. I think you also have to

have believe there is such a thing as literature and that matters as

well. 25 years later, you don't think people will like the book,

but others won't. You have been trenchant about politics as well as

literature and indeed in your Mamma -- memoir, you write about your

disdain for the traditional left and held - a -- how Uluru a poster

child for the Reagan and Thatcher eras. You have moved, haven't you?

You have moved quite a long way across the political spectrum.

did vote for Margaret Thatcher in 1979 because she was a woman end

knew the price of a loaf of bread. It was perfect for me, because that

was who I needed to be. I have watched with increasing dismay the

widening gap between rich and poor, the huge injustices in our world,

the way that we have exploited other countries and the way we

explode around work force. I feel really uncomfortable with that. I

love the fact that we are occupying Wall Street. If that is political,

I am very political. You clearly are. You have written most recently

about the riots. You said that the riots that were in Britain over the

summer were malicious, distracted and Eddie social. Unlike the riots,

what the papers have done might be all those things, but they have

been worse because it was not mind less. It was done deliberately to

turn a profit at the expense of a social order. Suggesting that were

bakers have done has been criminal? Yes. It amazes me that everybody

has been able to carry on with business as normal as though there

are not crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity is a very

strong phrase. Good. That is what we use when we talk about people

being guilty of war crimes. I would use it about Tony Blair, for

instance. Somebody has to take responsibility for the way the

world is. Or whether that is dead bodies in Iraq or the fact that the

world economy has dipped into complete chaos. It does not happen

by chance, it happens because people, usually men, take enormous

risks. You think equally that it is the duty of writers to be

politically engaged? Yes. I do not been there is a separation between

writing and the rest of life. It is very important to be engaged.

There is nothing passive about reading and writing books. It is

about forcing your minds to think about things differently. It is a

thinking and feeling experience. That is what we need in the world.

I am wondering where this leads you. You talk about the need to engage

and the need to confront people and may decide the uncomfortable. You

have a need to revisit your painful early adulthood. You were to track

down your birth never. All those things that you said you would

never do. I am just wondering where next for you? Are you looking

forward to the next shift that you're going to make? Or a year now

I do not want to die comfortably in my bed. You keep working in every

way and to you drop dead. That is the only way to do it. You like the

idea of breathlessness? It is an engagement with life, rather than

accepting life. I do want to make a difference. I were to be

politically involved. I used strong language because that is the way I

feel about the world. A writer has said, this is what happens when men

regard each other as useful objects. That seems to be mayor where we are

now. Denote what the next project will be? It will be another book...

Another novel? Yes. The visit has been a while. I lost interest in it

as a form because I was doing a lot of other things. I have written a

lot of books in my life, so sometimes you need to pull back