Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Read Online Free PDF Page B

lives.
    The fairy tales warn us that there is no such thing as standard size — that is an illusion of industrial life
    — an illusion farmers still struggle with when trying to supply uniform vegetables to supermarkets . . . no, size is both particular and subject to change.
    The stories of the gods appearing in human form
    — scaled—down power deities — are also stories against judging by appearances — things are not what they seem.
    It seems to me that being the right size for your world — and knowing that both you and your world are not by any means fixed dimensions — is a valuable clue to learning how to live.
    Mrs Winterson was too big for her world, but she crouched gloomy and awkward under its low shelf, now and again exploding to her full three hundred feet, and towering over us. Then, because it was useless, redundant, only destructive, or so it seemed, she shrank back again, defeated.
    I am short, so I like the little guy/underdog stories, but they are not straightforwardly about one size versus another. Think about, say, Jack and the Beanstalk , which is basically a big ugly stupid giant, and a smart little Jack who is fast on his feet. OK, but the unstable element is the beanstalk, which starts as a bean and grows into a huge tree—like thing that Jack climbs to reach the castle. This bridge between two worlds is unpredictable and very surprising. And later, when the giant tries to climb after Jack, the beanstalk has to be chopped down pronto. This suggests to me that the pursuit of happiness, which we may as well call life, is full of surprising temporary elements — we get somewhere we couldn't go otherwise and we profit from the trip, but we can't stay there, it isn't our world, and we shouldn't let that world come crashing down into the one we can inhabit. The beanstalk has to be chopped down. But the large—scale riches from the ‘other world’ can be brought into ours, just as Jack makes off with the singing harp and the golden hen. Whatever we ‘win’ will accommodate itself to our size and form — just as the miniature princesses and the frog princes all assume the true form necessary for their coming life, and ours.
    Size does matter.
    In my novel Sexing the Cherry (1989) I invented a character called the Dog Woman; a giantess who lives on the River Thames. She suffers because she is too big for her world. She was another reading of my mother.
    Six books . . . my mother didn't want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books — that I put myself inside them for safe keeping.
    Every week Mrs Winterson sent me to the Accrington Public Library to collect her stash of murder mysteries. Yes, that is a contradiction, but our contradictions are never so to ourselves. She liked Ellery Queen and Raymond Chandler, and when I challenged her over the business of ‘the trouble with a book [to rhyme with spook] is that you never know what's in it until it's too late . . .’, she replied that if you know there is a body coming, it isn't so much of a shock.
    I was allowed to read non—fiction books about kings and queens and history, but never, ever, fiction. Those were the books there was trouble in ...
    The Accrington Public Library was a fully stocked library built out of stone on the values of an age of self—help and betterment. It was finally finished in 1908 with money from the Carnegie Foundation. Outside were carved heads of Shakespeare and Milton, Chaucer and Dante. Inside were art nouveau tiles and a gigantic stained—glass window that said useful things like INDUSTRY AND PRUDENCE CONQUER.
    The library held all the Eng lit classics, and quite a few surprises like Gertrude Stein. I had no idea of what to read or in what order, so I just started alphabetically. Thank God her last name was Austen . . .
    At home one of the six books was unexpected; a copy of Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Mallory. It was a beautiful edition with pictures, and it had