Five Minutes With: Jeanette Winterson

Genet it's great to see you thank you you've relatively recently finished writing a memoir yes it's called why be happy when you could be normal and we are going to do five minutes and do that Windsor now and if you could possibly count us down when the battery goes in all right whoa look at that four three two whoa oh are you a party killer I love parties because you don't have to talk to many people you can just flip from one to the other what I hate at dinner parties we have to sit next to some nudnik oh that's Jewish for an annoying pest and you don't want to talk to them and you forced you all through three courses that's my ideas of how do you listen to pop music yes but my taste in pop music is really bad so I'll be listening to JLS or pink you know it's just it's just not very cool tell me about your love for opera oh well that's serious um I discovered opera or 20 years ago by chance and all the hairs on the back of my neck still end and I thought this is everything it's theater it's drama it's music it's excitement its life and it's life lived so intensely and since then I've just gone see everything and the whole repertoire over and over again so opera is it's in my DNA now which is surprised for a northern working-class girl do you have a favorite opera well a friend once said to me you start with Puccini and he make the journey through through varner and the you end up back with Puccini and strangely enough that's what's happened to me and I was listening to toss her again the other night and I thought yes it's still Tosca which was the first offer I saw do you sing yourself um not anymore that's because I was brought up in a gospel tent in a part with a pile of evangelicals saving souls and the evangelicals are very big on singing so you were endlessly singing so I have now given that up what do you think you would have been had you not been a writer this is terrible question um I had a vision of myself in the other life I was in Monty during an art gallery and I was wearing a little blue Armani pinstripe suit and for reasons I can't go into how to spray tan and Jimmy Choos and I was in one of those basement bars they love in Manchester drinking 20 quid martinis and I thought if I hadn't found art and books and poetry I'd be a property developer I still be drinking the 20 quid martinis that I've had two husbands and a boob job by now and I live in a ranch-style house with a jacuzzi because I was always going to get somewhere so you can't see yourself at the heart of a big opera no no no no I'd be there with my hot tub on the gravel and the Range Rover Sport are you a quick reader very quick except for poetry because my view is that poetry's can only be read out loud and that you should read it to yourself in the mirror because you memorise it very quickly then and also you see the effect that it's having on you it's very interesting way to do it so prose I can read a great speed but still satisfying a poetry slow do you not think you miss anything if you read quickly yes but I can't help it that's the trouble and I learned to read quickly because my mother misses Winterson was always coming into the outside loo and snatching the books off me because books weren't allowed in our house we only had six books so I had to read in the loo with a flashlight and a it's freezing and be if you've got this menacing monster coming out from the kitchen to snatch you away then you learn to read fast so it was strategy do you think that novels should be more than entertainment do you think they are I think they are exactly so I think the the best novels the strong texts that we want to read they do delight us but their challenges on every level and the strange thing is that as you get older and you go back to read things that you read earlier of course the text can't have changed in reality but I'll chemically it does seem to because there's a different relationship between self and text and that's what I love I want the thing to grow with me you know one one read book is fine but I prefer something that you can grow with would you ever read your own novels once they've been published no I think you never do read your own books you know you write them but you don't read them and strangely 25 years later if I have to go back and read something like oranges or the passion then I read them now I'm delighted in a strange kind of way because remember the person who wrote them so they feel like someone there know very well but it isn't me do you think you've got better as a writer is that the right sort of question god I hope so you guess that you get facility you get a condo you you do you get an ability whatever you work with for so long the trick is really to keep challenging yourself to do things differently to extend your own process to risk it to humiliate yourself all of those things which is uncomfortable and on the edge that's necessary otherwise you might as well stop how did you write your very first novel did you write by pen or with a typewriter now wrote it by pen a pen and paper mainly in the reading room of the British Museum what do you do now to unwind are you a good relaxer can you relax easily like a relaxed person oh no sex and rulings do you think not at the same time do you think a lot do you sometimes find yourself just thinking I think no one stopped and the only way I can stop thinking is where I'm running it's where my head empties completely and for me that's freedom what is the most important thing in the world love and that is five minutes I was trying to think of a loss [Laughter]

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Keywords: Five Minutes With, Celebrities, Matthew Stadlen, BBC, Interview, 5 Minute Clock, Comedy, Sport, Music, Talk, Acting, Conversation, Questions, Journalism, Media, Breaking News, TV, Radio

Id: D9_q4IrsYWI

Length: 5min 45sec (345 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 09 2013