Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

A friend said this was the best title she had ever heard. I think so, too. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the title comes from a scene in the book where the narrator tells her mother she has realized she is gay and loving a woman makes her happy, and her mother says, “Why be happy when you could be normal?”

A blurb from Dwight Garner of The New York Times says, “Raucous…hums with a dark refulgence from its first pages…”

Refulgence? I had no idea what that meant. Merriam Webster says, “a radiant or resplendent quality or state : brilliance.” Dark brilliance. An oxymoron. But I think I agree. The writing does seem to glow like gems, the way I often describe great writing, but there is a darkness to it.

The darkness comes from the heartrending story. Jeanette Winterson was adopted as an infant. Her adoptive mother, who Winterson called “Mrs. Winterson” at her mother’s request, was, in my unprofessional diagnosis, mentally ill.

Every day Mrs. Winterson prayed, “Lord, let me die.” This was hard on me and my dad. (page 9 *)

I’m sure! In the paragraph before, Winterson writes,

Her favourite song was “God Has Blotted Them Out,” which was meant to be about sins, but really was about anyone who had ever annoyed her, which was everyone. She just didn’t like anyone and she just didn’t like life. Live was a burden to be carried as far as the grave and then dumped. Life was a Vale of Tears. Life was a pre-death experience. (page 9 *)

Dark indeed. But glowing and radiant. Brilliant.

I was glad to read:

And the Bible told me that even if nobody loved me on earth, there was God in heaven who loved me like I was the only one who had ever mattered.

I believed that. It helped me. (page 22 *)

How I wish everyone would get that internal bedrock message about God. What a miracle that Jeanette Winterson did, considering her childhood and especially the mother she had.

A common punishment Mrs. Winterson doled out was to lock Jeanette in a coal-hole. This passage made me smile:

The one good thing about being shut in a coal-hole is that it prompts reflection. (page 23 *)

My mother had Parkinson’s Disease and hated to admit that her falling, which happened more and more often as the disease progressed, was much of a problem. Once, when she told my sister and me about having fallen, she said, “I just lay there for a while, thinking about things.” Falling prompted reflection for my mom, just like “being shut in a coal-hole” did for Jeanette Winterson.

Winterson goes on to say:

Read on its own that is an absurd sentence. But as I try and understand how life works—and why some people cope better than others with adversity—I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found. Not in the me-first way that is the opposite of life and love, but with a salmon-like determination to swim upstream, however choppy upstream is, because that is your stream… (page 23 *)

“Salmon-like determination to swim upstream.” Again, a gem.

Pursuing happiness, and I did, and still do, is not at all the same as being happy—which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine.” (page 23-24 *)

“A bit bovine.” Ha! I love cows, but what a great disparaging description. Cows as the opposite of salmon.

More great writing:

[About annual summer tent revival.} And so every year when Mrs. Winterson saw the tent in the field, and heard the harmonium playing “Abide With Me,” she used to grab my hand and say, “I can smell Jesus.”

The smell of the canvas (it always rains up north in the summer), and the smell of soup cooking for afterwards, and the smell of damp paper printed with the hymns—that’s what Jesus smells like. (page 71 *)

Would you ever have thought of that? Jesus smells like canvas, soup, and damp paper?

This one made me laugh out loud and read it to my husband:

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior—benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one’s own chaos was also brought under control.

“Whenever I am troubled,” said the librarian, “I think about the Dewey decimal system.”

“Then what happens?” asked the junior, rather overawed.

“Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course—as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness.” (page 127 *)

There you have it. The Dewey decimal system offers a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of life. When you are troubled, think of the Dewey decimal system—something has just been filed in the wrong place.

I hope you will read Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? I underlined and dog-eared too many passages and pages to include.

* Why Be Happy When you Could Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson. Grove Press. Copyright 2011 by Jeanette Winterson.