Weight
April 2nd, 2006The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
by Jeanette Winterson
ISBN: 1841957186
I suppose authors don’t often get the chance to (explicitly) do cover versions. But that is what Weight — one in a trio of books in Canongate’s new mythology series — is. The project appealed to Winterson because, as she explains in the introduction, “I like to take stories we think we know and record them differently.”
She’s done it before, reworking the twelve dancing princesses story in Sexing the Cherry, and she’s good at it. Weight gives us a Hercules (as we are more likely to know him) who is more of an ass than a hero, and that makes the story more interesting. Atlas is the one who is a hero, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Because the story is a myth, and because Winterson is telling it, things aren’t that simple. The book isn’t a long one (Winterson’s books generally aren’t) so spend an afternoon with a story you think you knew. I’m pretty sure Sputnik wasn’t in any version you’ve heard before.
