{"id":3964,"date":"2020-06-21T21:18:24","date_gmt":"2020-06-21T20:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3964"},"modified":"2020-06-23T10:18:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-23T09:18:57","slug":"the-stone-gods-its-the-end-of-the-world-and-we-know-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3964","title":{"rendered":"The Stone Gods: It’s the end of the world and we know it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If books are to be judged on their first sentence, Jeanette Winterson\u2019s The Stone Gods wins all the prizes. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This new world weighs a yatto-gram<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\nAt first I considered it a silly idea, the first-sentence judgement.\nAbsurd to form an opinion on an entire novel from the first handful\nof words. But I can see its truth. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThere is a catch, though. You can only judge the worth of the first\nsentence after you\u2019ve read the book. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For that opening line, if it is brilliant, hold tens of thousand of words in its palm. And there is no way to know if it does that, unless you measure the pile. Only then, when you come back to the beginning, is it possible to see how it cups the ending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having read The Stone Gods<\/em>, each one of those six words now carry the weight of the world. Together, they carry the power of a meteorite, inter-stellar travel, the possibility of the impossible, the germ of our own destruction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nI have a new theory: the success of the novel is its ability, having\nbeing read, to turn its first sentence into an intricate dance of\npoetry and philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThere\u2019s the fact we\u2019re living\nthrough a pandemic. A virus is sweeping through the global human\npopulation, and we have no cure, no antidote, no vaccine. A novel\nvirus come about, ultimately, through destruction of our own planet.\nDestruction that at times seems wanton; of habitats, of species, of\nentire ecosystems in order to feed a greed that cannot be sated.\nGreed destroying natural balances that would limit exposure and\nspread, would keep things in their lane. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nBut homo sapiens is not good at\nstaying in the lane. The whole point of evolution is to get out of\nyour lane. And we\u2019re the most evolved, arguably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe difficult thing is, there\u2019s\njust too many of us. We are too many of one dominant species. A\nplanet full of apex predators. Yes, if managed properly and on\nholistic principles, all eight billion of us and counting could be\nfed and watered and housed but we are also gregarious and congregate\nin cities that become metropolisis. This requires complex systems,\nand the more complex the system, the more precarious it becomes. A\nsubmicroscopic bundle of DNA is able to bring us to our knees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nWhatever your view on the politics\nof overpopulation, we\u2019ve run out of world. We need a new one.\nImagine we found one, one that weighs a yatto-gram. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no conscious intention to read a novel that in any way reflects the extra-ordinary situation our world is in (though it was no less extra-ordinary a year ago, we just weren\u2019t personally affected). I had no desire to read Camus\u2019s The Plague<\/em> while enduring one. If anything, I was seeking literature to take me away from the incessant scroll of Covid-19 information. Yet if I had sought a novel through which to find perspective, I doubt there could be any better than The Stone Gods.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It didn\u2019t take many pages before the novel became a mirror in which I stared at humanity, but as if from the other side. The unflinching clarity of Winterson\u2019s vision, the crisp sensuality of her writing, created the uncanny feeling of being the reflection, of looking through myself and seeing the cosmic dust of our cells, pulsating nearer and nearer to each other on their insatiable journey to form new life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nPublished in 2007, there is nothing of plague or disease in it,\nexcept for that resulting from nuclear fallout, but one imagines it\nexists, just a spore release away, in Winterson\u2019s world, or worlds.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nHer novel is made up of three\ninter-connected novellas: Planet Blue<\/em>,\nEaster Island<\/em>, and\nPost-3 War<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A trilogy, although triptych is more apt. Each is complete in itself, but link and echo through characters and themes, each supporting the other to create a narrative circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To provide any further information about these three parts is to risk spoiling the work, except to say they link beginning to end, end to beginning; an ouroboros encircling a hundred million years and all the galaxies between them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If books are to be judged on their first sentence, Jeanette Winterson\u2019s The Stone Gods wins all the prizes. This new world weighs a yatto-gram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[999,1000],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3964"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3974,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3964\/revisions\/3974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}