Why should we care what Jeanette Winterson has to say about artificial intelligence? The answer is that Winterson is never boring. She can be brash, didactic and hectoring, but she is always passionate and provocative. On subjects ranging from late capitalism to Greek mythology, she comes across a little like an over-caffeinated teacher determined to drum some sense into Year 10 on a wet Friday afternoon.
Winterson’s manic energy can have mixed results. It can produce work that is porous and mutable in its structure, forward-looking and ambitious in its themes, such as Sexing the Cherry (1989) and Written on the Body (1992). But it can also produce wacky high-wire performances full of stylistic gimmickry, as in Art & Lies (1994), Gut Symmetries (1997) and The Stone Gods (2007). These are books that seem to attack their subjects rather than explore them. And there’s no getting away from Winterson’s aphoristic mode of writing, which seems imbued with a Cassandra-like certainty that she has seen the light and will lead others towards it. “I’m telling you stories. Trust me,” she wrote in The Passion (1987).
Content from our partners
