Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Myths, The) [Paperback]

Jeanette Winterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 2006 | Series: Myths, The

With wit and verve, the prize-winning author of Sexing the Cherry and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit brings the mythical figure of Atlas into the space age and sets him free at last. In her retelling of the story of a god tricked into holding the world on his shoulders and his brief reprieve, she sets difficult questions about the nature of choice and coercion, how we choose our own destiny and at the same time can liberate ourselves from our seeming fate. Finally in paperback, Weight is a daring, seductive addition to Canongate’s ambitious series of myths by the world’s most acclaimed authors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“One of the most worthwhile and singular reads of 2005. Jeanette Winterson creates an uncategorisable, meditative and moving book.”
–David Mitchell, Sunday Herald (Glasgow)


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

A novelist whose honours include England’s Whitbread Prize, and the American Academy’s E. M. Forster Award, as well as the Prix d’argent at the Cannes Film Festival, Jeanette Winterson burst onto the literary scene as a very young woman in 1985 with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her subsequent novels, including Sexing the Cherry, The Passion, Written on the Body, and The PowerBook, have also gone on to receive great international acclaim. Her latest novel is Lighthousekeeping, heralded as "a brilliant, glittering, piece of work" (The Independent). She lives in London and the Cotswolds.


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Canongate U.S. (September 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841957992
• ISBN-13: 978-1841957999
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #223,920 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What to do when the Matterhorn is digging into your shoulder..., December 13, 2005

By 

Kieri "Kieri" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Myths, The) (Hardcover)

Winterson's work is always beguiling, and here she proves that often, less is more, especially with a story that she emphasizes again and again has been told before. She wants to tell the story again, and this might be the best retelling of them all.

Atlas, a titan among the Titans, has been sentenced to hold the weight of the world on his immensely strong shoulders for pretty much the whole of time. (Time being relative and unimportant in the long view, we might as well say he must carry the world for all eternity.) He spends his time reflecting on past loves, past mistakes, and, of course, the weight. One day, though, a reprieve comes in an unlikely form: Herakles.

Winterson's Herakles is as un-Kevin Sorboish as one can imagine. He's a drunken, oversexed oaf with an Oedipal fixation on his beautiful stepmother, Hera. (He is also by far the funniest and most lively character in this novella.) He's getting close to the end of his Twelve famous Labors, and he needs Atlas's help. In return, Herakles will hold up the world for just one day.

You probably know how the myth ends. After all, we don't talk about how Herakles shoulders the weight of all Creation, now do we? But then what happened, when Atlas took up his burden again?

Winterson does bring the story into the 20th century, although this is not precisely a "modern retelling" as the jacket description would have you believe. She brings an intriguing twist into the story that, as a devoted dog-person, had me smiling for about a week.

For any fan of Jeanette Winterson, classical lit, history, dog-lovers, and sufferers of Atlas-complexes, this book is a must-have.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep questions pondered, December 19, 2005

By 

Steven R. McEvoy "MCWPP" (Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Myths, The) (Hardcover)

Now on to much weightier matters. Winterson takes a much different approach than Atwood. She tells this tale as herself telling her tale retelling a tale. Confusing? No not really. She begins with herself, tells the story of Heracles ad Atlas and then returns to her own life and lessons learnt.

Unlike the Penelopiad, this book Weight is very dark and brooding and leaves one with a feeling of unease as if we missed something, or even that in reading this book, like Pandora, we have opened a box and cannot now close it and will be forever different. Though we are not sure how.

How does Winterson accomplish this? In this deep brooding book she touches something primal inside. Much as Heracles is awoken and bothered by the question "Why? Why? Why?" this question arises and will not let him go.

So too, this book will awaken questions in your mind and your spirit, and maybe, just maybe, if we are lucky, in this book we will find the questions to lift our weight. If we can learn from it to tell our story we can be freed, and step out from under the burden on our shoulders, as Atlas so desperately desired.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Your Upstanding, Altruistic Heracles Here, September 16, 2006

By 

Amy Graham (Scottsdale, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Myths, The) (Hardcover)

I positively LOVED this book. It's the first I read in Canongate's Myth series, and I'm glad I started with this one! I read Weight in a couple of hours, but then it's not all that long (coming in at 151 pages), but in those pages it was fun, outrageous, sad, and well, different! I particularly loved her un-Sorbo like Heracles...he's coarse, vulgar, oversexed...and oh so unlike the Hercules played by Sorbo - and this is a good thing in my book! For Atlas' part, the long suffering god, made to bear the weight of the world upon his shoulders, is relieved of the burden for a short time, but even then he is tricked too early to returning to it...even in this we are given a twist, following Atlas from ancient Greece into the modern space race...I really enjoyed this twist. Weight is kind of a story inside of a story, with side stories even, and I like that about this book, it give one a lot to think about and a whole new twist on these mythic figures.

I've not read any of Winterson's other work (which I may have to try out based on this reading), so I can't compare this to her other work, nor can I compare it to Atwood's Penelopaid (which I have in my library TBR pile...but this one is due in two days and cannot be renewed, so I had to read it NOW)...which is also in the Canongate's series of myths retold... even so, I give Weight a A, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it for a quick, fun retelling of the Atlas/Heracles myth.