March 17, 2009 - 12:33am
In On Literature Umberto Eco, considering recipes for writers, writes:
There is no set of rules, or, rather, there are many, varied and flexible rules; and there is no hot magma of inspiration. But it is true that there is a sort of initial idea and that there are very precise phases in a process that develops only gradually.
Winterson's novel grows naturally out of that non-recipe. She presents and develops an idea that radiates through all of the phases of the book. Even as her protagonist becomes unstuck in time, reminiscent of that great American moralist, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., ("So it Goes"), the idea is foremost, the profundity and humor manifest on every page. Eco, Vonnegut, and other writers come to mind when reading The Stone Gods. For example, Jared Diamond's book Collapse strikes me as a scientific source for the story. Diamond writes of the collapse of Easter Island, "The sad story of European impacts on Easter Islanders may be quickly summarized. After Captain Cook's brief sojourn in 1774, there was a steady trickle of European visitors. ... They must be assumed to have introduced European diseases and thereby to have killed many previously unexposed islanders…" (111, 112) Collapse is a central idea in The Stone Gods.
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