Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Hercules, by Jeanette Winterson. New York: Cannongate, 2005. $18.00, Hardcover. ISBN 1-84195-718-6

Have you ever read someone you're a fan of and thought; there's no way to do it better than this? For me it's Jeanette Winterson, her lyricism, her wide flung knowledge of mythology and science, and humanness and above all else, her risk taking. At the end of each of her books I walk away feeling like she’s left everything on the page the way an athlete leaves everything on the field. I imagine her office, piles of books and papers everywhere, and her at an old wooden desk, sweat dripping from her skin, the pen in her hand written dry. I imagine her wrung out, leaving every part of her in the text. Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Hercules is no exception.

In stunning filmic prose, Winterson tells the story again of the boundless energy and mindless savagery of Hercules in stark relief to Atlas, the rock, duty bound, contemplative, and the erotic, playful and fierce Gods and Goddesses. As the story unfolds, boundaries, and burdens, action and stasis are the concerns. And then, there’s Fate. Hercules sidelines his testosterone packed rampage to fulfill his punishment handed down by Hera. To do so Hercules enlists the aid of Atlas, taking the universe off his shoulders so that Atlas can retrieve three golden apples. During his time away from his burden Atlas considers another life, desires his garden, his daughters. Hercules suffers under the weight, though ever boastful, he won’t admit that it’s too much for him. When Atlas asks for more time to see his daughters, the trickster Hercules once again places the weight of the universe on Atlas. Hercules gets his in the end, as Fate has proscribed and Atlas gets a surprise visit.

Never content with leaving the past in the past, Winterson brings the myth forward. Atlas befriends Laika, the dog from the first Russian space capsule, Sputnik. It is the physical connection between Atlas and Laika that entice him to think seriously about that life he longs for out from under the weight of the world.

Never in any of her other works, has the author been so present and never has she written more directly about writing. From the science of ix and x, and the opening line of the introduction, “Choice of subject, like choice of lover, is an intimate decision.” we are provided clues for the reading. But, in Leaning on the Limits of Myself where Winterson and Atlas become one, “My girlfriend says I have an Atlas complex.” each carrying burdens, she is vulnerable and working out what it means to survive, to live, to be free.

In the end, we are left certain of Winterson the writer like Atlas the gardener. And we are left hopeful.
From the Mythos series, retelling myths in a contemporary way by renown authors, Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Karen Armstrong, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Milton Hatoum, Victor Pelevin, Donna Tartt, and Su Tong.

-Donna Epler