Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  452.Lifetime I, Canadian Personalities Package. [Videorecording]. [Toronto]: CTV Television Network, 1990. 1 videocassette (41 min.). Among those interviewed, Atwood talks about herself, women, and her latest project, The Handmaid’s Tale (10 min.).

  453.Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography. [Videorecording]. Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ: National Film Board of Canada Library, 1990. VHS tape, 1 videocassette (ca. 69 min.). Atwood is one of several interviewed.

  455.BAER, Susan. “Handmaid Author Supports Film.” Chicago Sun-Times 31 March 1990: 15.

  456.GODDARD, Peter. “Margaret Atwood on Words, Films and Puritans.” Toronto Star 4 March 1990: Section: Entertainment: C1. (1091 w). Atwood reflects on earlier attempts to adapt her novels as movies, and refutes the criticism that The Handmaid’s Tale was made by men: “There are not very many female producers around, there are not very many female directors, and there are not very many female script writers. It’s an underpopulated area, although there are more people moving into it…. If it had been an entirely female team, they never would have got the money to make the movie. People would have taken one look at the subject and said, ‘Oh, no, it’s total propaganda. We don’t want to touch it.’”

  In response to the question: Who exactly should be entrusted with this essentially feminist story? Wouldn’t the only choice to direct have been a woman? Atwood replied: “I don’t think gender is any guarantee of anything. They might have gone over backwards in the other direction—i.e., ‘We don’t want people to think we’re strident, so let’s make everything a bit softer.’ Remember, the jury that picked Kingsley Amis for the Booker Prize (which won over The Handmaid’s Tale) was all female, except for one person.”

  458.INGERSOLL, Earl G., ed. Margaret Atwood: Conversations. Ontario Review Press Critical Series. Willowdale, ON: Firefly Books; Princeton, NJ: Ontario Review Press, 1990. 251 pp. Contents: Graeme Gibson. “Dissecting the Way a Writer Works.” 3-19. Conducted in 1972 and published in his Eleven Canadian Novelists. Toronto: Anansi, 1973.—Levenson, Christopher. “Magical Forms of Poetry.” 20-32. Conducted on 4 April 1972 and published in Manna 2 (1972).—Gibson, Mary Ellis. “Thinking about the Technique of Skiing When You’re Halfway Down the Hill.” 33-39. Conducted in February 1976 and published in Chicago Review 27 (1976): 105-113.—Sandler, Linda. “A Question of Metamorphosis.” 40-57. Conducted during March and April 1976 and published in The Malahat Review 41 (1977): 7-27.—Struthers, J. R. (Tim). “Playing Around.” 58-68. Conducted in October 1976 and published in Essays on Canadian Writing 6 (1977): 18-27.—Oates, Joyce Carol. “My Mother Would Rather Skate Than Scrub Floors.” 69-85. Conducted in February 1978 and published in New York Times Book Review 21 May 1978.—Davidson, Jim. “Where Were You When I Really Needed You.” 86-98. Conducted 6 March 1978 and published in Meanjin 37 (1978): 189-205.— Hammond, Karla. “Defying Distinctions.” 99-108. Conducted 8 July 1978 and published in Concerning Poetry 12.2 (1979): 73-81.—Hammond, Karla. “Articulating the Mute.” 109-120. Conducted 8 July 1978 and published in American Poetry Review 8.5 (1979): 27-29.—Twigg, Alan. “Just Looking at Things That Are There.” 121-130. Conducted in 1979 and published in his Strong Voices: Conversations with Fifty Canadian Authors. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 1988.—Gerald, Gregory Fitz and Kathryn Crabbe. “Evading the Pigeonholers.” 131-139. Conducted on 13 September 1979 and published in Midwest Quarterly 28.4 (1987): 525-539. [Ed. note: Journal also lists Earl G. Ingersoll as a third interviewer.] Brans, Jo. “Using What You’re Given.” 140-151. Conducted in 1982 and published in Southwest Review 68.4 (Autumn1983): 301-315.—Ross, Catherine Sheldrik and Copry Bieman Davies. “More Room for Play.” 152-161. Conducted 20 January 1983 and published in Canadian Children’s Literature 42 (1986).—Mendez-Egle, Beatrice. “Witness Is What You Must Bear.” 162-170. Conducted in 1983 and published in Margaret Atwood: Reflection and Reality, Edinburg, TX: Pan American University, 1987.—Walker, Sue. “Managing Time for Writing.” 171-176. Conducted February 1985 and published in Negative Capability 5 (1985).—Meese, Elizabeth. “The Empress Has No Clothes.” 177-190. Conducted in April 1985 and published in Black Warrior Review 12.1 (1985): 88-108.—Hancock, Geoff. “Tightrope-Walking Over Niagara Falls.” 191-220. Conducted 12-13 December 1986 and published in his Canadian Writers at Work. Toronto: Oxford, UP, 1987.—Lyons, Bonnie. “Using Other People’s Dreadful Childhoods.” 221-234. Conducted 14 February 1987 and published in Shenandoah 3.2 (1987: 69-89.—Ingersoll, Earl. “Waltzing Again.” 234-238. Conducted in November 1989 and published in Ontario Review 32 (1990): 7-11.

  459.______. “Waltzing Again’: A Conversation with Margaret Atwood.” Ontario Review 32 (1990): 7-11.

  460.JOHNSTON, Sheila. “The Ultimate Sexploitation Movie: Sheila Johnston Talked to Margaret Atwood about Double Standards at Play in the Screen Adaptation of Her Novel The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Independent (London) 26 October 1990: Section: Listings: 6. Although she was currently adapting her latest novel, Cat’s Eye, for the screen, Atwood did not write the script for The Handmaid’s Tale; Harold Pinter was responsible for that. ‘‘I think I was too close to it. There is a lot of layering of time, a lot of meditational prose and inner monologue. All that had to go and I didn’t feel up to doing that. The other practical reason was the subject matter, the ‘horrible feminist propaganda’ factor. As it was, it was very difficult to get it financed; a lot of people were scared silly by it. So with that and a female screenwriter, the chances of it ever being made were very low.” That said, Atwood was not dazzled with the results, she stated.

  461.MALCOLM, Andrew H. “Margaret Atwood Reflects on a Hit.” New York Times 14 April 1990: Section: Arts: 13. Atwood pronounced herself happy with the movie version. ‘‘This story,’’ she said, ‘‘could have been the most gross sexploita-tive film ever, sort of ‘maidens on a sexual rampage.’”

  462.MOORE, Micki. “Margaret Atwood: What Didn’t Happen to Me That Happens to a Lot of Women Is That Their Self-Confidence Gets Damaged at a Fairly Early Stage of Childhood.” Toronto Star 22 March 1990: Section: Life: F1. (2059 w). Questions about her career and marriage.

  463.MORRIS, Mary. “The Art of Fiction CXXI.” Paris Review 117 (Winter 1990): 69-88. Representation of the theme of survival in her works; consideration of survival as an intellectual and political struggle; challenges of being a poet.

  464.PERRY, Gerald. “Handmaid’s Tale Depicts Futuristic Puritans in Harvard Square.” Boston Globe 4 March 1990: B39. Reprint: Los Angeles Times 4 March 1989 Section: CAL: 38-39, 90.

  465.WOODWARD, Calvin. “Margaret Atwood, a Very Lively ‘Bug on a Pin.’” Toronto Star 15 August 1990: B3. Atwood reflects on what it is like to be under constant examination.

  Scholarly Resources

  466.“Atwood, Margaret.” The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. By Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy. New Haven, CT; London: Yale UP, 1990. 38-39. Biographical sketch and discussion of Atwood’s themes and impact of her work.

  467.Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English. Vol. 4. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990, passim. Covering 1972-1984, includes Atwood as one of Canada’s best poets and novelists.

  468.ALLISON, Alida Louise. “Eurydice: The Lost Voice (Virgil).” PhD thesis. University of California, Riverside, 1990. 274 pp. Atwood is discussed as one of the 20th-century women writers who have portrayed the character of Eurydice. For more see DAI-A 51.07 (January 1991): 2371.

  469.ANDERSON, Michele E. “Two Cultures, One Consciousness: A Comparative Study of Canadian Women’s Literature in French and in English.” PhD thesis. Indiana University, 1990. 498 pp. Similarities are greater than differences for At-wood, Blais, Hébert, and Laurence. For more see DAI-A 51.10 (April 1991): 3415.

  470.ARMBRUSTER, Jane. “Memory and Politics: A Reflection on The Handmaid’s Tale.” Social Justice 17.3 (Fall 1990): 146-152. The Handmaid’s Tale is a springboard to urge looking back to the feminist mov
ement and reviving consciousness raising of 20-plus years ago.

  471.ARNOLD, David Scott. “Hidden Since the Foundation of the World: Girard, Turner, and Two Mythic Readings.” The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story. Ed. Robert Detweiler and William G. Doty. American Academy of Religion. Studies in Religion. Ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, no. 60. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. 137-148. Girard’s concept of mimeticism to interpret Mark’s Gospel story of the Gerasene demoniac and Turner’s concept of liminality to understand “The Sin Eater” are the mythic perspectives for these stories.

  472.ATHERTON, Stanley S. “Atwood, Horwood, Kreiner, and Wright: The Caribbean Connection.” Tensions between North and South: Studies in Modern Commonwealth Literature and Culture. Proceedings of the Eighth Commonwealth Literature Conference. Ed. Edith Mettke. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 1990. 28-36. Includes Bodily Harm, an ironic exploration of outsider involvement in local politics, in an analysis of Canadian fiction set in the Caribbean where the focus is on tensions that result from lack of understanding and an inability to suffer personal consequence.

  473.BACHINGER, Katrina. “The Rhetorics of Desperation and Re-Definition in the Evolution of the Ape Feminine: Margaret Atwood’s ‘Under Glass.’” Crisis and Creativity in the New Literatures in English Canada, ed. Geoffrey Davis. Cross/Cultures: Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English, ed. Gordon Collier, Hena Maes-Jelinek, and Geoffrey Davis, 2. Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA: Ro-dopi, 1990. 185-198. The banality of “Under Glass” gives it “paradigmatic status.” Atwood’s use of desperation speech followed by the rhetoric of re-definition brings on “epistemological evolution” and a re-visioning of the ape feminine.

  474.BANERJEE, Chinmoy. “Alice in Disneyland: Criticism as Commodity in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Essays on Canadian Writing 41 (Summer 1990): 74-92. At-wood’s parody, duplicity, and concern with aesthetics make The Handmaid’s Tale a “pseudo-dystopia.” The novel’s structure “generates two levels of response”: naive consumption and sophisticated enjoyment.

  475.______. “Atwood’s Time: Hiding Art in Cat’s Eye.” Modern Fiction Studies 36.4 (Winter 1990): 513-522. The psychological narration forms an understanding of the novel in artistic and literary terms.

  476.BAUGHMAN, Cynthia. “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Pinter Review: Annual Essays (1990): 92-96.

  477.BERAN, Carol L. “The Canadian Mosaic: Functional Ethnicity in Margaret At-wood’s Life Before Man.” Essays on Canadian Writing 41 (Summer 1990): 59-73. The Life Before Man manuscripts show Atwood’s concern with Lesje’s ethnicity and altering of key scenes, affirming the characters’ “movement from existential isolation toward social integration.”

  478.______. “Images of Women’s Power in Contemporary Canadian Fiction by Women.” Studies in Canadian Literature 15.2 (1990): 55-76. Works by Aritha Van Herk and Alice Munro are discussed along with The Handmaid’s Tale and Cat’s Eye; Survival heralded an interest in power as a theme.

  479.BLAISE, Clark. The Border as Fiction. [Orono, ME]: Borderlands Project, 1990. 1-12. Bodily Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale are mentioned in essay on the symbolism of borders, primarily the Canadian and United States border; printed and bound with BROWN (see 483).

  480.BOUCHARD, Guy. “Science-fiction et utopie: Margaret Atwood.” Imagine: Regards sur la science-fiction et les littératures de l’ imaginaire 11.4 (September 1990): 109-136.

  481.BOUSON, J. Brooks. “The Anxiety of Being Influenced: Reading and Responding to Character in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman.” Style 24.2 (Summer 1990): 228-241. Bouson compares the reading experience to psychoanalytic coun-tertransference and examines how the self-deficient Marian invites reader participation and interpretation.

  482.BOWEN, Deborah. “Mimesis, Magic, Manipulation: A Study of the Photograph in Contemporary British and Canadian Novels.” PhD thesis. University of Ottawa, 1990. 443 pp. Atwood, and other Canadian writers, ascribe to Roland Barthes’s thesis of “the intransigent value of appearances.” For more see DAI-A 52.12 (June 1992): 4337.

  483.BROWN, Russell. Borderlines and Borderlands in English Canada: The Written Line. [Orono, ME]: Borderlands Project, 1990. 13-70. Atwood’s novels and her critical writings are referred to frequently in this essay discussing Canadian literature in terms of opposites and two sides of existence; printed and bound with BLAISE (above).

  484.BRUNTON, Rosanne D. “Feminine Discourses in the Fantastic: A Reading of Selected Inter-American Writers.” PhD thesis. Pennsylvania State University, 1990. 213 pp. “This dissertation analyses four contemporary novels from the perspectives of the Inter-American, the fantastic, and the feminine. The texts discussed are Isabel Allende’s La casa de los espiritus, Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Simone Schwarz-Bart’s TiJean L’horizon. The development of Inter-American literary conventions—as having distinct qualities that relate to the Inter-American environment and experience—is discussed. The fantastic is defined as a literary mode that articulates the awareness of magic in certain Inter-American cultures. The feminine aspect of the study relates to themes and techniques in the texts that emanate from female experiences.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 51.09 (March 1991): 3063.

  485.BUCK, M. Laurel. “The Spiritual Dimension of the Struggle of Marian Engel’s Heroines to Shape Their Lives toward Wholeness.” MA thesis. University of Calgary, 1990. 186 pp. “While Engel shares with such writers as Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood the creation of women engaged in a struggle toward wholeness of life, the exploration of the spiritual dimension is distinctive in her work.” (Author). For more see MAI 30.03 (Fall 1992): 483.

  486.BURDETTE, Martha. “Sin Eating and Sin Making: The Power and Limits of Language.” The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story. Ed. Robert Detweiler and William G. Doty. American Academy of Religion. Studies in Religion. Ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, no. 60. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. 159-168. Psychoanalytic literary criticism to interpret the Gospel of Mark tale and “The Sin Eater.”

  487.CARRIKER, Kitti. “Literary Automata: Lacanian and Figurative Approaches to the Self-Created Miniature.” PhD thesis. University of Notre Dame, 1990. 330 pp. Many writers are discussed; for Atwood, “the body of the doll appears as an object and imperfect imitation of the human subject it represents.” For more see DAI-A 51.07 (January 1991): 2383.

  488.DAÑOBEITIA, María Luisa. “The Journals of Susanna Moodie and Roughing It in the Bush: An Interpretation Based on Social Adjustment.” Revista Española de Estudios Canadienses 1.1 (September 1990): 45-70. Uses these two works to illustrate that more educated and wealthier immigrants have a more difficult time adjusting to a new culture.

  489.DECONCINI, Barbara. “Narrative Hunger.” The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story. Ed. Robert Detweiler and William G. Doty. American Academy of Religion. Studies in Religion. Ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, no. 60. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990. 111-122. Loss, remembrance, a desire to make sense of things are themes in this narrative and involve the reader in the story.

  490.DESJARDINS, Louise. “Comparaison entre Power Politics de Margaret Atwood et Bloody Mary de France Théoret ou Comment on disait je t’aime dans les années soixante-dix.” Metonymies: Essais de literature canadienne comparée / Essays in Comparative Canadian Literature. Ed. Larry Shouldice. Sherbrooke: Département de letters et communications, Université de Sherbrooke, 1990. [57]-74. [Ed. note: The Table of Contents incorrectly lists the page numbers as 49-66.]

  491.DETWEILER, Robert, and William G. DOTY, ed. The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story. American Academy of Religion. Studies in Religion. Ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, no. 60. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. 232. Papers presented at 1987 colloquy, sponsored by American Academy of Religion; Atwood’s “The Sin Eater” and the narrative of the Gerasene demoniac from the Gospel of Mark are the subjects of the papers; the papers on Atwood appear here as individual entries.

  492.DEV, Jai. “A Study of Ma
rgaret Atwood’s Surfacing: Lessons for M. Phil. (English) Course, Option VII (Semester II), Commonwealth Fiction, Perspectives of Historico-Cultural Identity.” Patiala: Dept. of Correspondence Courses, Punjabi University, 1990. Available from the National Library of Canada.

  493.DIVASSON CILVETI, Lourdes. “The Handmaid’s Tale: Una Forma de Su-pervivencia.” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 19-20 (November 1989-April 1990): 211-219. Irony is examined as a seldom-mentioned feature of this novel.

  494.DOTY, William G. “Afterword: Sacred Pigs and Secular Cookies: Mark and At-wood Go Postmodern.” The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story. Ed. Robert Detweiler and William G. Doty. American Academy of Religion. Studies in Religion. Ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, no. 60. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990. 191-206. Discusses the essays presented and the themes set forth in postmodern interpretation.

  495.DOWNEY, Mike. “German Stories.” Cinema Papers 80 (August 1990): 24-26. The Handmaid’s Tale is one of 3 films from German directors discussed here.

  496.EPSTEIN, Grace Ann. “Fluid Bodies: Narrative Disruption and Layering in the Novels of Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood.” PhD thesis. Ohio State University, 1990. 181 pp. These writers are aware of oppressive appropriation of women in traditional novels, and their narratives try to escape that fate. For more see DAI-A 51.12 (June 1991): 4117.

  497.FIGUEIRA, Dorothy. “The Redemptive Text.” The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story. Ed. Robert Detweiler and William G. Doty. American Academy of Religion. Studies in Religion. Ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, no. 60. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990. 149-158. The hermeneutics theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer are employed to understand these texts through a mixture of familiarity and strangeness with the text.