Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  I practically worked with a stencil!

  I strewed quotes about with the greatest largesse,

  And the phrases flowed from my pencil.”

  The poem continues in this vein before hitting a more downbeat note:

  “But now I am ageing; my brain is all shrunk,

  And my adjective store is depleted:

  My hair’s getting stringy; I walk as though drunk;

  As a quotester I’m nigh-on defeated.”

  Atwood advises Canongate to ask a younger, hungrier author to endorse the book, concluding:

  “I wish you Good Luck, and your author, and book,

  Which I do hope to read later, with glee.

  Long may you publish, and search out the blurbs,

  Though you will not get any from me.”

  3007. “[Quote].” The National [CBC] 3 July 2001. Available from Lexis-Nexis. Atwood commenting on Mordecai Richler who had just passed: “He was out to skewer the hot air balloons, and anybody who does that is perceived as being, you know, mean, sharp, et cetera. But unless you have a side of you that is interested in common human decency, you wouldn’t be bothered skewering hot air balloons.”

  3008. “[Quotes].” The Quotable Gardener: Words of Wisdom from Walt Whitman, Jane Austen, Robert Frost, Martha Stewart, The Farmer’s Almanac, and More. Compiled by Kathy Ishizuka. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001. 48, 110. Includes two Atwood quotes: “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt” (48) and “Gardening is not a rational act” (110).

  3009. “[Quotes].” The Quotable Woman: The First 5,000 Years. Compiled and ed. Elaine T. Partnow. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001. 639-640. Includes 28 choice Atwood quotes, almost all from her novels, such as this line from Cat’s Eye: “If a stranger taps you on the ass and says, “How’s the little lady today!” you will probably cringe. But if he’s an American, he’s only being friendly.”

  3010. “[Quotes].” Speaking of Success: Collected Wisdom, Insights and Reflections. By Pamela Walin. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2001. 78, 172, 200, 245. Includes various pieces of advice from Atwood.

  Interviews

  3011. “Atwood Happy to Cross Choppy Sea to Readers.” Sydney Morning Herald 8 March 2001: s.p. Available from Lexis-Nexis. There are advantages to being short-listed for a literary award 3 times before actually winning it. For starters, says Atwood, “you get better at deciding what to wear....”

  3012. BARNETT, Nick. “Write of Passage.” The Dominion [Wellington, NZ] 6 March 2001: 9. Why Atwood dislikes being labeled a feminist and why she loves surprises: “If my main reason for being on earth was to support women, I wouldn’t be a writer. I’d be working in legal aid.”

  3013. CLARK, Lucy. “Write Again.” Daily Telegraph [Sydney] 24 February 2001: G08. Interview in advance of Atwood’s trip to Australia, a place she likes to visit. Her husband’s mother was an Australian from Brisbane and they have “rellies” there. Focus on her as writer.

  3014. ELLIOTT, Helen. “The Good Witch: The Sting in the Tale.” Weekend Australian 3 March 2001: R01. Atwood, daughter of an entomologist, does not like to be pinned down. Lots of new quotes on such topics as “What’s Marian [The Edible Woman] doing now?” Atwood also complains about lazy journalists: “We get endless faxes and telephone calls [from journalists] wanting to flesh out their Valentine’s Day pieces asking what qualities you most value in men, what’s your favorite kind of chocolate, if Valentine’s Day weren’t red, what color would you prefer it to be? Blah, blah blah...”

  3015. FIELD, Thalia S. “Author Atwood Visits Harvard, Offers Wilderness Tips.” University Wire 30 November 2001: s.p. Available from Lexis-Nexis. Atwood interviewed by Harvard Crimson on 19 November when she was in town to deliver a speech as part of the Radcliffe Institute’s Dean’s Lecture Series.

  3016. FOCAMP, Paul. “High Priestess of Literature.” Southland Times [NZ] 3 March 2001: 35. Atwood interviewed in Dunedin. On Toronto in the 1950s: “If you saw a writer’s name in the paper it was probably because the old ladies were giving him a tea.” In the interview, she discusses her early literary influences from Orwell to Huxley to T. S. Eliot. She also said that as a specialist in Victorian literature she had read Middlemarch (George Eliot) at least 5 times.

  3017. GOULD, Alan. “Write on! Margaret Atwood.” Good Times 12.3 March 2001: 10-13.

  3018. HEILMANN, Ann, and Debbie TAYLOR. “Interview with Margaret Atwood, Hay-on-Wye, 27 May 2001.” European Journal of American Culture 20.3 (2001): 132-147. “This interview took place during the 2001 literature festival in Hay-on-Wye in which Margaret Atwood featured prominently. Here she talks about her work as a writer, with particular reference to her latest, Booker Prizewinning novel, The Blind Assassin, which was also nominated for the Orange Prize and which won the International Crime Writers’ Association’s Dashiell Hammett Award.” (Author).

  3019. HILLER, Susanne. “Atwood’s Town: How Toronto Figures in the Author’s Novels, and in Her Life.” National Post 15 September 2001: E1. Atwood interviewed over Sunday breakfast at People’s Restaurant on Dupont Street. (Her meal: brown toast and coffee, followed by a “big tip.”)

  3020. IRVINE, Denise. “Word Perfect.” Waikato Times [Hamilton, NZ] 5 March 2001: 8. On the origins of The Blind Assassin and related topics.

  3021. JACOBSON, Michael. “The Sights of the Assassin.” Gold Coast Bulletin 24 March 2001: W14. Interviewer in awe of Atwood and manages to survive a few darts. Jacobson: “I float across the Queen Street Bridge, not so much chuffed that writer extraordinaire Margaret Atwood has remembered me but thrilled that she could even be bothered….And the privilege of being in her company is as deep as the relief of being out of it.”

  3022. LAFLAMME, Lisa. “Canadian Author’s Book to Become Four-Part Miniseries.” Canada AM 10 September 2001. Available from Lexis-Nexis. Atwood explains why The Blind Assassin was optioned as a mini-series rather than a movie.

  3023. LANGDON, Julia. “All the Glittering Prizes.” The Herald [Glasgow] 8 August 2001: 2. Atwood pooh-poohs literary prizes. In the interview, she also discusses her forthcoming title, Negotiating with the Dead, which is based on a series of six lectures she gave in Cambridge: “It’s not how to write, it’s not why I write, it’s not my brilliant career, but it is what is this thing called writing and what do people think they’re doing when they do it?” Does she come up with an answer? “Well I came up with six lectures, so obviously it’s not a short answer.”

  Atwood also said she has been interested in Scotland for a very long time. Her father’s mother, one Florence McGowan, was a Scot who left for Nova Scotia in the Clearances. Margaret and Graeme lived in Edinburgh for a year when he was the first Canadian–Scottish exchange writer and she was writing Life Before Man; they made a journey all round the outside of the country, exploring its extremities, and they hiked in Orkney. Her most enduring memory of Edinburgh, however, is of technological problems to do with writing, 22 years ago. Their apartment had two electrical outlets and she had an electric typewriter. This means that she could only ever have any two of light, heat, or electrical power for the typewriter. She had to write in the dark, or the cold, or not write at all. She also had a small child to keep warm. Surely she could have found an adaptor? “If you plugged them all in at once, everything blew.”

  3024. LAYMAN, Margaret. “Atwood Reveals the Labor of Her Craft.” Daily Yomiuri [Tokyo] 22 April 2001: 18. Atwood, in Tokyo to speak at Canadian embassy, speaks on the genesis of The Blind Assassin, etc. Some comments: “You can never read your own books because, having written them, you already know what happens.” When asked about people attributing a political agenda to her work, she responded with a story about her visit to a Japanese monastery. “There was a picture on the wall of a bunch of Jizo figures, and they looked to me quite happy. They were in a sort of cave and they had a candle, so I asked the young monk what this picture meant and he was quite evasive about it. I said it seemed these figures are quite happy and he said, ‘Perhaps that is
because you are happy.’ Then I looked again and there was a quite different way of reading the picture. Some of them looked maybe sort of sleepy, some looked self-satisfied. You could read a number of different things into it,” she said.

  3025. MOORE, Christopher. “Defying Definition.” The Press [Christchurch, NZ] 24 February 2001: 4. Interview on eve of Atwood’s New Zealand tour.

  3026. NICHOL, Ruth. “Taking the Biscuit.” Evening Post [Wellington, NZ] 10 March 2001: 30. Atwood talks about strange coincidences, [Girl] Guide biscuits, and the perils of wearing plaid. Who is the Blind Assassin? “Some people think the blind assassin is time....There’s a little bit in the book that says there are two blind dogs, one is love and the other is justice. You could have Iris, you could even have Laura, and you could have the obvious suspect which is the blind assassin in the story.”

  3027. O’REILLY, Finbarr. “Atwood on Awards and Almost Dying.” National Post 13 June 2001: A13. An amusing interview in which Atwood is asked what the best award she ever won was. Answer: “Well, I’d never pick and choose, but who would have ever guessed I’d win the Swedish humour award? My publishers went to accept it and the prize was a crystal ball or bowl—I never did find out because they took it back to their office and someone stole it.”

  3028. SCHULTZ, Judy. “Her Life, Her Times: Margaret Atwood.” Edmonton Journal 12 February 2001: C1. Phone interview in advance of Atwood’s opening lecture in the Unique Lives and Experiences Series.

  3029. SHARP, Iain. “Atwood at Large.” Sunday Star-Times [Auckland] 25 February 2001: 3. Interview before Atwood headed off to New Zealand for book-signings “and a spot of bird watching.” In interview, Atwood claims to love travel. “I’m a nomad by temperament. Things haven’t really changed that much since my early days when I’d travel the length and breadth of Canada promoting my poetry….”

  3030. SHEPHERD, Rose. “Drama Queen: Booker Prize-Winning Novelist Margaret Atwood Is Fascinated by Fear.” Mail on Sunday 18 November 2001: 23. In wide-ranging interview Atwood reveals for the first time how she protects herself from germs: “You travel around in planes that are filled with germs,” she says. “And if you do something such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, you are infected by germs from all over the world. You’re jammed up against other people, they’re all talking and laughing all over you, and it’s quite a battle to fend off illness….[If] you would like to know how I do it, I will tell you. Firstly I put a gel called Zicam up my nose. Secondly, I swallow a zinc lozenge. Thirdly, I take some Echinacea. And lastly, I take two 1,000 mg vitamin Cs. That usually does the trick.”

  3031. SIBREE, Bron. “Held Hostage by a Master StoryTeller.” Canberra Times 3 March 2001: A2. Atwood on her writing career. Example: As a child, she became interested in the writer Susanna Moodie, “because the two Os in her name are the same as the two Os in mine.”

  3032. TURNBALL, Barbara. “Last Minute Margaret.” Toronto Star 29 January 2001: Section: Entertainment: C:01. Atwood interviewed in connection with pinch hitting for Margaret Turnball in the kick-off lecture of the Unique Lives and Experiences Series. “Last minute is my specialty,” she said. “People come into the world with different capabilities and I was a language person....And I was a language person from the Year One. Like a lot of children, I talked to myself all the time when I was two, and writers probably just keep on doing that.” When asked about her devotion to social causes, she commented, “I don’t have a day job. No one’s going to fire me for saying things that will get other people fired.”

  3033. WALKER, Susan. “Atwood at Work Again.” Toronto Star 9 September 2001: D11. A review of Atwood’s activities in 2001 in an interview which takes place in Arlequin Restaurant, her local dining spot and interview location of choice [134 Avenue Road, Toronto. Phone: 416-928-9521 for reservations]. Atwood arrives at interview bearing gifts—The Blind Assassin bookmarks. They’re an item in the point-of-sale merchandise about to flood bookstores on both sides of the Atlantic as the paperback of her Booker Prizewinning novel is released. There’s a full-size, cardboard female—the flapper from the much-reproduced cover of The Blind Assassin, dump bins, little book ends. “And there’s a banner that I plan to turn into a cocktail dress,” she jokes.

  3034. WIGOD, Rebecca. “Margaret Atwood: A Simple Tale of Herself.” Vancouver Sun 17 February 2001: B1. Interview with author before her appearance in the Unique Lives and Experiences Series, Vancouver version. “My whole message is that I don’t have a message. I’m a writer. I don’t have the secret of life.”

  Scholarly Resources

  3035. “Happy Endings.” Short Stories for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Short Stories. Vol. 13. Ed. Jennifer Smith. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2001. 149-161.

  3036. ABBAS, Herawaty. “The Notion of Power as It Is Reflected in The Edible Woman and Karmila: A Comparative Study (Margaret Atwood, Marga T., Indonesia).” MA thesis. St. Mary’s University, 2001. 99 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (2002). “It is found that the major protagonists of the two novels are similar in the effort to free themselves from other people’s control, especially from male domination. However, viewed from a cultural point of view, the way each novel asserts their [sic] power is different. This is because the two novels come from different cultural backgrounds. Or in other words, in terms of asserting power, something perhaps is ‘small’ if it is viewed from one culture, but it is ‘big’ if it is viewed from another culture. This work is done not to generalize how Canadian and Indonesian women assert their power, but to show how literary works can teach women to empower themselves and to take advantage of each other’s culture.” (Author). For more see MAI 40.05 (October 2002): 1166.

  3037. ADHIKARI, Madhumalati. “The Game of Power: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day and Shobha De’s Snapshots.” The Feminist Mode in Commonwealth Literature. Ed. R. A. Singh. Bara Bazar: Pra-kash Book Depot, 2001. 26-36.

  3038. AGUIAR, Sarah Appleton. The Bitch Is Back: Wicked Women in Literature. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 2001. Extensive discussion of wicked women in Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride.

  3039. AMOURA-PATTERSON, Sana. “Using Short Fiction to Explore Definitions of Rape.” Eureka Studies in Teaching Short Fiction 2.1 (Fall 2001): 76-84. Teaching approaches to rape using Atwood’s “Rape Fantasies” and Lessing’s “One off the Short List.”

  3040. BACCOLINI, Raffaella. “Viaggi in distopia: Memoria e immaginazione nell’opera di K. Burdekin, G. Orwell, M. Atwood e M. Piercy.” El Viaje y la Utopia. Ed. V. Fortunati and O. Steimberg. Buenos Aires: ATUEL, 2001. 157-177.

  3041. BARAT, Urbashi. “Feminine Awareness and Feminine Selfhood: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, Bapsi Sidwa’s An American Brat and Shobha De’s Socialite Evenings.” The Feminist Mode in Commonwealth Literature. Ed. R. A. Singh. Bara Bazar: Prakash Book Depot, 2001. 37-48.

  3042. BLOOM, Harold, ed. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001. Reprints key articles; each indexed in this section.

  3043. BLUE, Sarah Jane. “Selfhood and the Art of the Found Object: Self Creation in Three Novels by Margaret Atwood, Colette, and Monique Wittig.” PhD thesis. University of Georgia, 2001. “This study examines the problematic of selfhood in three novels by women authors: Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood; La Maison de Claudine by Colette; and L’Opoponax by Monique Wittig. It views the project of selfhood as an essentially artistic undertaking when read through the lens of object relations theories developed by D. W. Winnicott, Marion Milner, and Jessica Benjamin.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 62.08 (February 2002): 2750.

  3044. BOUSON, J. Brooks. “The Misogyny of Patriarchal Culture in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001. 21-62. Reprinted from Brutal Choreographies: Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of Margaret Atwood, ©1993.r />
  3045. BROWN, Russell M. “The Practice and Theory of Canadian Thematic Criticism: A Reconsideration.” University of Toronto Quarterly 70.2 (Spring 2001): 653-689. Includes discussion of Survival.

  3046. BRUNET-ARVANITAKIS, Emmanuelle. “Les éléments visuels dans les romans de Margaret Atwood de 1969 à 1993.” Doctoral thesis. Université Paris III, 2001.

  3047. COAD, David. “Hymens, Lips and Masks: The Veil in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Literature and Psychology 47.1 (2001): 54-67.

  3048. COCOUAL, Ifiq. “‘I’m Sorry It’s in Fragments’: Poétique du fragment, spéculari-té, jeux rhétoriques et narratifs dans un passage de The Handmaid’s Tale.” Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies: Revue interdisciplinaire des études canadiennes en France 51 (December 2001): 145-155.

  3049. COFFELT, Jamie Roberta. “She ‘Too Much of Water Hast’: Drownings and Near-Drownings in Twentieth-Century North American Literature by Women (Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudory Welty, Margaret Atwood, Pam Houston).” PhD thesis. University of North Texas, 2001. 170 pp. “Drowning is a frequent mode of death for female literary characters because of the strong symbolic relationship between female sexuality and water. Drowning has long been a punishment for sexually transgressive women in literature….Chapter 5 analyzes a set of works by Margaret Atwood. Lady Oracle includes another faked drowning, while “The Whirlpool Rapids” and “Walking on Water” feature a protagonist who feels invulnerable after her near-drowning. The Blind Assassin includes substantial drowning imagery.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 63.12 (June 2003): 4307.

  3050. COHEN, Mark. Censorship in Canadian Literature. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s, 2001. See especially Chapter 3, “The Ambivalent Artist: Margaret Atwood,” 49-87. Extensive discussion of Bodily Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale. Based on author’s 1999 PhD thesis.

  3051. COUTURIER-STOREY, Françoise. “Subversive Corporeal Discourse in Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Female Body.’” Telling Stories: Postcolonial Short Fiction in English. Ed. Jacqueline Bardolph. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. 35-43.