Margaret Atwood

[Helga]

now I only have 'Oryx and Crake' and I have not read it. I don't have any other books by her and I know little about her except that she is a well known critic. What I do know is that she is fairly popular and seems very well educated (according to wikipedia)...what are your opinions? Is her work good?

[plainjane]

I've only read The Handmaid's Tale so far, and thought it was well written and well worth the time.

http://www.amazon.com/Handmaids-Tale-Margaret-Atwood/dp/038549081X/ref=sr_oe_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249060723&sr=1-1

I'd be interested in your eventual opinion of Oryx and Crake. :)

[kelby_lake]

Handmaid's Tale was a good read, although ironically I only really liked one character, who was a man.

[JBI]

I think she is interesting, except that she can't not write in an ironic tone - I think that is her weakness, that her tone is so monotonously ironic, and never sounds beautiful - she is obsessed with her own theories of Canadian literature, to the point where, despite her middle class upbringing of privilege - her successful school days, her best-selling career in every genre, and wide fame and awards - she always needs to write about depressing things, and surviving in some wasteland - despite the fact that she drives a car, doesn't need to worry about anything, and has yet to be forced into any of the positions she describes - I think her obsession with survival, and how it pertains to Canadian literature is pretty much idiosyncratic to her - her thematic criticism to me doesn't seem justified by the tradition, and merely seems made up.


That being said, Alias Grace is a good novel, as is Cat's Eye, and perhaps Surfacing and she has the occasional good poem every now and then, though I think she has abandoned that, as she has run out of ideas.

As a personality, she is most disagreeable, and self centered but that doesn't make all her works bad, it just shows in much of their attitude.

[kelby_lake]

Handmaid's Tale did get a bit 'let's jump on my high horse' at times.

[Helga]

I really appreciate your thoughts and I have heard good things about 'the handmaid's tale'
JBI, you told me exactly what I wanted to know so thank you for that.

[islandclimber]

My problem with Atwood is her apparent inability to portray men as anything but two-dimensional and monotonously negative... it's as though she cannot conceive of a strong male character... and her way of creating strong female characters seems to me to not so much be a case of creating a strong female character but producing these strong female characters by surrounding them with flat and insipid male characters..

I don't know, maybe it's necessary to have weak and underdeveloped male characters in order to make her heroines stand out more, but to be honest I don't think this is really the case... I think her writing, and her stories would be much more powerful and interesting if every single man in them wasn't portrayed in the same malevolent light... it just takes away from her writing and her "feminist" themes... I just can't help thinking also that if a man were to constantly portray his female characters as so malevolent and flat and negative he would be labelled misogynist and castrated for it.. at least today anyways.. I would describe Atwood as more "sexist" than "feminist"...

all that said though, I do think she can tell an interesting story, and is quite a capable writer, I just think she has tired out the same basic theme by using it over and over...

[kelby_lake]

It's not so bad in The Handmaid's Tale (although Nick and Luke are entirely 2D).

[JBI]

My problem with Atwood is her apparent inability to portray men as anything but two-dimensional and monotonously negative... it's as though she cannot conceive of a strong male character... and her way of creating strong female characters seems to me to not so much be a case of creating a strong female character but producing these strong female characters by surrounding them with flat and insipid male characters..

I don't know, maybe it's necessary to have weak and underdeveloped male characters in order to make her heroines stand out more, but to be honest I don't think this is really the case... I think her writing, and her stories would be much more powerful and interesting if every single man in them wasn't portrayed in the same malevolent light... it just takes away from her writing and her "feminist" themes... I just can't help thinking also that if a man were to constantly portray his female characters as so malevolent and flat and negative he would be labelled misogynist and castrated for it.. at least today anyways.. I would describe Atwood as more "sexist" than "feminist"...

all that said though, I do think she can tell an interesting story, and is quite a capable writer, I just think she has tired out the same basic theme by using it over and over...

It's the survival bit - the only way to really work a contemporary, Canadian system of "wilderness" is to feature the woman in a wilderness of men as predatory - it's all straight out of Frye and D. G. Jones. The struggling, sort of Susana Moody type character is in sharp contrast to the Successful sort of embracing figure of Catharine Parr Traill who completes the binary, and is the model for the women in Margaret Laurence's work, notably Morag Gunn from The Diviners.

The Moody mold is there everywhere - she is obsessed with it, to the point where the Parr Traill mold, women both successful as career women, and as writers and mothers, doesn't hold. The healthiness of such heterosexuality, seems alien to her, as her outside politics seem dominated by looking at images of women suffering - she feels comfortable using these images for herself, which is audacious, yet she has also no problem borrowing the men from those pictures, and transporting them into contemporary Canada, or whatever.

Of course, she is quite monotonous - I don't think she has ever written anything happy, but if you read her early essays of criticism in Survival, it all makes sense, in a sense - she has constructed Canada as a wilderness, and merely peoples it.

[kelby_lake]

There is one sort-of feminist book that I like- Quartet, by Jean Rhys. It works because you really pick up on the lonely quality and everyone is maginified to symbols- the physically and emotionally weak woman, the dominant yet crushing man, the jealous wife who gives in to the man's desires...

[dfloyd]

Quite by accident, I ran across The Blind Assassin at our library. I thought it was quite good. I am not a literary critic, and at my stage of life, I like to read what is interesting. This book was interesting and held my attention. Sometime later, I got an unabridged cd, and found it enjoable to listen to.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I think she is OK, but her "agenda" spoils her work for me. I would like to see her write without this huge black cloud, but I don't think this is likely, even so, I don't think I would read her work for pleasure, or of my choosing.

[susan_p]

I think she is interesting, except that she can't not write in an ironic tone - I think that is her weakness, that her tone is so monotonously ironic, and never sounds beautiful - she is obsessed with her own theories of Canadian literature, to the point where, despite her middle class upbringing of privilege - her successful school days, her best-selling career in every genre, and wide fame and awards - she always needs to write about depressing things, and surviving in some wasteland - despite the fact that she drives a car, doesn't need to worry about anything, and has yet to be forced into any of the positions she describes - I think her obsession with survival, and how it pertains to Canadian literature is pretty much idiosyncratic to her - her thematic criticism to me doesn't seem justified by the tradition, and merely seems made up.



You hit the nail on the head! I get tired of all her CanLit theories too - if you look at her list of favourite authors and books, it's almost exclusively Canadian content only: http://www.infloox.com/person?id=93b89bb3&lang=de ...I honestly do wish she'd branch out a bit and try something else for a change. You know that old saying, "You are what you eat"? maybe it should be modified to "You are what you read".

[JBI]

That's not what I said at all - you seem to misunderstand me. I am not criticizing her championing of Canadian works - I personally think she has done great things in that regard, and was there at a time when Canadian literature was essentially not even recognized as a tradition - her influence helped to bring several great writers wider attention, and to establish Canadian literature as a discourse.

It's her use of thematic criticism which gives me trouble, because, quite simply I don't agree with her thesis - she seems to misunderstand (purposefully I think) Frye's Conclusion to the Literary History of Canada, and rework it to fit her own Susana Moody-driven image of Canada as apocalyptic Eden.

Her work perhaps just shows the limitations of thematic criticism as applied to a modern, multicultural set of texts - whereas the Canada as Wilderness worked somewhat in the beginning (I think she misinterprets lots of works from mid-20th century), the same themes have been superseded, or replaced by more contemporary issues, notably post-modern politics, issues of historiography, immigrant and multicultural narrative and cultural identity, and labor issues. The And as For Me and My House model of struggling artist against a wilderness just doesn't hold much ground anymore, especially when you consider what is coming out of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and other cities, which feature the city, rather than the wilderness as backdrop - Ondaatje himself, in In the Skin of a Lion directly references that, by recasting Frye's notion of "The belly of the Whale", the voyagers trip into Canada by following from the sea by river into Hudson's Bay, and then wandering through the wilderness - by replacing it with the arrival of immigrants into Union Station in the 20s.

Beyond that too, Hugh MacLennan writing during the second world war (his novel set during the First World War) in Barometer Rising describes a similar situation, where the wilderness is silent next to the human aspect of Halifax, and industry:


A growing moon, pale as the inside of an oyster shell, hung over the forests and harbours of Nova Scotia, and in this nocturnal glimmer the edges of the province were bounded by a wavering flicker of greyish white, where the sea broke over the rocks of the coast. On all the solitary points thrusting out into the Atlantic, into the Fundy or the gulf of St. Lawrence, lighthouses winked or gleamed like fixed stars… The highways were empty and dark, and the windows of the farmhouses gave no light but that reflected from the moon. In the north of the province, around the Sydneys, pouring slag flared against the sky and turned the harbour into a pool of ruddy fire, while the last blast furnaces trembled under the pressure of armament production. In all other parts of Nova Scotia, silence gripped the land like a tangible force, for in only two of its counties was there the noise of a great city or factory, or the rush of traffic over a road. (MacLennan 157)


Her work just doesn't hold ground anymore, and held little ground - in truth, The Moody Parr Traill binary, which sort of extends itself to a discussion of Atwood's works, versus someone like Margaret Laurence's sort of destroys the myth - Parr Traill was able to negotiate the wilderness, and the struggles between work, art, and motherhood, and by extension, Laurence's Hagar or Morag are able to negotiate the land as well - except Traill is denied a voice in favor of Moody within Atwood - the struggle of the woman against the endless cold and wilderness - the struggling artist unable to gain expression.

She essentially misreads Irving Layton in that regard, taking poems like The Birth of Tragedy, and The Cold Green Element as aspects of a sort of struggling artists survival within the Canadian wilderness, but ultimately, neglects to read other poems by him, such as Against This Death.


I could go on forever, but I think I have bored most of you already.

[Dirtbag]

We read The Handmaid's Tale in class. I liked it for the most part. It was bleak and eventful. Eventfully entertaining. Like a comic book.

[lupe]

Alias Grace was one of the best-written books I read this year, not only for the intresting story, but mostly for the quality of the prose and the writing style.

[Mariamosis]

I have only read 'The Handmaid's Tale' and although I enjoyed the plot I became bored with her writing style. I found myself wanting to rush through it and move on to something else. Calling her style monotonous is, in my opinion, absolutely correct.

[kelby_lake]

I have only read 'The Handmaid's Tale' and although I enjoyed the plot I became bored with her writing style. I found myself wanting to rush through it and move on to something else. Calling her style monotonous is, in my opinion, absolutely correct.

The monotony is mainly apparant at the beginning: 'We had that. Now we have this. Miserable' especially as the plot hasn't really developed yet. I wouldn't read anything else of hers I don't think.

[prendrelemick]

As one who doesnt know much of the ins and outs of Canadian literature, I think Islandclimber has it about right. A very good writer, but with a feminist agenda that's always there, like too much garlic in your dauphinoise.

[LitNetIsGreat]

:lol: Yep, just what I thought, or as Keats said, (ish) "we distrust something that has a unpalatable design upon us" I mean all men aren't that bad are they?

[JBI]

As one who doesnt know much of the ins and outs of Canadian literature, I think Islandclimber has it about right. A very good writer, but with a feminist agenda that's always there, like too much garlic in your dauphinoise.

It's not even that though, because her plots are that well developed in her historical writing. In, for instance, Alias Grace, there is a very strong female component, and the actual daily narrative is perfectly researched - we have essentially the proof of it, and Atwood went back and dug it up. It's not that really, it's just that she is so obsessed with ironizing everything, and making everything she can depressing - that's what I feel is really the monotony. The poem This Is A Photograph Of Me ( http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/margaret_atwood/poems/312 ), for instance, isn't based on gender associations - but on a total wilderness - the artist, despite any real gender, is merely reduced to some unmarked speck in the beauty of the picture - there isn't gender there, but rather an empty frame - nothing but the dead artist, unable to get any real expression out of the photograph that speaks of its maker directly. For some reason she finds that interesting - the feminist narrative just surfaced, because, quite frankly, women weren't and aren't treated well. It's just in The Handmaid's Tale, which for some reason has become her staple everywhere, but is hardly her best work, took things to a worst case scenario, as a means of ironizing the whole (mostly American) feminist academic and discourse heavy climate around its publication in the first place.

[Scheherazade]

Love this poem by Atwood:

You Begin

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

[1n50mn14]

Love her books, hate the endings.
I think that sums it up.
Some of the feminist principles are a bit much for me to stomach. I agree with most of what JBI said, honestly.

[dramasnot6]

Handmaid's Tale is one of the best things I have ever read. I should really read more of her...but i've heard only good things about Oryx.

[toni]

Through research, I've become familiar with her life but never had the chance to read her works. I think she's quite possibly one of the most inspiring feminists I've come across.

[JBI]

Through research, I've become familiar with her life but never had the chance to read her works. I think she's quite possibly one of the most inspiring feminists I've come across.

In terms of achievement, I don't know if the woman sleeps - she seems to read widely, write rapidly, yet somehow is also one of the biggest self-promoters there are (she has a blog, facebook, twitter, you name it), plus she supposedly answers all her mail, and does a lot of work for Pen Canada and other organizations - as well as appears at every book promotion event possible.

[Helga]

I Was checking out the non-fiction books she's written, I found them interesting, well the subject at least, Canadian literature and days of the rebels 1815-1840....

does anyone have an opinion on her non-fictional books

[JBI]

I Was checking out the non-fiction books she's written, I found them interesting, well the subject at least, Canadian literature and days of the rebels 1815-1840....

does anyone have an opinion on her non-fictional books

Read above, I gave a commentary on her literary criticism, especially her volume Survivor.

[Helga]

yeah I did read that, but what about that book on the rebels, I don't know what it's about or what happened in these years she talks about... maybe I just need to check out the library....

I find it interesting how she writes about everything and her style, but I definitely think it's strange to have all these pages on herself, facebook and all that, I don't know half of them and don't use any, very self promoting...I prefer a bit of a mystery.

[JBI]

yeah I did read that, but what about that book on the rebels, I don't know what it's about or what happened in these years she talks about... maybe I just need to check out the library....

I find it interesting how she writes about everything and her style, but I definitely think it's strange to have all these pages on herself, facebook and all that, I don't know half of them and don't use any, very self promoting...I prefer a bit of a mystery.
I haven't read the text of Days of the Rebels, but I know a little history of the time - that was generally a time when Canadian history was undergoing significant changes in historiography - the emergence of the "post-modern" in literature also seems to have tied in there, with new interpretations reevaluting traditional perceptions of events - in that sense, it is no surprise that her volume is just a few years younger than the famous play 1837 by Canadian playwright Rick Salutin (a former professor of mine, coincidentally, and someone who has done collaborations with Atwood). I have no doubt, given the tone of history, and of Salutin's play, and a long poem I read whose author and name I cannot remember now dealing with the 1837 revolution, that her book probably takes the ironic stance on revolutionaries in Canadian history, as is still the case - the actual revolutionaries function as more of a joke on the American revolution, and the whole "shot heard around the world" bit than anything else - in the sense that the Canadian revolutionaries are regarded - well, I hate to say in a quixotic vein, with double-edged comic irony (which isn't unseen in portrayals of the French revolution either) but, it kind of feels that way, whereas in American historiography and culture, the revolution is generally felt as "the shot heard around the world".



That's all I can really say about that now, having not read the text itself, but I hope that's helpful, though, from what I understand her book is made up of mostly photographs.

[toni]

In terms of achievement, I don't know if the woman sleeps - she seems to read widely, write rapidly, yet somehow is also one of the biggest self-promoters there are (she has a blog, facebook, twitter, you name it), plus she supposedly answers all her mail, and does a lot of work for Pen Canada and other organizations - as well as appears at every book promotion event possible.

Amazing feats indeed. If I'm not mistaken, she barely stands a little over 5 feet. I wonder how she manages all those activities with such a small body frame.
I most especially admire her for being vocal about rights of artists and freedom of expression, among others.

[Bakiryu]

I love and admire her work. Despite or because of her feminist agenda. Mostly because it resembles MY feminist agenda. Some of you are complaining of her being depressing but books don't have to be happy, that's not real life and her work shows that.

[hessenkat]

Margret Atwood is one of my favourite authors. She is an accalimed feminist writer and is well respected in many academic circles. My favourite of her books has to be The Handmaid's Tale is it really makes the reader think of what is happening in our own society, as our author uses past and current events to create a dystopian, and frankly scary, future society.

Other books you may like to read is Alias Grace, which is a story based on factual events which happened in the late 19th century. However, Atwood consructs a fictional character in the Dr. Jordan, who researches the case of Grace Marks. The story makes the reader consider whether or not Marks' is an insane murderer, or whether she did what she did through being lead astray by McDermott.

You might also want to look at her poetry.

[Night_Lamp]

Very intelligent woman, and a talented writer. As much as I admire her craft I find the constant man-hating-feminism tiring.

[TurquoiseSunset]

I have only read 'The Handmaid's Tale' and although I enjoyed the plot I became bored with her writing style. I found myself wanting to rush through it and move on to something else. Calling her style monotonous is, in my opinion, absolutely correct.

I agree, because I had the same experience. Atwood's books are love it or hate it stuff for me. Hate might be a strong word though in this instance, but you get what I'm trying to say...

[Phaedra's Love]

A classmate got Atwood's number from a friend of a friend of a relative of a...
and called her. I wasn't there but, he said things like "Hi I'm Jake I'm an exchange student living in China... We're analyzing The Handmaid's Tale in class right now" etc.
He said that she was quite mean. Apparently she was very shocked and kept asking "How did you get my number" (I would too if I were her). And everytime he complimented her, like "I love your work/you're such a great writer/it really moved me", she acted like she'd heard it all before (well, I'm sure she has) and just said "Okay." to everything. Hahahaha.

[dfloyd]

is akin to wanting to meet a duck if you like foi gras.