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ATWOOD, Margaret (b. 1939)
This poem from Power Politics (1971) has stayed with me because it is so terrible. Not terribly written, but terrible in the image presented. But I also have a lingering resentment over being suckered in these lines. The setup and punch line are too obviously manufactured. And yet one can imagine many readers first recoiling and then gleefully accepting the hit against the nameless "you" of the poem. It seems so unfair somehow. Another reason these lines have plagued me is because I keep finding them in Atwood's writing in one form or another. Her characters are always examining innocent words to find tendentious or malicious meanings. From her most popular novel, A Handmaid's Tale (1985):
Of course the reader is intended to make the connections and it's not difficult to do so in the context of this dystopic story. It's not just the flipping over of expressions to find bugs underneath that's annoying though. That by itself might not even be annoying. But this quirk is symptomatic of Atwood's plots, characters and themes. A continual setup and punch down. The smile of nearly every personality, apart from the heroine, is quickly shown to mask hurtful motives. Everyone it seems is a shit, bent to some overall scheme for victimizing her. But it can't be just the negativity that is so tiresome. I can think of many authors, including such classics as Fielding or Thackeray with their rollickingly self-serving characters, who are a joy to read. Nor do the sexual politics—Atwood being somewhat of a feminist icon—offend, as some of my favourite books are by modern feminist writers and I probably share Atwood's social views, as far as I understand them. Perhaps it is a sense of mean-spiritedness in the writing that is so off-putting. Or a wearying of continual irony. Or resentment at being consciously tricked over and over again—the same things that bothered me with that first poem. (Though the trick is so expected now that it no longer surprises. One reads Atwood in a continuing state of expecting the next shoe to drop.) Other readers tell me they have the same reaction. However, it seems Atwood has many more fiercely loyal fans than detractors, judging by her wild commercial success and the critical acclaim that greets each new work. Atwood was born in Ottawa and spent her first years in northern Ontario and Quebec before moving to Toronto as a child. She studied at the University of Toronto where she was influenced by literary analyst Northrop Frye, and then at Cambridge and Harvard. While a student, she published poetry in various magazines as well as in two collections, Double Persephone (1961) and The Circle Game (1964, revised 1966) which won Canada's Governor General's Award. Her first novel, The Edible Woman (1969), was an edgy but humorous story of a woman who works in market research and comes to see herself as a consumer product. Its satire is more accessible and enjoyable than in her later, better-known novels. Her second novel, Surfacing (1972), takes place in northern Quebec where a young woman arrives with several friends to investigate the disappearance of her father. Compared to The Edible Woman, this short novel is humourless and contrived, with stereotypical characters. Hailed by some critics and hated by others, it seems more like a novelization of the controversial literary study she also published that year. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature interpreted Canadian writing as exhibiting a colonial mentality, an exercise in victimhood, caught between the powerful United States to the south and the vast frozen north. She continued producing volumes of poetry throughout this period with The Animals in That Country (1968), The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), Procedures for Underground (1970), You Are Happy (1974), and her most effective collection, Power Politics (1971). Her first Selected Poems appeared in 1976.Lady Oracle (1976) returns to the pointed lightness of her first novel, with a magical tale of a bored activist's wife who takes off on her own literary and political adventures. Atwood's next, Life Before Man (1979), however is a dreary story of people trapped in dreary relationships, supposedly saying something about male-female power relationships, as all her works do, but already seeming dated. Her best-known work so far came several books later in 1985 with The Handmaid's Tale. This novel depicts a society in which women have lost all rights and freedoms, except to be wives, housekeepers, and child-bearers. It was adapted for film in 1990 with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. Cat's Eye (1988) is another depressing story of a woman in a midlife crisis, this time an artist persecuted by her lifelong best friend. The Robber Bride (1994) is about three women in midlife crises, persecuted by an old friend they thought was dead. Atwood's next three novels are the works that have made her a best-selling international literary figure. Alias Grace: A Novel (1996) is based on a true story of a woman imprisoned in 1843 for the murder of her employer. The Blind Assassin (2000) won the Booker Prize, the top prize for English literature. It is a family saga, told as a story within a story, involving politics, scandal and mystery. Oryx and Crake (2003) takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. As with Handmaid's Tale, this is really in the line of science fiction novels, although not presented with the commercially deadly SF tag. Unlike Handmaid's Tale, however, it never rises above being run-of-the-mill speculative fiction, with no more content or ideas than has already been presented in any number of science-fiction short stories or novellas, but padded out here to numbing novel length. Second-rate SF. Startling perhaps, though, to those who have never been exposed to these timeworn SF concepts before. Her most recent work, Moral Disorder (2006), is either a novel or a series of linked stories with recurring characters. Trouble is, they are not particularly interesting characters and their stories are not particularly engaging either. As befitting the title, nothing really stands out around which the overall work is organized, although certain passages — especially those regarding memories of childhood — do show glimpses of the spooky power of which the former poet is capable. Atwood's prolific book output over the past three decades has included new poetry, more selected poems, short story collections, literary criticism and even children's fiction. — Eric |
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© Copyright 2004–2007 Eric McMillan. All rights reserved.
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Before she became an
internationally famous novelist, Margaret Atwood wrote a few lines that
have stayed with me ever since: