Writes Decca Aitkenhead, in "Margaret Atwood: ‘God made the middle finger for a reason’/The Handmaid’s Tale author at 86 on gender wars, trade wars, assisted dying and the power of not playing nice" (London Times).
"She says she has never scared people 'on purpose,' but the pleasure she takes in her own power is apparent and exhilarating to observe. When I ask whether I should call her Margaret or the name she grew up with, Peggy, she inquires, 'Well, who are you speaking to right at the moment?' Er, to you. 'Yes, but who is me?' Amusement teases in her eyes. 'You’re not talking to the writer, because I’m not writing at the moment. So Peggy.' When I later mention some people who used to behave very badly towards me, her eyes narrow. 'Are any of them dead?' Not yet. 'Oh well, it could be arranged.'"
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38 comments:
Could “beadily” be a typo for “readily”? That is otherwise incomprehensible to me.
She sounds kind of childish and self-absorbed.
That’s a telling anecdote—she’s disappointed that her perfectly normal and responsible act didn’t shock.
"Could “beadily” be a typo for “readily”? That is otherwise incomprehensible to me."
Well, what do we mean to say about a person when we call their eyes "beady"? I think we are attributing a state of mind to them: They've got mischievous or evil intentions. So I take it that to say something "beadily" is intended to mean that it was said in a way that made you feel the speaker had some nasty plans.
The word "beadily" is not in the OED, and "beady" is defined as "Beadlike; (of eyes) small, round and glittering." There's no way to say something like a bead. Beads don't talk. But I'm going with my interpretation.
Purchasing your burial plot is the least creepy thing most people think about you, Peggy.
Oh The stupid book.
She's happy she contributed to the delusion & lowering of IQ with many white left American females.
She's written 50 books. Quite successfully. You can get some insight into what drives her. She likes to stir things up. It's fun for her, even at 86, even after losing her husband. She wants to make things happen, even for this dour interviewer.
The one book ruins the other 49.
I typed in, 'beadily definition' and it said, "In an avaricious or penetrating manner."
She is an amazing writer. No question. I read many of her books years ago. "The Handmaid's Tale" was one of them, but not one that really grabbed me like some of her others. Still, I held her in high regard and looked forward to her latest book for years. That is until recent times when she made it clear that she apparently hated people like me.
So...I haven't read another word of hers. I don't think she'll notice. But then...I don't miss her either. So much to read in this world. I'd rather give my money to those who don't actually hate me for what I think.
I read The Handmaid's Tale in the mid-1980s when it first came out and was struck (like right between the eyes) by the way she excavated from the present and the past to paint such a deadeye portrait of the future. The perspective on evolving societal power relationships and structure from the eyes of the handmaid was eerily prescient. Atwood painted a society on two tracks, and so it has turned out to be in the ensuing years.
Atwood was the lady with the x-ray social vision, a woman of her times who stood outside her times.
"She sounds kind of childish and self-absorbed."
Strike the phrase "kind of" and we are in complete agreement.
"'Well, who are you speaking to right at the moment?' Er, to you. 'Yes, but who is me?' Amusement teases in her eyes. 'You’re not talking to the writer, because I’m not writing at the moment. So Peggy"
She sounds tiresome. She could have said the same thing without the question and it would have been fine.
It could be that I am just inclined to dislike her. I read "The Handmaid's Tale" when it came out and now have no memory of it other than that I loathed it.
"Dour": good word that fits the Scots ancestry of so many Anglo-Canadians. Burial societies, though, were a big thing with so many immigrants to the Americas. They wanted to be sure of a plot when they went.
"Beadily": it is indeed a word. AI explains:
๐๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ช๐ญ๐บ ๐ช๐ด ๐ข๐ฏ ๐ข๐ฅ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฃ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฏ๐ด ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ด๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ ๐ด๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ, ๐ฃ๐ณ๐ช๐จ๐ฉ๐ต, ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ฆ๐บ๐ฆ๐ด—๐ญ๐ช๐ฌ๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ข ๐ฃ๐ช๐ณ๐ฅ ๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ข ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต—๐ฐ๐ง๐ต๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ด๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ธ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ช๐ฏ๐ต๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ด๐ฆ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ค๐ถ๐ด, ๐ด๐ถ๐ด๐ฑ๐ช๐ค๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ, ๐จ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฅ, ๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ค๐ญ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ฃ๐ด๐ฆ๐ณ๐ท๐ข๐ต๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ.
Atwood: it sucks to be her now because everyone thinks she abetted child abuse like the other famous Canadian writer, the one no one has heard of.
Instead of men forcing women to have babies - we have whole US states run BY the left who codify abortion up until birth in their state constitutions. The next frontier for the left is to allow moms to kill their own live children - and use "but I was mad" and hormones as the excuse.
"I read The Handmaid's Tale in the mid-1980s when it first came out and was struck (like right between the eyes) by the way she excavated from the present and the past to paint such a deadeye portrait of the future."
Amazing! How did you know?
“The eyes, chico, they never lie.”
- Tony Montana
Those words she is using...
Serious Question:
Why didn't they ask Margaret Atwood about Islam and Sharia law?
i'd think that IF you wanted to ask her questions; that'd be at the top
Bob Boyd @9:17, thanks for the first chuckle of what's going to be a long day!
in her Handmaid's Tale, polution kept most women from having babies?
and the religious government stole the VERY FEW fertile ones?
She COULD HAVE wrote an interesting book,
where most western women CHOSE not to have chidren..
and a religious goverment treated THEIR women like chattel..
and the competition between the one side (with no kids) and the other
pollution has NOT reduced fertility.. Western Women have.
A book where a politically correct Woman, who supports ALL the correct causes, and is childless and lives with her cats,
is enslaved by religious fundamentalists that force her to have children; would be an interesting story.
It could have side chapters, where she dreams of her old childless life.
and an epilogue, where her children don't even think of her AT ALL, and instead Rule The World in Allah's Name
That would have been a scary book!
Yes indeed
Ann Althouse said...
She's written 50 books. Quite successfully. You can get some insight into what drives her. She likes to stir things up. It's fun for her, even at 86, even after losing her husband. She wants to make things happen, even for this dour interviewer.
Atwood is just another coddled white woman who was given freedom, air conditioning, and a life of complete comfort then she proceeded to shit on the people who made her coddled life possible.
Atwood needs to spend some time in a Burka in Afghanistan.
I heard Atwood being interviewed and the opening question was what in The Handmaid's Tale she wished she'd written differently. The interviewer may have hoping for a big reveal of regret and revision and seemed unprepared when she replied dryly: "๐'๐ฅ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ท๐ฆ ๐จ๐ช๐ท๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐บ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฅ๐บ ๐ค๐ฆ๐ญ๐ญ ๐ฑ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ด."
I read that "The Handmaid's Tale" was written with Islam ans sharia law in mind. Any truth to that?
Doesn't matter. It's been retasked to attack white guys, as Gloria Steinem intended.
Here is a summary of her book “Before Man”:
“ Life Before Man (1979) is a bleak, closely observed novel about a love triangle and the emotional wreckage around it.
The three central characters are Elizabeth, her husband Nate, and Lesje. Elizabeth works at a natural-history museum and is having an affair with a younger man, Chris. At the beginning of the novel, Chris has killed himself after Elizabeth ends or destabilizes the relationship. His death hangs over everything that follows.
Elizabeth and Nate remain married, but their marriage is largely hollow. Nate knows about Elizabeth’s affairs and has affairs of his own. He becomes involved with Lesje, one of Elizabeth’s coworkers at the museum. Lesje is fascinated by paleontology and dinosaurs—hence the title: she often retreats mentally into prehistoric time as an escape from the messy emotional lives around her.
As Nate and Lesje’s affair develops, the relationships become increasingly tangled. Elizabeth is outwardly controlled and often manipulative, but Chris’s suicide has affected her more deeply than she admits. Nate wants to imagine that his relationship with Lesje might provide a genuine new beginning, while Lesje gradually discovers that neither Nate nor Elizabeth fits neatly into the roles she initially assigns them.”
I can only assume she wrote porn in her salad days for rent.
Vapid woman writes worthless book, but becomes famous.
"She sounds kind of childish and self-absorbed."
She is the Queen of all the childish and self absorbed women, so this is unsurprising.
I read THT when it came out, but quickly discovered that large segments of the plot were inelegantly ripped off from the excellent Robert Heinlein 1953 novella If This Goes On-. I finished Atwood’s book but thought it was basically a failed experiment. My wife and I saw the movie adaptation when it came out, and aside from the luminous Natasha Richardson (RIP) we mostly thought the movie laughable. Neither of us have seen the TV series; it looks just too precious for words and our TV-watching time is too limited to tackle obvious lunacy.
"Joan Crawford died of a heart attack on May 10, 1977, at age 73 in her New York City apartment."
The quote: When a housekeeper or nurse began praying at her bedside as she grew near death, Crawford reportedly snapped: "Damn it! Don't you dare ask God to help me!"
The meaning: Biographers and pop culture lore cite this as a final display of her fierce, unyielding, and defiant control, refusing passive or pious pity even in her final breath.
Wait a minute? Society now is like "The Handmaid's Tale"? For real?
The the first sentence of the quote stopped me dead in my tracks: either “two weeks before we met” or Atwood “purchases”. Use the historical present if you want, but don’t mix the tenses.
Is she creepy? Or just a creep? I lean toward the latter.
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