Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” sold more than 10 million copies and spawned an Emmy-winning Hulu series, but the Canadian author dismissed the notion that the dystopian novel is her magnum opus.
The 85-year-old author said she believes that if not for the ongoing rollback of reproductive rights and the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the 1985 novel would probably just “be sitting on a shelf somewhere.” Instead, the scarlet costume made famous by the wildly popular book has become a uniform of real-life protest and resistance.
“It’s not due to me or the excellence of the book,” she said. “It’s partly in the twists and turns of history.”
The strict rule behind Atwood’s fiction
Atwood has written 64 books — and counting. Her fiction tells of future worlds plagued by totalitarianism, environmental collapse and a global pandemic
In 2003’s “Oryx and Crake,” for instance, Atwood wrote of environmental collapse and a global pandemic.
“It wasn’t, you know, ‘This is going to happen without a doubt,'” she said. “[It was,] ‘This could happen. This might happen, so you should be on the watch for it.'”
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Atwood has been called a prophet of doom, a forecaster of dystopia. But her speculative fiction about dystopian futures is rooted in actual events. At the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto, Atwood has archived stacks of her research, including hundreds of news clippings that substantiate her plots.
She writes by a strict rule: If it didn’t happen, somewhere, at some time, it doesn’t make it into the pages of her fiction.
From fiction to reality: “Book of Lives”
In her latest work, a memoir titled “Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts,” out this past week, Atwood looks back at her own life, starting with a free-range childhood spent in the deep wilderness of Quebec. She was homeschooled until the age of 12 while her father did fieldwork on insects as an entomologist.
She shared what she learned by watching her father at work.
“I think probably growing up with a biologist makes you quite particular about details because you’re not saying, ‘That’s a butterfly,’ You’re saying what kind of butterfly. You’re not saying, ‘That’s a tree.’ You usually know what kind of tree,” she said.
Atwood, intent on spinning details into prose, enrolled at Victoria College at the University of Toronto. As a young poet, she hit the reading circuit and performed in student plays and revues at Hart House, one of Canada’s oldest theaters.
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When she graduated in 1961, Canadian writers were encouraged to pursue careers outside the country. But Atwood stayed and helped found the country’s now-thriving literary institutions.
Along the way, she met another writer, the late Graeme Gibson, who would become her longtime partner. Gibson came into the relationship with an “undivorced wife” and two kids. In her memoir, Atwood confronts the complications of the blended family.
“There are several letters in this book from me to my Inner Advice Columnist. Everybody has one,” Atwood said. “‘Dear Inner Advice Columnist, sorry to bother you.'”
Atwood used the columnist device to confess that though she and Graeme had a daughter of their own, she wanted more children.
“We are back at the farm after Scotland, and I’ve brought up the subject of a second child. I would like one, but Graeme has said that a total of three is enough for him,” Atwood wrote. “I feel deprived, resentful, and disrespected.”
She also detailed the advice she gave herself.
“‘Oh, for heaven’s sakes, count your blessings. Some people don’t know when they’re well off,'” Atwood read aloud from the memoir. “‘Many would give the shirt off their back to have your luck in men. Suck it up. Cherish your child. Get another cat. Your Inner Advice Columnist.’ You can see she’s rather severe.”
Atwood is a student of government, power and the overreaches of both. She wrote much of “The Handmaid’s Tale” on a rented typewriter in 1984 West Berlin. Atwood recalls hearing sonic booms from the other side of the wall. In her ventures to the Eastern Bloc, she witnessed policing, paranoia and the absence of freedom. In her memoir, she addresses the erosion of democracy.
“The overriding of ordinary civil liberties is one of the signposts on the road to dictatorship,” she wrote.
Atwood, when asked if she sees the United States on that road right now, said it’s not wrong to be concerned. She said there are some warning lights flashing.
“There are certain things totalitarian coups always do,” Atwood said. “One of them is trying to control the media. But the other thing is making the judicial arm part of the executive. In other words, judges just do what the chief guy tells them to.”
Responding to book bans and attacks
Atwood’s own works have been subject to edicts and bans. Her works have been banned from 135 American school districts, according to PEN America, a nonprofit that champions free speech.
Atwood’s books have been banned for content deemed overly sexual, morally corrupt and anti-Christian. She said she was particularly peeved when a recent ban came from Edmonton, Alberta, in her own country.
Atwood stated for the record that she’s always been attacked more from the political left than from the right.
“I think the right thinks I’m irrelevant,” Atwood said. “The left thinks that I should have been preaching their sermon, whatever it may happen to be, and that I am therefore a traitor for not having done that which they themselves would do.”
Her response to that, she said, is unprintable.
“It involves a finger,” Atwood said.
