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A note from Will:
On Atwood
Will Ferguson
I ran into Margaret Atwood the other day . . .
Well, it wasn't really the other day; it was a year and
a half ago, and I didn't exactly run into her. She was at
a bookstore opening and I simply latched onto her and refused
to leave until she acknowledged my existence. I have to
say I was disappointed. Margaret (or "Ms. Atwood," to those
of you who are not on an accosting basis with the First
Lady of Canadian Literature) was warm and gracious. She
even suggested an idea for my next book.
"You should do one on how to be a Canadian," she said
in that trademark low flat voice of hers. "A guidebook for
the perplexed."
But I was already perplexed. Surely this friendly, personable
woman was not our the famous Ice Lady, the Queen of Bleak?
And it struck me, just then, to wonder why it is that Canadians
supposedly hate Margaret Atwood so much.
A colleague of mine suggested that Margaret Atwood is
resented because she represents a certain school of feminism,
one which peaked in the 1970s, and which some people found
overly combative. At a recent book conference I was surprised
to find myself caught in the middle of a heated debate about
Atwood's ethos. A male bookseller challenged a female publicist
to name "one man who actually reads Margaret Atwood." It
was his contention that no male literary "great" would ever
be allowed to get away with creating female characters as
two-dimensional and relentlessly negative as Atwood's male
character's inevitably are. "If Margaret Atwood was male,
she would be labelled a misogynist. You couldnŐt present
women that way. But men are fair game in Canadian literature--as
the endless parade of drunken, abusive caricatures attests."
But I disagree. It is Atwood the Icon that people
resent, not Atwood the Feminist. And let's be frank, Atwood's
critics are just as often women. In fact, some of the most
visceral reactions against Atwood come from the very readers
she is supposedly pandering too: ideological women.
Atwood herself has been criticized by feminist theorists,
and several of my own female colleagues have expressed an
almost visceral reaction against Atwood, saying they find
her prose "cold and aloof."
Some have even suggested it is simply her voice--clipped,
stiff, and nasally--that grates certain people. But I think
Margaret Atwood's voice is kind of, well, sexy. I'm not
being the least bit facetious. Atwood's voice reminds me,
in its tone and timbre, of one of those old 1940s movies,
when sound recordings still had a certain thin distant quality.
It's as though Margaret is channelling a character in a
hard-boiled detective flick, where every sentence is arch,
every quip is dry and every pause is pregnant.
No, it's not anything as grand as gender politics or as
petty as the tone of her voice. It is simply the fact that
Atwood has become an icon, and icons' were meant to be--if
not toppled--at least pelted by snowballs.
As for me, I know full well the cachet of Ms. Atwood's
name and you better believe that I'll be milking it for
all it's worth when How to be a Canadian hits the
stands ("From an idea by Margaret Atwood!!").
Lesson One? How to be an Icon.
En Route
August 2001
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