Q&A with Margaret Atwood discussion
Margaret says goodbye for now and answers a few more questions
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A recipe for toast. I love that. Strangely, I'm kind of interested too because I love toast. Thank you and have a safe trip!
Thank You Ms. Atwood for taking some time out for us here on goodreads. Especially at such a busy time for you. Welcome to a "Very Wet" Westcoast and look forward to any future Q & A's with you. Sincerely, Margaret
Thank you for sharing. We think you're wonderful! Have a safe trip and fun in Japan. :)
Thanking you for taking time to be with us, Deborah
4 years ago! Wow, I'm late in the game....I found those comments fascinating. Another way in which writing becomes "oral" or "signed" (through ASL) is by reading, then actively passing on the information you've read with another. The Deaf community has an extremely active signed tradition, that may or may not reflect oral tradition. It often takes on a life of its own within the context of the larger Deaf community. I agree that writing is, in a small way oral/signed, but only in the largest sense of the word. Studying language makes many important cultural and emotional distinctions. The context in which one translates the reading into language depends largely on the individual and on her audience. Thank you for your comments Ms. Kingsolver!
On another note, a personal anecdote:
My grandmother had the book Prodigal Summer on her bedside table when she passed away. Ours was a shared love of reading and passing on our interpretations through language. She passed on her love of your books to me, (her favorite :) grandchild. I'm forever indebted to her.
I did have time to get to a few more questions and I am going to post the answers here:
One reader asked why there is so much food in my writing. ANSWER: There are two answers — 1) Literary: As a young person, I was disturbed when the characters in books never got anything to eat, or when they were actually starving or going hungry, as in Oliver Twist and Les Miserables. Also I read a lot of animal stories and food is very important in them. So I try to give my characters something to eat when possible. 2) Real life: I was young during the war when there was rationing; people thought a lot about food, what was scarce, etc. And I spent much of my childhood in the northern bush — we had a garden (no shops nearby) and caught fish, etc. So I have always known where food comes from. I have known about wild foods all my life and have prepared and eaten many. (I raised the money to start PEN Canada by writing a book called “The CanLit Food Book,” which juxtaposes fiction bits and poems about food with recipes by authors - some of whom can’t really cook... There’s a recipe for “toast,” for instance.) In the 70s we lived on a farm and had chickens and other animals and a huge vegetable garden, & did a lot of canning, drying, preserving etc. (Some of this is in the three central stories in “Moral Disorder.”)
In a related question another reader asked: "I've noticed that you often use images from nature, and I would like to know if you spend a lot of time outdoors, camping, etc.?"
ANSWER: Yes, I grew up in northern Canada and still go up every summer... And am outdoors on the weekends when possible. We go birdwatching when we have the time. See www.birdlife.org, “Rare Bird Club,” for our connection to that international organization. I have recently started another garden.
The same reader then asked: "I would also like to know how often you write poetry. Do you write poems while you're working on your novels or just between novels? And how long do you typically revise a poem before you feel content with it?"
ANSWER: I seem to write poetry when I’m not writing a novel or anything else. Revisions range from “none” to “never finished.”
I also noticed a few questions about Canadian literature and one reader asked for a list of my top 5 Canadian novels. ANSWER: Sorry --I don’t do lists much because I have a hard time with them. And as soon as you pick five, a whole bunch of other people will wonder why you didn’t pick them!
Some readers are wondering if I will write a sequel to THE HANDMAID'S TALE. ANSWER: No — I couldn’t really do that, because there isn’t any fictional “room” for that — I couldn’t imagine the shape it might take...
Finally, a reader asked a long question about the written vs. oral traditions of storytelling (link here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/4...), and this is my ANSWER: This has been an ongoing discussion, with many generations of writers “taking part.” I think that all written work is essentially oral, in that print is a code for language and language is usually (though not always, see below) oral in nature; thus print gets translated back into sound, either when read aloud by someone — as writing was until a couple of centuries ago, says Alberto Manguel — or read in ones’ head. An exception is of course works read by deaf people who have never “heard.” The meanings and patterns are still received and appreciated, but in different ways. One of the top US literary critics of the twentieth century was in fact deaf.
As for how fiction “should” exist — I think the answer is always “the best way that it can.” Some things lend themselves better to oral renditions, and some authors are better than others at reading their own work. But it’s unfair to expect everyone to have all ideal qualities. (I don’t for instance at all like the way Yeats read his own poetry, and kind of wish I’d never heard the recording..) I don’t much like my own reading voice when it’s recorded. I think it’s a curiosity, but that the real “reading” takes place when book meets reader ... I talk about this in Chapter 5 of my book about writing, which is called Negotiating With the Dead.