[ Multiple Speakers ] >> Margaret Atwood is considered
to be one of the most important and influential writers alive
today. The Canadian author has more
than 40 books to her credit
including poetry, short stories, children's
fiction, and 14 novels. She has earned worldwide
accolades for her work which has
been translated into more than 40 languages. The Hand Maid's Tale
and the Blind Assassin, two of her best known
works won the Booker Prize. We'll talk with her about
life as a writer. The difference between
speculative
fiction and science fiction and about the manuscript she's
writing
for the future library project. Readers won't see the
book for 100 years. Here's our conversation
with Margaret Atwood. Margaret Atwood, welcome to the
program. >> Thank you. >> You're here at Penn State to
receive the Institute of Arts and Humanities medal for
Distinguished Achievement. Something that's been
giving annually since 2006. So congratulations. We are delighted to have
you at Penn State. >> Thank you. >> Your career spans 50 years. And you have received numerous
national and international
awards, with that I'm sure the money has
been piling up with the awards. And I think it's safe to say
that it's not those two things
that keep you at this art and at such an
amazing pace 50 years later. What is it that keeps you at it? >> Well I think Samuel Beckett
put it very well when somebody
asked him that. He said not good for anything
else. >> But actually you --
[multiple speakers] -- >> And Mavis Gallant, said
you think when you start that you're in control of the
camel. But then once you're way out
into the desert you realize the
camel is in control of you. >> Well you started at 16. >> I did. >> You made a commitment to
become a professional writer at
16 which I look at as a gift in a way that you
knew this is where you were
headed. >> Yes I was also very ignorant
but I didn't realize what was
involved. I didn't have any role models
available
to me in that place at that time in the middle of the '50s in
Canada. >> In the wilderness in Canada. >> Well I wasn't in the
wilderness when I was 16. I was in high school which some
people
think of that as the wilderness. I was in high school. And I just didn't really
know what it would involve. I knew that I would have to
have another means of support. I didn't expect just somehow
burst into best seller right
away. So I had some practicality. My parents, of course, didn't --
weren't in favor of this plan at
all. They wanted me to be a
scientist. >> Which they were. Your mother was a nutritionist. Your father was an entomologist. >> That's right. >> And your brothers were
scientists. >> Well, there's only one of
them but he would be pleased to
be plural. >> [Chuckling] Pardon me for
that. You know you're part of the
so called silent generation. >> Yeah. >> That was born between 1925
and 1945. >> When we were silent? >> Well that's a good question. >> Yeah. Were we that silent? >> Time Magazine says that
children born in that time
period were unimaginative, withdrawn, unadventurous,
and cautious which, to me, is the antithesis of what you
are. >> Not the ones I knew. I don't know what they were
counting or where they counting
them. So I really don't know
where they that got idea. I think that, for instance,
people in the Depression had to
be very inventive because they had to figure
out how to get through it. And then people in the war years
had to be similarly inventive. And the people who went to the
war and then came back were
usually hell raisers. We were told when we were in
college that we weren't as
nearly as interesting the Vets who had
come
back because they had come back. They were grown up and
they questioned everything. And didn't necessarily believe
what was told to them, were
funny and irreverent. And we were a bit more subdued
than that but not my particular
bunch of people. >> Your particular cohorts. >> The particular cohorts were
the
handful interested in the arts. So we essentially were
inventing things from the ground up because there wasn't a
scene in Toronto at that time, a kind of visible artistic
thing that you could be part of. There wasn't a Greenwich
Village type of thing. >> Do you think that part of
your vivid imagination stems
from the fact that you did grow up in the
wilderness in Quebec isolated
really from a lot of other people? You describe it as 6 people, 6
houses in a little settlement
without running water. >> No, I wasn't in the
settlement. I could see the settlement way
down the lake but we were in the
woods. We weren't even -- >> Even more isolated. >> Yes. Yes, of course
children think of anything that happens to me as normal
life. So you don't think of yourself
as
isolated and I certainly didn't. That was just how we lived. So on the other hand, it meant
that I wasn't properly
socialized. Other little girls complain of
having had to wear pink, frilly
dresses. I longed for a pink, frilly
dress. You know I just didn't get one. I got overalls. >> You said, though, when you
were a child if your mother
wanted to eat, she'd go catch a fish. >> Yes. You know if she wanted
to -- >> So you had very independent
-- >> -- feed people for dinner. If she wanted to eat,
then it would probably -- I mean you have to picture it. No grocery store, right? So they had a kitchen garden. And they had a lot of things in
tins and they had some very well
cured bacon. Those were kinds of things. SPAM is actually quite good if
you cook it over a wood stove. You're giving me that
disbelieving look. >> I've never -- I must
say I've never tried SPAM. >> Well, try it under
the right circumstances. We also had something called
klim. People of a certain generation
will remember klim. It's milk spelled backwards. And it was powdered whole milk. And we used to buy it in
sort of bags like that. And you beat it up with an egg
beater. And there was always lumps. And I liked the lumps best. So these are childhood memories
that not everyone will share. >> I want to talk a little bit
about what is, arguably your
best known work, and that is the Handmaid's
Tale which came out in 1985. Many saw it as a movie when it
came out in 1990 starring
Natasha Richardson. That book, that work still can
elicit strong reactions to this
day. What do you suppose is behind
the reactions that it still
generates? >> Well, when I published it in
1985-6, '85, I think, in Canada and I think it was '86
in the U.S. and the UK. It had three different
reactions. So in the UK who had already had
their religious civil war and
weren't about to have another
one said jolly good yarn. In Canada perennially an anxious
country, they said could it
happen here? And in the U.S. they said
how long have we got? So even then in 1985 people
were feeling quite alarmed about some of the things in the
book. And they also were saying
things like well, you know, is this about the Middle East? And I would say it's actually
no, it's about everybody. I took examples from all around
the world and all you have to do
is go back in our history, maybe 100
years, and you're going to find very similar things. >> You look at Boko Haram today
in Nigeria, they're kidnapping
girls and saying you will not be
educated. And of course the hand maids -- >> Oh I know very much so. Yeah but education for women was
hotly debated in the 19th
century in England. So this is not very long ago. These are things that have
happened over history and
there's no rule that says that things have to keep getting
better. Sometimes they go backwards. They get worse. So, for that reason, and also
because you'll often hear
sentiments expressed in this country and in my
country, that are very similar
to some of the things that people say in the book. That was less true in the
mid '80s than it is now. In the mid '80s, some people
such Mary McCarthy basically
said it could never happen here but I just
-- I don't believe -- >> Mary McCarthy in The New York
Times. >> Yeah. I don't -- I never
believeD it could never happen
here because if you look at
history, pivotal moments, it -- whatever it may have been
-- happened to people who thought it would never
happen here. >> Well, you mentioned Mary
McCarthy of The New York Times. Time magazine named the Hand
Maids' Tale the book of 2000. >> Did they? >> They did and in fact,
they named it one of the 100 best English
language novels after 1923. And I contrasted that with the
review that Mary McCarthy wrote. And I was sort of astounded
at her reaction to it. You've been describing -- >> Well she was kind of
an old socialist in a way. And people of that generation in
that group, really wanted to
believe that things would get
better all the time. And that -- >> She thought you were too
negative? >> Yeah I think so. And also I don't think she
understood religion as she ought
to. As she went to a Catholic girls
school but I think she thought
she had gotten out of that and that
that we were, you know, putting that us behind
but that's never true. >> Well, speaking of religion. Religion is a part of
so many of your books and you have read and reread the
Bible. So I'm kind of curious to know
what your beliefs are and what
you get? My guess is you get lots
of fodder for your stories. >> From the Bible -- well
there are three big wellsprings of motifs in Western literature. Greek and Roman liturgy and
mythology is one of them. Folk tale, you know, Grimm's
fairytale. We all know who Cinderella is. In fact, Cinderella happens
to be the oldest story that we know about in the world. And those glass slippers used to
be furs, isn't that interesting? >> It is. >> So folk tale, Greek and
Roman mythology, and the Bible. And if you went through honors
English which was from
Anglo-Saxon to T.S. Eliot in the early, late '50s, early
'60s where I went to university. You had to know the Bible. I knew it anyway because it
being Canada we had it in
school. We didn't have the separation
of church and state. We had two school systems. One Catholic, one Protestant. And the one I went to was the
Protestant school system and we
had it every day and we also had it for memory
work. That we memorized poems in those
days. So of course, I know it. And of course I know the
references in Western literature
that come out of it and relate to it including a
number of William Faulkner's
novel titles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's just part of a literary
education but that was one
question. And people are complaining to me
today and now we're teaching
these kids and they don't know the Bible
studies. They don't even know about Noah. They don't know even about
[multiple speakers] -- >> And if they see it on the big
screen, it's such a distorted
view of what -- >> Well it's a very interesting
view but people have reinterpreted
those stories in every
generation. So it's not unusual to have
a story be interpreted. It's happened regularly. >> Well, I guess I'm
wondering because the state of North Carolina has actually
taken the Hand Maid's Tale off
the required reading list. >> Oh people have done
that all over the place. >> Saying that it's
anti-religion
and it's anti-Bible. >> Then they haven't read it
very carefully, have they? They missed the Lord's Prayer
spoken by the central character,
didn't they? >> They did. >> Yeah, slightly differently
worded but okay let's talk about this because it's
important. Religion can be a positive faith
that helps and encourages people and comforts then in time of
trouble. Or it can be a hammer to hit
people over the head with. >> Just the way it's often used. >> Often. Used by those who
want more power for themselves. So those are -- those two things
have pretty much always been
true. And it's probably also true
that the impulse to religion or like I say the impulse to
believe
in an invisible power greater than yourself, that is probably
an evolved adaptation and people
are going to do it whether you
want them to or not. That invisible thing bigger than themselves may be the stock
market having a lot of people
believe in that. >> Interesting. >> Or it may be quote science, that big thing that's invisible
that's bigger than yourself. There all sorts of things
that people believe in and that may not necessarily
be an established religion but they all do it in
one way or another. >> Well, speaking of science and
you may be bored with this
question. But you make a distinction
between science fiction and
speculative science. What you write you say is
speculative fiction rather. >> You just jumped the tracks
big time. >> [Chuckling] But what -- >> We'll get back to
what I actually believe. I'm a hard core agnostic. >> Okay. >> And what does that mean? It means you shouldn't proclaim as knowledge something
that is actually faith. And that's a pretty simple
distinction. So let's just say, some
things are matters of faith and other things are matters of
knowledge, you can prove them. So you shouldn't confuse
the one with the other. >> Okay. So let's move -- >> Yeah. >> I'm glad you answered. You had -- >> Speculative fiction, science
fiction. The French don't have a
problem with this question. And the reason they don't have
a problem with this question is that they have always had a term
for what we call speculative
fiction and it's un roman d'anticpatopm,
a novel of anticipation. And they consider that distinct
from, different from science
fiction proper. What would spaceships, aliens,
things taking over your body, and you know other means of the
genre. So they don't have a problem. Nobody ever asks me this
question there. They have a bit of a problem
here, I think due to the
bookstore habit of putting everything on a shelf
labeled science fiction if it is
in any way about the future or if it is in
any way got things in it like
robots and stuff. Though the more we go on, the
more robots we actually have in
real life. >> You know anyone who
reads your stories will say that Margaret Atwood must be
prescient because you have
written about things that have happened. You know and I just read two
weeks ago about robots that as
they evolved from generation to generation
they've learned to lie to one
another. And I think wow, that could be
part of one of your next
stories. >> It's pretty interesting. Yes, it's pretty interesting. Artificial intelligence is a
very interesting subject but my
books don't, for instance, have other
planets, spaceships, aliens or any of those things. So if it's got science fiction
on the front and you open it up and there aren't any of those
things in it, and you wanted
there to be. Wouldn't you -- >> You're disappointed. >> Wouldn't you be annoyed? I want the label to say what the
kind of thing you might expect
to have in it. So if it's fantasy, I do expect
the occasional magician or
dragon. I mean it would be very
paltry not to put those in. >> Do you expect one day for
there to be a speculative fiction
book or shelf in a bookstore? >> Yes I would think so. But on the other hand,
bookstores,
of course, wanting to sell lots of books they might prefer just
to have the mall on the one
shelf and then somebody might by
mistake pick up something they
might not otherwise. But people were pretty clear
about that when they were
writing. When they started writing
this kind of thing. Joel Varen [phonetic] who
started with, what we would now call
speculative fiction, considered
that he was writing about things that might really
happen. And -- >> Could happen. >> Could, could and he expected
them to. He was writing about submarines
and air travel and things that he fully expected would
happen. And guess what? They did. Maybe not quite the
way he pictured it but they
happened. >> Yeah, you've written about
meat being grown in Petri dishes
and pagoons. >> All those -- >> Organs that come from pigs
and are transplanted to humans. Things that now are headlines
in newspapers. >> I know but I knew all --
I knew back when I started that people were working
on those things. They just hadn't succeeded yet. One of the latest is they've put
some human cortex tissue into
mice. That's all we needed. Smarter mice. Thanks. Don't let them out. >> There was a group from
National Security who got
together with filmmakers and writers -- >> It was after 9/11. >> And said, yes. And said you know what sorts of
things might be coming down the
pike? Where are our vulnerabilities? >> Exactly. >> Had you been asked by
National Security to be part of that conversation,
would you have contributed? >> Well one of the things I
would've said is the 9/11
episode came right out of Star Wars where
they fly the plane into the Death Star and blow it
up. They happened. >> An episode I didn't see. >> It was in the first one. >> Okay. >> Not Star Trek, Star Wars. >> Oh okay. >> Yeah, Hans Solo flies and his
pal fly this decrepit plane into
the Death Star. They happened to be able to
throw the explosive device and then go screaming
out so they don't die. But the idea of using a plane as
a weapon, it's right in that
movie. >> You said earlier that when
you were coming up as a young
writer that you didn't have role
models, that there wasn't a really
big literary scene in Canada. And so -- >> That's putting it mildly. >> Has it changed much? >> It's changed completely. Yes, there's absolutely
completely but that was a long time ago. We're now thinking of
in 1960, for instance. There were five novels
published in English Canada by English Canadian publishers. And it was the same in Quebec. A very small number and a
lot of books were imported. So it was very, very small and
-- >> In fact, you were featured, your partner Graham Gibson wrote
a book Eleven Canadian novelists and you were -- >> That was 10 years
later because I begin with a. They're alphabetically
arranged. I added to that book. It was very funny. We were using reel to
reel tape in those days. And we had a typist who'd
transcribed it for us and we
realized afterwards that she was a little bit deaf. So there were a lot -- >> Words missing? >> Well and words that had been
transformed into other words. So I more or less had to
guess what people were saying. Anyway, it was lots of fun
but between 60 and 70, we -- our generation was inventing
publishing companies. So that book came out
of that whole movement. I don't know where they
got the silent generation. These people were very
noisy as far as I can tell. >> You have said that every
Canadian has a complicated relationship with the United States. What do you mean by that? And can you speak for yourself
what that means as well? >> I am the spy amongst you. Yes, I go here and there. Okay. So think of a map. There's a map. On your map there's a sort of a
line across and there's nothing above it but actually it's us. We're above that line. And so therefore, south
of us we've got you. And south of you, you've got
Mexico. That's very different right
there. You are smaller in size but
you have a lot more people. What's the population now of the
U.S.? >> Three hundred million. >> Probably about like that. >> Okay. >> Three hundred million -- >> So 10 times bigger when
you're talking about economies of scale and who can sell what to whom
and who can make it cheaper and all those kinds of things. You can see it would have an
impact. So -- >> In fact you talk about Canada
as not occupied but dominated. Is that how Canadians feel? >> I think they feel
-- they're very aware that there's an extremely large
market to the south of them. And that can have good effects
and it can have bad effects. The good effects are, if they
can think of something to sell to that very large market,
that's a good effect. But on the other hand, if that
very large market decides to
sell things to them that they want to sell
to themselves, that could be a
bad effect. The other thing is, it
is a one way mirror. We know all about your culture. We know everything. >> And we don't know enough
about yours. >> You know very little about
ours. Yes, it's -- >> And that's an insult, isn't
it? >> No, I don't think so. It means that we can lie
to you with immunity. [Chuckles] There's a guy called
Rick Mercer who has a show on television, a television show
-- >> I saw a video you did for
him. >> Yeah, I did a video for him
but he also did another show in
which he went around and asked these really
quite impossible questions to Americans about Canada. >> And it was embarrassing. >> Well, it was -- >> For us, I'm sure. >> It was funny. I'm not sure that the
Canadians would have done any -- >> Better? >> Might have done a bit better
on questions about you but maybe
not 100%. You know there's an astonishing
amount that people don't know
either about themselves or about other
people. >> Well there's a wonderful
video about you giving some ice
hockey lessons and I'll let people look that
up. But I want to quickly move to
something that you are working
on or have done which I think is absolutely
fascinating, the Future Library
Project. You were the first author
to submit a manuscript. >> Haven't done it yet. >> You haven't? Okay. >> That's happening in June. >> Okay. >> Okay. So -- >> To be unveiled 100 years from
now. >> That's right. So it is a sleeping beauty
project. There's a forest in Norway
that will grow 100 years. And each one of those 100 years
a different author will be asked to submit a manuscript
to the Future Library. And all they're allowed to tell
about is the -- their name and
the title. Nothing else. So it'll be in a sealed box. It'll be put into this library
in Norway and it can be a poem. It can be a story. It can be a novel. It can be nonfiction. No images and you can't
tell anybody what's in it. So year 100, enough trees will
be cut down to make the paper
to print those 100 books. >> And who knows if we'll have
printers 100 years from now. >> That's a vote of optimism. She's put a printing press
in the room just in case. Katie Patterson is the name of
the conceptual artist who
thought it up. And therefore, my book
will be 100 years old and the final book will
only be 1 year old. The people choosing say
at the 50 year mark, that committee hasn't been born
yet. And the final committee we have
no idea who those people will be what
their literary tastes will be
but it is a vote of confidence in the future. There will be people. There will be books. People will be able to read. Isn't that cheerful? >> It is. And on that
note, we're out of time. Thank you, Margaret Atwood,
so much for talking with us. >> And thank you. >> I hope you enjoyed our
conversation with Margaret
Atwood. Comcast subscribers can watch
this program anytime on Penn
State OnDemand. Find out how through our
website conversations.psu.edu where you'll also find
excerpts from Atwood's books. I'm Patty Satalia. We hope you'll join us for our
next conversation from Penn
State. [ Music ] >> Production funding provided
in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
and by viewers like you. Thank you. >> This has been a production of
WPSU. [ Silence ] >> Margaret Atwood is
an award winning writer. >> In 1985, people were
feeling quite alarmed about some of the things in the
book. I never believe it could
never happen here because it, whatever it may have
been, happened to people who thought it would never
happen. >> Margaret Atwood on the next
Conversations from Penn State.
