Margaret Atwood sits down with Tom Power on her 80th birthday

Margaret I would hello nice to see you again nice to see you I read the Testaments did you I loved it well that's good to know I've read I will talk to you bout it later on but I read it on the plane back from I had a horrible routing from st. John's to Halifax Halifax to Montreal and Montreal to Toronto was that on purpose or was it whether it was I didn't pay attention to my own flights when I was booking it's it's a it's called I pressed book and didn't pay too much attention to but it gave me the occasion to have 9 hours in a row that was quite a long time and I read the whole goddamn thing I'm very pleased that you weren't watching family cartoons no I I tried to stay away from Garfield and it stuck to me I'll talk to you about it in a second we're talking in early November but we're recording this interview and celebration of your 80th birthday on November 18th so I guess I can be the first to say happy 80th birthday thank you very much pretty good hey not too shabby and on around your 80th birthday you meet the Queen at Windsor Castle not that long ago made you a member of the Order of the Companions of honour for your services to literature and I was thinking you were in your teens when queen elizabeth ii ascended to the throne right early teens early teens yes so what was going through your head when you were standing in front of her uh well of course we go back further than that because I remember her during the war when she was very she was model to young people she and her family and Princess Margaret did not go to another country they stuck it out and she I think she was trying to drive her at that point she was driving trucks for those as a teenaged person right so she was a she was held up as a model right of behavior to young people so did you have some sort of new did you feel the presence of royalty in front of her given that she is in fact she is 93 years of history Yeah right there in front of you and and only a baker's dozen years older than me but then I mean and there she is you know right in front of you you guys know what she is astonishing I mean to carry on the schedule that she does right it's a high bar I'm always expecting her to stop you know I'm almost expecting her to retire or to you know get off the road she will keep going as long as you can I think so and this was a lot of people at this ceremony and she just she did it all how do you find those kind of ceremonies act that kind of thing well that kind of thing I'm not sure that there are too many there aren't too many in Windsor Castle there aren't too many how did you find the Queen I thought it was extremely well run yeah oh not their first rodeo they they know how to do these things very efficiently and on top of that you got to see all the amazing paintings I'm going inside Windsor Castle really beautiful well it's very historic of course you think somebody cornered the white satin market and made a fortune because they're all of these pictures of generals and Grandy's and you know people and they're in their outfits with the white satin breeches and then the enormous capes lined with white satin and you think wow so I said that and somebody said there was a person who cornered the market and in black velvet right at the end of the 19th century because they knew the Queen Victoria was going to die and you had to wear mourning for a year so in anticipation of her dying that's good old English preparedness is I think that's good old futures training yeah so this is this gives me an opportunity to talk to you not about a new book or anything like that but an opportunity to talk about kind of everything you've done and down and stuff and I I've been really interested in sort of your background especially if the stuff around living in the woods and and stuff around your ancestors and I wanted to start by going back to the 1600s the 1600 that would be the arrival of the Puritans in New England yeah but you weren't around then not personally no but in spirit I was in spirit yeah youko dedicated The Handmaid's Tale to a woman named Mary Reeve Webster you also wrote her about her in the 1995 poem half hanged Mary yeah you described her as your favorite ancestor if she was so so the big question is did she have any children because if she doesn't have any children she couldn't be an ancestor but she was certainly part of those Webster's and part of the extended Webster family as it were and my grandmother was one of those Webster's and I heard your grandmother use to say on a Sunday she was related to you on a Wednesday she'd say she has to change her mind a bit about it depending on how daring she felt so who was she she was a woman who luckily for her was accused of witchcraft before the Salem thing really got going so she was taken into Boston she was put on trial she was acquitted and she went back to Hadley Massachusetts but the locals didn't accept the verdict so they strung her up anyway it was before they had invented the drop which breaks her neck so they they just kind of hauled her up you know like a flag so as opposed to being hanged by standing and then you drop and draw it was later it breaks your neck right so they just kind of strung her up and left her up there all night came in the morning to cut down the corpse and she was still alive so if they thought she had supernatural powers before this event they must really have thought it afterwards and that's what we know about her we know that Cotton Mather who was one of the great whippers on of the whole witchcraft thing was also a great whipper on a sentiment against her and what was she accused of doing she was a kids of making an old man extremely valetudinarian valetudinarian old she had made an old man hold older she had somehow been right somehow her fault apparently through witchcraft well he quite frankly sounds as if he was having some hallucinations right and since one of them was was of her it was kind of fatal it was very bad to have someone have a hallucination about you so she survives the hanging she does and then is seen she lives in another 14 years and must have terrified the townsfolk even more or or or she was terrified I'm sure they were mutually terrified sure they were of one another I feel like that story stuck with you though I'm I'm in a must've if it means well my aunts were great collectors of such kinds of stories and of course they were from Nova Scotia and people in Nova Scotia liked to collect stories like that and send you your genealogical background so I have a lot of that kind of thing your mom and your dad were both from Nova Scotia word did you feel a connection I know they left but did you and you didn't grow up there but they were depression emigrants did you feel a connection to know was good absolutely had to go back after the war you couldn't go during the war but but after the more we would scream out there to visit them make the rounds that's beautiful but what do you remember from going out there Oh quite a lot mm-hmm because I have a lot of cousins and I'm still in touch with them but they one of them was the Annapolis Valley with a place on the Bay of Fundy as well and the other one was down at the South Shore so my dad's family was so sure around Shelburne do you know anything about that part of it I know the South sure I don't know Shelburne ok so there's a river there called the Clyde River and if you go up the river you get to a place called upper Clyde which is sort of a bump on the map so that's where he was born in 1906 and when you went there did it feel like a whole different life to you I mean there was a it was like the 19th century because they didn't have any electricity right so you were walking into a 19th century rural firm ecosystem and this was on the 19 for you the 1950s little earlier than the warrants and 45 essentially yeah so after that time we would go out and visit quite regularly but I feel like the life without these these comforts and electricity and television is pretty much a part of your story well it allows me to write a novel like alias grace without a lot of research because I still had an action and you and you lived it I mean when you were growing up you're growing up out in the blood that wasn't good yeah but but it was but that was different from out in the woods yeah it was without electricity etc but did I mean you you spent a good part of every year with your family in the woods in northern Quebec your dad was an entomologist from the time you were a few months old you head into the bush from the spring until the fall no it's correct so if you if you close your eyes and think back to that childhood what what moments come to mind your feet got very cold your shoes right and then you wouldn't have any yeah so so you'd have to go around and look into cold dirt with your uncertainty going around and cold food do you look back on it it's obviously a pretty unconventional way to grow up I mean a lot of it well it was more usual than the others to Baltimore people didn't have electricity it wasn't it wasn't the norm a lot of people didn't have cars huh was right after the war highways were actually if you couldn't believe it quite empty so it was a different period of time and within that different period of time there were more people living like that than there are now so it may have been less unusual than you from your perspective might think what were some of your jobs you had to do when you were living out it's a lot of carrying in the wood right because of course any heating and cooking is going to come from wood so kids were enlisted quite early to do chores and that was nothing new because my my parents had both done the same did you mind being away from everybody like did you mind me was it who was this everybody of which you speak other other children than your siblings Margaret other children you know everybody that's that's others yeah yeah we had some others from time to time yeah some other children of other scientists and things would pass through and there was another one living not too far away that had two children so it wasn't completely devoid of of others and then around 45 or so we moved to Lake Superior okay so north of Lake Superior there were more children that could be acquired there so maybe three or four more and this was still in the summertime when you would go out to this spring summer and fall there was still some and you'd missed the end and beginning of school yeah B yeah sounds pretty good to me you know it's sitting in the desk that was kind of kids kids did not evolve to sit in desks right they didn't evolve to be inside rooms all the time so what's coming back right now is the idea of outdoor schools making quite a lot of inroads and they they feel that children actually learn better when it's interactive learning with their environment rather than just on the page do you feel like that shaped your life at all that experience living I don't have a control group so I couldn't get one together me right have a minute I don't know dude look at me that was brought up in some other way right so of course you would say sure it did so reading writing and drawing a lot of that went on because there weren't any other I didn't have an iPad Tom there weren't any I see you sitting there with your iPad I've been told their iPads back then Jackie here no no they were called black boards they were called slate there are no iPads um yeah so it wasn't and of course as it was in the woods there were no snow cinema no movies no radio we couldn't get much on a radio up there were there bears oh yes to him scary oh yes must have been a little scary I'd be scared you know respectful I think you need to be respectful embarrassin not leave your foods turn around and if you catch a fish hanging out from a tree it's hard to have any sensible person would do hard to have the kind of perspective when you're 8 years old and in the middle of the dark woods I'm not sure about that I suppose but either I'd be a little terrified remember when I used to be a little scared of the moose or something like this can be tricky and mating season it's true yeah never worry about million what you don't you wanted to stay away from them so I mean apparently I stopped were you doing messing around at the mrs. Tom I was just trying to build the treehouse as I was trying to do when they were trying to eat the moss off the tree so I was trying to do so you allegedly say there were no iPads I still don't have any proof we're gonna get someone to check that wallet what doing while we're doing the interview there's no Starbucks no I don't I don't know about that because that seems like that's all we spin around no there are no lattes hold on hold on you're blowing my mind so you ended up writing and illustrating your first novel and you were seven called Annie the ant it still exists it's a bad example of a narrative arc I'm gonna give you the first line it was late in the afternoon and all the ants were busy some of them were pulling bugs other crumbs of bread or cookies all of these to give their larvae yeah just nappy opening tell me what kind of seven-year-old rights they have what kind of seven-year-old were you'd probably quite well-informed about the habits events but was someone who wanted to write about it someone who wants every day we had previously been writing comic books quite a bit and reading them I must say as well so we did have Illustrated I've illustrated in ante the end we have a picture of Annie mm-hmm herself once she got legs problem with the plot is three quarters of it she does nothing because she's an egg right then she's a larva right then she's a pupa right and until that that's over with nothing happens to him nothing to do as a bad Starbucks no I fired and no narrative arc but I could maybe because your father was an entomologist and perhaps because you lived out in the woods like that but you seem to have no fear of insects I have no fear of insects as such why do you think people are afraid of insects creepy crawly and lots of legs I think that might be it oh yeah so usually even more afraid of spiders no I used to be afraid of carpenter ants did you really yeah well you don't want them in your house no he's pretty sure he's to show up if everybody but you weren't afraid of them as such you were afraid of what they're gonna do to your wood I was more afraid of what they felt like when they were crawling on my hand you know what I mean why would they be crawling under him cuz I pick him up to be charging you by I could charge you by the hour but I also read that you went to Sun you chose to go to Sundays which is not something about you talk about how children aren't meant for the desk and yet they sort of had to be forced in there a lot of children don't choose to go to Sunday school I know but it was the forbidden fruit because my parents didn't really approve of it so it was a reverse I went it was a rebellious act to go to something act of curiosity later on went to every single different religion I could get my hands on including the spiritualists what Sunday School was it it was the Deer Park United and did it stick with you did the no no it wasn't your part no Deer Park United where I went to brownies it was Bloor Street United right in Toronto as / yes so did you did any of that stick with you did you come home to your largely I'm guessing your just parents and say hey you know I went to Sunday school I found out about the Lord let's let's do this no but I won the prize for Best Bible verse memorizer plus the prize for best essay on temperance or why you shouldn't drink can you remember any of it absolutely you remember the verse can't remember which for a thing I think it was a multiple the multiple verse test but it was sounds so some a couple of different sums they were quite nice can you remember any of the temperance essing absolutely here's why you shouldn't drink okay when you drink and alcohol is in your bloodstream your capillaries expand and then if you go in out into the snow and fall over you will freeze to death faster oh boy I'm gonna poke a hole in that you think yeah why do you drink in the hot weather you're missing the point Tom what am I really if you're if you're if the only problem with drinking is that when you if you develop this habit in the hot weather you'll carry it over into the winter and then you're doomed Tom who's to say who's to say all I got from your your essay on temperance is that I just got a drink during the month of July well but that's but that's that's interesting to me it's interesting to me that you as me again most children aren't curious about faith it's something that they have to go to its most children aren't encouraged to be curious about religion it's something that's kind of voice turd upon them it's it's interesting to me yes I don't expect you to know why but I think their ideas was that children shouldn't be brainwashed but should make up their own minds later and did you have did you retain any notion of Christianity from there extremely well-versed was that because not only did I go to Sunday school which in which you didn't learn the interesting parts I'm here to tell you but I could I could bone up on those later because in order to go through English language and literature in the late fifties and early sixties you had you know this stuff you you have to know something about Christianity and theology in order to make your way through people like Milton and indeed even Shakespeare to a certain extent Louis and certainly John Bunyan and any rather more pious 19th century novels you even need to you even need it in order to decipher the titles of a lot of 20th century novels but it also leads that guy and I'm guessing that some of the larger grand lessons of Christianity were stuff that would be probably taught around the house and sort of more of a humanist way the do unto others because because unlike the United States right Canada did not have the separation of church and state right so there are two school systems the Protestant and the Catholic and the Protestant is now pretty secular but at that time it wasn't so you got Bible readings every morning at school would you make of that well it was just something that happened at school it's cool I tell you something that it's have to happen in school and if you're just tuning in I'm speaking with the author Margaret Atwood there's a story you told that I'm really curious about well you were at high school at least side here in Toronto you were walking across a football field and you had an experience and here's what you wrote about it later the day I became a poet I was scuttling along in my usual furtive way suspecting no ill when a large invisible thumb descended from the sky and pressed down on the top of my head a poem formed it's a metaphor Tom but there wasn't really a thumb I was told there were no metaphors back then what happened what happened what do you remember I just started writing I just started writing so what were my choices before that time keeping in mind that we had something called the guidance textbook which was gray yeah and then the guidance textbook there were all the careers you might possibly have and there were a lot of careers for mail types of people and there were five four female types of people and they were nurse secretary public school teacher airline stewardess which is what they were called then and home economists yes I saw home economists yeah what is that done with Donna mist do you know Archie comics yes of course you know earlier chin comment yeah you know fifties aren't you comics yeah I was a deep Archie comics reader growing up well that's what Betty and Veronica were doing when they were making cookies for the boys home ech yes I didn't know it was a profession I thought it was dead sharp okay with the wood so and and the girls do home and so would they learn to yes right so so why had I taken that oh because I was I should have taken secretarial sciences then I don't had a type uh-huh which I don't but it was just scary alright it was scary girls went into it who were their boyfriends ankle bracelets and is that is that a thing is that like when you're going steadying yes where your clasp in oh no it was a little more scary than that oh can I translate I don't think there is anything you can translate it to anymore I think it's perhaps DMing a selfie on Instagram these days perhaps that's him I don't know what it would be equivalent to just recall that I was I was twelve when I went to high school and I was not ready for a lot of this stuff so I want to go back to that moment is that I understand that it was a metaphor and a thumb didn't place itself on your temp that did not but do you remember there was a it was there truly a moment you're walking across football field and you said oh my god I think I'm gonna be pretty well can you place it yeah I just did I told you I was wearing my pink princess line dress that I enjoyed myself in home AK mmm-hmm and at that very moment I thought good bye pink dress is gonna be black from now on and when you were writing poems did you feel did you feel something different that you had never felt before I know when I speak to musicians they say oh the first time I picked up a guitar I felt or the first time must have been so Thomas this is a long time ago now I have drawers full of this stuff right I thought it was really good it's pretty bad but that's how you learned you know yeah I suppose what were you writing poems about oh all kinds of things the hungarian revolution stuff like that oh just typical teenage stuff well you know it was a big deal in 1956 I'm sure it was but you know it wasn't you know compare thee to a summers day or no no no we were we were into the the same e'er side of things right so uh definitely not lyrical love poems of the 17th century we're your buddies into poetry as well we've already poems together nope no no this was just an eccentricity of mine so one of the people I'd went to high school with told me much later that she thought it was very brave of me to just come out and say that I was gonna be a writer because I didn't confine myself to poetry right I was going to be a writer in all fields so I started with everything that I currently do the nonfiction prose the fiction and the poetry well in your in your yearbook in which I wrote you wrote your yearbook yeah what do you mean you've wrote your yearbook I wrote all the entries from my class in the yearbook so what you're about to quote was written by me why did you write your own all your book because I was elected to be the person who wrote the write-ups of the people okay well let me read the thing that I thought someone else read about me and my boyfriend Paul did it that seems more like an admission than a than a fact Margaret is finally getting out there and sending the same for you I appreciate that okay so ready this was presumably written by somebody else it was written in fact written by me everybody knew that all right bazoo wrote about yourself in the third person named Horace Peggy's not-so-secret ambition is to write the Canadian novel and with those English marks who doubts that she will yep quite a thing to write about yourself by the way absolutely that's very very that's very nice of you to write enterprise Oh it feels like something that someone else would write about you I'm glad and it was it was accepted as being more or less what ought to have been written about me and it showed some confidence I think in your ability to do so Margaret I know what stupidity what's the difference between naivety and stupidity is the question oh yeah okay I'll revise it how naive were you really thinking about writing the Great Canadian I was a teenager absolutely mm-hmm yes of course I knew nothing about publishing or any of those things at all because it hardly existed so there had been writers in the 30s and there had even been some bestsellers like Ella Montgomery and um there had been a couple of bestsellers that we had that we just didn't know about it all like the the tin flute got real love sold an astonishing a number of copies in the 40s but of course this wasn't the forties anymore yeah oh so yeah I just thought I can do it why not I like how it's not it's not necessarily about writing the best novel you could but you it was it's it seems to be imbued with some a game third-person ambition like I want to write the Great Canadian well there were people kept talking about the great American of course and why shouldn't there be a great Canadian management which they were not talking about well I want to get to how that all worked out in just a second but Margaret Atwood you studied at the University of Toronto with the great literary critic Northup Frey you've said that he stopped you from quote dying young and poor in a Paris carrot well that was that was what I was going to do I was gonna run away to Paris smoke cheat on not possible and they made me cough drink absinthe again not something I was good at and live in a garret write my deathless masterpieces in the evenings wait tables during the day get TB and cough to death by the age of 30 there's one dead what made you want to do that who were you mantises who were you looking to who had done that happy oh variations of it it was sort of the John Keats crossed with Katherine Mansfield type of thing right in that is that is sort of the stereotypical dream of the author isn't it when they're sixteen right to live in a life I often often guess I should say when they're 20 I would often get you know young authors coming to Newfoundland and saying I'm just gonna move up to the lighthouse that they write how many weeks I think I think we're talking hours so what did Northrop Frye do to you do tell you of that how would you like to have a windrow Wilson scholarship and go to graduate school and I said no I think I'm gonna go to Paris and etc and he said I think you would get more writing done you know he's right because I did have a job as a what would now be called a server but was then called a waitress of course and it was very debilitating mm-hmm sounds like the difference between a friend of mine who's a stand-up comic he often says to people do you want to be a stand-up comic or do you want to have been a stand-up comic I think the louder yeah so I think those who go to drink absinthe in Paris perhaps want to have been writers well maybe they would they want to have been absinthe drinkers well who doesn't well I don't anymore I think I think I might still it's gonna bring in a bottle for me and you so so you you saw I think he also he probably taught you them what an actual author can is no nobody did that okay there wasn't a model and and that was why I think we got into in the sixties creating publishing companies and later on creating the Writers Union because nobody had any idea of how to do this right do you ever imagine what your life would have been like had you gone to Paris and smoke cigarettes and been a server yeah my French would have been one heck of a lot better than it is but you know I don't know if that I'm you must be grateful that it all turned out the way that it did any bets you didn't head over to some kind of cafe and hang out with a monkey what eating a striped shirt wearing a stray I think my only idea of bears for some reason I've been there a bearable I've been there a lot but yet I still think about Bugs Bunny cartoons from Nike okay see back in the woods you didn't have Bugs Bunny cartoons you had to make your own we had Bugs Bunny comics but only after the war you were a comic person too weren't you absolutely what did you like about them uh well that that was what there was so that was it that it was comics but that was the forum that was disapproved of by adults you know it would probably be the Internet or it would be you know porno films or something like that but but then it was comics or Twitter is supposed to be bad for you yeah yeah or tic-tock tic-tock is the things that tick tock is this video platform every video is 13 seconds long I think it's entirely populated by people under 30 and I see nothing but what kind of older people get very mad about it but really it is just what's in it um you'll see like a video of someone who like you know the wave a wand over themselves and they'll turn into somebody else or though what's wrong with that nothing wrong with it in my opinion but you know I think the old old folks tend to not like this yeah exactly they're probably doing that in the 1700s they probably thought oh your bonnet was tied the wrong way back in my day we steyr bonnets on the top you know what people forget about the advent of the Gutenberg printing presses that we think out out from it poured all of these classics mm-hmm actually out from it poor and a lot of pornographic literature and cheap fiction and political drugs I can't believe ledges tract I can't believe I'm about to say this I'm so happy you brought up the printing press and why are you happy well no cause it brings you to Marshall McLuhan well no it doesn't bring Universal McClure I do now the hallway out there brings me to Marshall McLuhan did you see the big picture of him at in the hall oh I must go look at it look at life like well sorry life size is uh yeah not bigger no I think you know the size of him all right as far as I can tell me I never met the man but it now in this way I assume that's how big he was I'll go and tell you yeah you mean you met Marshall McLuhan by the way of course dear I'm really old come on yes Hina Guttenberg yeah Steve Guttenberg is yeah talking about Marshall McLuhan tell me what was he like so Marshall McLuhan hung out at st. Mike's which is just south of Victoria College right and his first book called the mechanical bride and classic highly recommended he had taken advertisements of the late forties and he had analyzed them as if he were a Joycean literary critic which in fact he was there he has these very funny analyses of the ants right which were in those days much more literary and a lot more Freudian than they are even now how do you mean lots more words right and a lot of weird imagery that you couldn't get away with now right you can say hello oh well so this is what happened some of the people whose ads he had taken such as Proctor and Gamble took exception to this and he hadn't obtained the copyright hmm so the book had to be pulled but we all knew that he had stacks of it in his cellar so you would go to Marshall McLuhan's house and you've got a black market copy of the mechanical bride out the back window and I've got one that's pretty cool don't you think I do think that's a very very cool with this house didn't get into it transaction so your first book of poetry as an adult was a pamphlet called double Persephone an adult and you did all the artwork yourself my hand said it well that's the thing you type set up do you types edit yourself on an old flatbed press I'm longing to John Robert Columbo I don't know who John Robert well I began to have a google yes ramble Wikipedia essentially if you didn't play banjo in the 40th I don't really know if his name doesn't begin with old Joe something yes great and of course banjo I used to run the the poetry nights at the bohemian Embassy mm-hmm hey coffee house on st. Nicholas Street in 1960-61 where I gave my first poetry readings but he also was the possessor of this flatbed press so yes I said it and didn't make very many copies which look well and they sold them for $0.50 each you know that original copy sell for thousands and thousands of dollars it makes me sick I should have kept you know hundreds of you get a couple of copies in the basement maybe you can hand him out I'll come by you can hand you can hand him out through the basement to me if you're just tuning in I'm speaking with Margaret Atwood we're celebrating her birthday she's here with me in the studio you went to Harvard for grad school in 61 when you were 21 that was the year JFK took office it was the year the Bay of Pigs invasion and perhaps more momentously it was your first time living outside of Canada what was your biggest surprise of living in the States for the first no big surprise was that my roommate who is from North Carolina couldn't go anywhere without people saying what a cute accent say it again but I could paisa most them unnoticed and unobserved yes the secret agent right from another country where is she from within the country was an oddity so she has to try to get me to teach her how to speak Canadian and we would spend some time rehearsing to no avail can you teach me how does a big Canadian I have a hard time with him oh not like her no I mean oil yeah and boil boil and boil do you say Oh bowl Oh ball bowl yeah oh you wanted to speak North Carolinian mm-hmm oh well you know she had a very thick accent but oh you would teach her oil and boy she wanted to speak like me so many people wouldn't tell her how cute she was all the time but for you I mean when you went down there I mean I know when I first started to go to the States I said oh and you know these are people they're just like me and when I went down there and I can't I don't quite have the language to describe it but I oh and this is actually actually a little bit different I want to know if you felt the same when you were going to Harvard it was a little bit different mm-hmm like quite a lot different how'd you find the United States Tom familiar with a very large rich country yeah the United States home is this the Wikipedia voice yes what is the GDP frequently doesn't know much about Canada right and particularly it did not in 1960 so I'm afraid I took to lying because they would say oh so do you live in an igloo and I'm I got to sing yes about it you know it's it's an England with several different rooms in it it's quite a big igloo and and do you have a dog yes about lovely dog team I've got 12 wonderful Huskies because you kind of couldn't disabuse them mmm this idea that it was cold all the time they all lived in English but I know things have changed since then because we've had Leonard Cohen since then but mm-hmm I've heard that anyway and it's true Leonard Cohen yes he started to make an impact but he hadn't yet made one in 1961 when did you first meet him in the six days when I was teaching in Montreal so that would be 67 and was he let her Cohen by then or was he he was pretty much Leonard Cohen by then oh my he started out as a poet mm-hmm so he was well-known as a poet in the early sixties but he had not yet become the big music star that he was shortly to become were you a fan Oh everybody loved Leonard Cohen who could not you yourself when the Governor General's Award in 66 for your collection of poems the circle game this was your first book after a double perséphone the one you printed yourself what do you what do you remember about getting that kind of recognition in your okay first of all who knew what it was second I was living in a you didn't know what the Governor General's Award was not really I mean so I knew that there it was about the only literary award there was at that time it was a big deal but I was 27 so my main problem at that moment was what do you wear to it because I didn't have any of those kinds of clothes so acquired of there was a place in Boston called Filene's basement where you could go I've heard of filings but yeah so I think actually I borrowed a dress from one of my roommates I don't think I even went to Filene's basement for that and what had I bought with thee to me enormous um I had bought my first contact lenses but they were the hard kind so if you got a speck in your eye it was very painful and I had just started learning to wear them I was only supposed to be wearing them a half an hour at a time right so I got stuck in the ceremony it goes on and on I don't know how to take them out I end up it's dinner and I'm by this time I'm weeping and the nice gentleman on either side of me thought that I was overcome by emotion so they start drying my tears and patting me and telling me it will be alright so the the first chance I get I rush into the ladies and pride the motor for my eyes this time they're very painful so how did you react when you went outside of the you know desperate pain what am I supposed to say godsend you know yeah chunka chunka cash I bought an electric typewriter plus the contact lenses it was a big deal oh your folks proud of him at that moment I don't know whether they really registered because they didn't they they were not part of the extremely small my new miniscule literary scene in Canada yeah so I think they thought it was very nice mhm but they would have said that I mean no matter what I was put on my mother would say you look very nice and I think you're just saying that because you're my mother I know but I need the truth but isn't that nice it is lovely I love that too you know yeah so I did have my first interview for a newspaper then it was a guy who was on his way back from the Vietnam War more reporter and they his passing through Boston some they said why don't you just go and interview this Canadian poet who's won this thing so there is this battle-hardened journey here I am 27 years old my little horn rimmed glasses yeah and he looks at me and I look at him and he looks at me and I look at him and he says say something interesting say you write all your poetry on drugs because of course it was now by now it was the LSD moment sure and did you know not did you say not did you write all your poetry on drugs I mean that's another question about Saigon I did not say that to appease him it's an interesting way to conduct your first interview Margaret that's what I thought yeah I thought so too you could have maybe I could have lied you could have also just taken some LSD and the interview might have been really fun then um I really think so not for me I want to skip ahead a little bit because you've been generous but I don't want to take up too much of your time yes you do I don't you do I don't I don't if I did if I did shut down the curtain and take my head's off headphones off and lock the door and I get out of the Absinthe and the LSD and we'd have quite a birthday party you know you probably should buy and you should I don't want to take up too much of your time let alone that you don't want to take up too much time Christ you know you're a busy person I want to talk about another governor's award so The Handmaid's Tale wins the Governor General's Award this time a little bit bigger I've wondered about this by this time your daughter was in high school handmade sales quite often required reading in school was it required reading for her reasons don't know the answer to that but you could ask her you don't know she never came home with the book report saying hey mom I got to do your book Wow so I'm guessing not I'm guessing ahead she had to do this might have been quite secretive was it was a wide it but it how did it feel for you to have a book become required reading I feel like that's another exelon foreign for an author okay so I love that you looked at me when I say - long back you know I like I'm glad you were looking over there that's an issue on you came back yeah what what does that mean so the real result of it is that if it's required reading in high school those who read it think you're actually dead but you know that people that you read in high school are dead right you always knew that so you assume that they're you assume that as a high school student it was him they're dead right so you can be quite a surprise when you turn up in real life and you're and you're not dead yeah and they will say but I took you in high school but it must it must be meaningful also as well to have a book to be deemed important enough that it should be taught to the don't know how it's being taught do you know you're not there in the in the room does that ever concern you no because I have no control over it but I can tell you a result the showrunner of The Handmaid's Tale his name is Bruce Miller got this book assigned in high school where he read it and at that time when he was an adolescent he thought to himself this is what I'm gonna do when I grow up I am going to make this into a TV show and he did seems like a pretty good way of teaching it if that's how he got in well I think a lot of the things that get made of various kinds musical things too are things that people have been very impressed by as adolescence and then time passes and then they have the actual knowledge and power to to make them the same thing happened to Sarah Polley who read alias Grace when she was an adolescent and wrote me a letter when she was seventeen saying could I have the rights to this book because I'm going to make it into a movie she was 17 she said it only took me 20 years but I think that's what what then happens you get very impressed by something when you're that age and and then you either emulate it you recreated in some way when you've got the skill set to do it I think that's what I meant by saying it was meaningful to have a taught that Margaret because yeah I think was meaningful for other people because that then resulted and you know people girl people thought that they can write speculative fiction they thought that these were subjects that could be treated this way they're they're now quite a slew of books that circle around these these themes written by people who acquired the skill set to be able to do it hmm so now we move on to the Testaments which we kind of started by talking about if the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale you won the Booker Prize this year jointly with Bernardin evaristo who also one of her novel girl woman other the two of you walked up arm and arm to to share the award how did it feel to win that prize that was very sweet so as you know I wanted in the year 2000 for the blind assassin mm-hmm as you want to know I didn't mean it from The Handmaid's Tale because Kingsley Amos wanted for a book called the old Devils but even being shortlisted back in 1986 put the Handmaid's Tale on the map I have no stranger to being shortlisted for the Booker it has happened to me six times so I have a practiced ability to not win it so this time however it was so that that we did and it and that was very lovely and what else can I say about that I mean you said you were surprised that you wanted I don't mean I thought I was out of the age group he thought you were told maybe too old for oh yes dear very much too old is that the old person voice yes whatever it's it's a really tremendous book what made you want to revisit and Lydia I mean this was uh this was a character that it was you know it was in The Handmaid's Tale but the true story of an idea how she became who she was the only scene she's only seen from the outside in the hemisphere yeah I mean in the Testament it's more about the humanity event Lydia well the three-dimensional so she does not come out as a as an angel because in fact she isn't one no but she is an interesting character all the same so when when did you make the decision to take about the middle of 2016 that's a pretty easy year nothing really big happiness yeah before the election I was doing it but you could kind of see things moving more towards Gilead than they had been and say 1995 right so for a while we thought we were moving away from it but then for some years we appeared to have been moving back towards it in many parts of the world but not in other parts I was just in Ireland and they're still pretty perked up by the fact that they reversed this absolutely no birth control or or a choice at all they were they they reversed that decision and they've been digging up a lot of their own past such as the mother and baby homes and which a lot of babies died because they were malnourished and improperly cared-for so all of that has come to light there's a book I know called the Republic of shame well well I'm glad you have the occasion to look at the lightness in the world I mean how do you feel when you see the the signs of you know make Margaret Atwood fiction again in these signs well I think you know there's a reason that that people are carrying those signs around right because things seem to have moved back towards Gilead totalitarianism but just yesterday we had a I probably shouldn't say just yesterday cuz you're not broadcasting this for a while it's very very kind of you and very very very if and thank you for being so perceptive as to help us help our editing a little bit appreciate your energy thank you so in the election of early November 2019 Virginia just went all Democrat we means they may finally be able to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the United States so you're hopeful you're feeling that things there no there's no point I'm not being hopeful I don't necessarily think that they're looking up but I don't think they're inevitably looking down can I tell you another expression I know one on the way and I told you an expression you said that has to be from Newfoundland can I tell you another one yes we must live in hopes supposing we die in despair well that is very cheery Mergen I'm not entirely sure how to bring this up but I certainly I wanted to pass on my condolences on the loss of your partner Graham yes it was very sad but not unexpected I just want to talk a little bit about him Graeme Gibson was a novelist a nonfiction writer a conservationist a human rights activists with you he was a founding member of both the Writers Union of Canada and the writers trust of Canada he served as a president of pan Canada but I'd love I'd love if you could just tell me something about him Graham yeah um know what kind of thing would you like a funny thing whatever you'd like whatever I'd like he was a great cook is that so what did he like to cook he liked to cook whatever I felt like cooking at the moment right so he uh what was the specialty what was your favorite thing he cooked mmm he had a quite a range of things but he had some things that he invented himself he had a very good garlic soup recipe that he he put things into it from different garlic soups he had here and there and he perfected it so I have that recipe I'll sell it to you I'll take it out of the back of it with the Marshall McLuhan books what give me give me a memory of him if you don't mind Ram um early Graham middle grammar later Graham middle Graham middle grim that would be probably let's say our first canoe trip first canoe trip was on Lake Temagami and we were in a pretty unfrequented part of it and we had use a polar bacon and we found this great big stash of puff balls but we didn't have anything to cook them in so we paddled around until we found a lone cabin and it had a flag flying so there were people home so covered with soot and with her hunting knives in full view we went up to the door and knocked and we said would you happen to have a couple of pieces of bacon I think we completely terror elderly people just a minute just a minute take the whole pound look it doesn't help that you're wearing a ski mask so you went in but you're doing all right I was I just wanted to see how you're doing me yeah I'm all right talking to you yeah so I think it's it's better to be with people yeah however I have lots of friends and family and cousins we were we're all thinking about you something thank you I wanted to let you know you know when we passed on the word on the show here we had a lot of notes and I wanted to pass on that a lot of people were thinking about you and we certainly were as well well he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances and so I've heard from a lot of people I'm glad different walks of life the International birding community the writing communities here and they're there and all sorts of people that he knew well you know as I want to be so cognizant of your time I don't want to take up too much of your time as we've established Margaret I thought I'd close off like this in a CBC interview in 1911 to you by the way I got a I get a kick out of it man I am certainly enjoying it in a CBC interview in 1977 you said I laugh at my public image otherwise I jump off a bridge yeah well you can't control your public image can you so I have known writers not mentioning any names who started believing in the inflated billboard picture of themselves that might be out there and that is fatal what do people get wrong about you in your mug image I'm not sure that I just have just one public image but when you see people write about you well that's been very variable over the years so they're not reviewing my hair anymore which they used to do quite a bit the midea so curls Oh an evilness a darkness you know let me tell you another story sure my neighbor Sam he was a lawyer of an eccentric disposition yeah came out one October when I was sweeping up my leaves with a broom and he said Margaret yeah she doesn't let people see you doing that Sam what are you talking about it's the broom Margaret I said Sam what do you mean he said well don't you know people call you the Wicked Witch of the annex and I said Sam fear is given more respect than love is it Margaret you're right I'm gonna leave it there it's been nice talking to you yeah thanks for making the time scared loved [Laughter]

Channel: q on cbc

Views: 20,883

Rating: 4.75 out of 5

Keywords: Margaret Atwood, Margaret Atwood interview, Margaret Atwood CBC, Margaret Atwood 2019, Margaret Atwood CBC q, Margaret Atwood YouTube

Id: k2OG_E03h8o

Length: 56min 16sec (3376 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019