Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  She also noted that she had trouble convincing people that a writer’s life is actual work. “My lawyer says I don’t have a real job, that my novels flow like toothpaste from a tube....I wish that were true. It’s bloody hard work, as Joan Sutherland used to say. My mom is 89 years old and still doesn’t think I work. It still comes as a surprise to her when I say I’m working on a new book.” Finally, she commented that literary fame was a two-edged sword: “When you’re at my age and stage, if you write the telephone book, they’d publish it. I give my manuscripts to friends who are critical readers.”

  2264. KRULL, John. “Read, but Not over Her Shoulder: Margaret Atwood Wants Her Fiction and Poetry to Stand on Their Own and Resists Probes of Her Private Life.” Indianapolis Star 26 April 1998: Section: Lifestyle: J01. Atwood interviewed before Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture. (1722 w). Atwood’s reluctance to reveal too much about herself is defended by Mary Kirtz, an English professor at the University of Akron: “We sometimes forget that writers aren’t like movie stars. They do not want to display themselves before us, and they shouldn’t have to.”

  2265. LADOUSSE, Gillian Porter. “The Unicorn and the Booby Hatch.” Textes publiés sur Margaret Atwood dans Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies (1975-1997). [Ed.] Jean-Michel Lacroix. Talence [France]: Association française d’études cana-diennes (A.F.E.C.), 1998. 31-45. Original interview conducted in Paris on 4 February 1978. In it, Atwood reflects on growing presence of Canadian literature in the international market, as well as on herself as a feminist writer. Reprinted from Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies 5 (1978): 97-111.

  2266. SNELL, Marilyn. “Power and Non-Power.” The Power to Bend Spoons: Interviews with Canadian Novelists. Ed. Beverley Daurio. Toronto: Mercury Press, 1998. 20-24. Snell interviews Atwood.

  2267. STIRLING, Claire. “Three Bits of Evidence Add to Novelist Atwood’s Picture of the Historical Focus of Alias Grace: Margaret Atwood Worried She Might Have ‘Got It All Wrong’ in Her Novel about Grace Marks’s Life.” Vancouver Sun 17 June 1998: C7. Atwood interviewed in Thunder Bay when she was in town to collect one of the two honorary degrees she received in 1998. The interview includes Atwood’s comments on new material which has emerged about Grace Marks, including a prison-release questionnaire signed by Marks uncovered by the archivist of the Kingston Penitentiary.

  Atwood was amused by some of the questions. “It was a market research questionnaire about things like, ‘How was the food?’ On the verge of leaving, how are you going to answer? That it was terrible. Back in for you.” One of the questions was “To what do you attribute your incarceration?’” Atwood: “Her answer was so perfect—I just loved it....She said ‘To having been employed in the same household as a villain.’ She didn’t say, ‘I killed somebody.’ She didn’t say ‘I didn’t kill somebody.’…Her handwriting was right there. It was a neat, controlled, self-contained signature, let me tell you. Not giving much away.” In passing, Atwood also noted: “They taught [inmates] specifically to read and write in the penitentiary. It was so they could read the Bible and become improved. Thrashing and religion were the two things that were supposed to improve you in those days.”

  2268. VEVAINA, Coomi S. “Daring to Be Human: A Conversation with Margaret At-wood.” Margaret Atwood: The Shape Shifter. Ed. Coomi S. Vevaina and Coral Ann Howells. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1998. [146]-156. Conversation took place at Atwood’s residence in Toronto just before publication of Cat’s Eye in 1988.

  Scholarly Resources

  2269. “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Novels for Students. Vol. 4. Ed. Marie Rose Napierk-owski. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 1998. 114-136.

  2270. ABITEBOUL, Maurice. “ Le romanesque et le grotesque dans ‘The Man from Mars’ de Margaret Atwood ou le mythe démythifié.” Textes publiés sur Margaret Atwood dans Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies (1975-1997). [Ed.] Jean-Michel Lacroix. Talence [France]: Association française d’études canadiennes (A.F.E.C.), 1998. 81-92. Reprinted from Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies 24 (1988): 87-98.

  2271. ADAMO, Laura Elizabeth. “The Imaginary Girlfriend: A Study of Margaret At-wood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace.” MA thesis. University of Calgary, 1998. 193 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1998) and as .pdf file: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0014/MQ31277.pdf. Shows how the feminist vision of harmonious relationships and politically effective alliances between and among women is frequently complicated and obscured by the multiple contradictions of power structures which form and inform women’s relationships. For more see MAI 37.01 (February 1999): 67.

  2272. BEER, Janet. “Doing It with Mirrors: History and Cultural Identity in The Robber Bride.” British Journal of Canadian Studies 13.2 (1998): 306-316.

  2273. BIGNELL, Jonathan. “Territories, Boundaries, Identities.” Margaret Atwood: The Shape Shifter. Ed. Coomi S. Vevaina and Coral Ann Howells. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1998. 9-25. On The Handmaid’s Tale.

  2274. BONTATIBUS, Donna. “Reconnecting with the Past: Personal Hauntings in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride.” Papers on Language and Literature 34.4 (1998): 357-371. Bontatibus argues that in the novel, Atwood draws from a specific folkloric tradition to give added meaning and depth to this contemporary ghost story.

  2275. BRINK, André. The Novel: Language and Narrative from Cervantes to Calvino. London: Macmillan, 1998. See especially “Withdrawal and Return: Margaret Atwood, Surfacing.” 253-268.

  2276. BROWN, Lyn Mikel. “The Dangers of Time Travel: Revisioning the Landscape of Girls’ Relationships in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” Analyzing the Different Voice: Feminist Psychological Theory and Literary Texts. Ed. Jerilyn Fisher, Ellen S. Silber, and Carol Gilligan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. 27-43.

  2277. BROWNLEY, Martine Watson. “Atwood on Women, War and History: ‘The Loneliness of the Military Historian.’” Lyrical Symbols and Narrative Transformations: Essays in Honor of Ralph Freedman. Ed. Kathleen L. Komar and Ross Shideler. Columbia: Camden House, 1998. 186-203. Atwood as a recycler: Brownley contends that this dramatic monologue, first published in 1990, is by a character who is a prototype of Tony Fremont, the military historian who appeared three years later in The Robber Bride.

  2278. BRUNET, Emmanuelle. “[Her] Genius Was Synthesis: L’Exogenèse de The Handmaid’s Tale.” Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale / Le Conte de la ser-vante: The Power Game. Ed. Jean-Michel Lacroix and Jacques Leclaire. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1998. 17-34.

  2279. BÜHLER ROTH, Verena. Wilderness and the Natural Environment: Margaret Atwood’s Recycling of a Canadian Theme. Tübingen: Franke Verlag, 1998. Based on author’s doctoral thesis (1997) at the University of Zürich.

  2280. BUSCHINI, Marie-Pascale. “Idéologie et fonctionnement du pouvoir dans The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood. Ed. Marta Dvorak. Paris: Ellipses, 1998. 41-50.

  2281. CAREY, Gary, and Mary Ellen SNODGRASS. A Multicultural Dictionary of Literary Terms. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998. Includes multiple Atwood references. For example, under “Absurdism,” there is a reference to The Handmaid’s Tale.

  2282. CASTINO, Melissa. “Margaret Atwood and Northrop Frye: Voices of the Frontier.” MA thesis. Bemidji State University, 1998. 74 pp.

  2283. CHAKRAVARTY, Radha. “Mothers in Flight: The Space of the Maternal in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” Mapping Canadian Cultural Space: Essays on Canadian Literature. Ed. Danielle Schaub. Jerusalem, Israel: Magnes, 1998. 104-121.

  2284. CHUNG, Kathy K. Y. “Co-Editing Atwood Juvenilia: The Student Experience.” English Studies in Canada 24.3 (1998): 309-318.

  2285. COLES NOTES. The Edible Woman. Toronto: Coles Publishing, 1998. Student aid.

  2286. ______. Surfacing. Toronto: Coles Publishing, 1998. Student aid.

  2287. COLLETT, Anne. “Half Me and Half You: Voices of Real Ladies and Literary Grandmothers in the Poetry of Joan Crate and Margaret Atwood.” Ma
rgaret At-wood: The Shape Shifter. Ed. Coomi S. Vevaina and Coral Ann Howells. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1998. [99]-113.

  2288. COLVILE, Georgiana M. M. “Textualité et textilité du récit dans The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood. Ed. Marta Dvorak. Paris: Ellipses, 1998. 156-161.

  2289. COOKE, Nathalie. Margaret Atwood: A Biography. Toronto: ECW Press; Chicago: Distributed in the United States by LPCGroup-InBook, 1998.

  2290. COSTA de BEAUREGARD, Raphaëlle. “Moving Photographic Images: Silent Movie and the Uncanny in Volker Schlöndorff’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Lectures d’une oeuvre: The Handmaid’s Tale de Margaret Atwood. [Ed.] Jean-Paul Ga-billiet and François Gallix. Paris: Éditions du temps, 1998. 123-134.

  2291. DAWSON, Carrie. “Never Cry Fraud: Remembering Grey Owl, Rethinking Imposture.” Essays on Canadian Writing 65 (1998): 120-140. Includes a discussion of Atwood’s “The Grey Owl Syndrome,” which was one of 4 essays collected in Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature.

  2292. DELORD, Marie. “Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace: A Postmodernist Novel— Mémoire de maitrise.” MA thesis. Université de Toulouse Le Miral UFR des étu-des du monde, anglophone, 1998. 100 pp.

  2293. DEMOS, John. “In Search of Reasons for Historians to Read Novels.” American Historical Review 103.5 (1998): 1526-1529. Response to Atwood’s Bronfman Lecture, reprinted in AHR.

  2294. DETORE-NAKAMURA, Joanne. “From Victim to Victor: The Friendship Plot in Contemporary Women’s Novels.” PhD thesis. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1998. 193 pp. “This dissertation argues that three contemporary North American women writers namely, Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich and Amy Tan, authored novels that reflect current feminist thinking in which the female protagonists complete both a spiritual and social quest that eventually ends with the female protagonist still adhering to ties with friends, family, and community. This friendship plot differs sharply from what has now been termed the feminine quest plot of woman-authored novels in which the female protagonist completes a spiritual quest and discovers her identity but is unable to complete a social quest and fit into society.” (Author). The thesis features a chapter on Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride. For more see DAI-A 60.03 (September 1999): 737.

  2295. DIOT, Rolande. “‘Image du corps et stade du miroir’: Un aspect de l’humour de Margaret Atwood dans Lady Oracle. ” Textes publiés sur Margaret Atwood dans Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies (1975-1997). [Ed.] Jean-Michel Lacroix. Talence [France]: Association française d’études canadiennes (A.F.E.C.), 1998. 47-57. Reprinted from Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies 9 (1980): 51-61.

  2296. DOLITSKY, Marlène. “Characterizing the Narrator: Narratee as Alter-Ego.” Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale / Le Conte de la servante: The Power Game. Ed. Jean-Michel Lacroix and Jacques Leclaire. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nou-velle, 1998. 101-116.

  2297. ______. “The Meta-Narrative Invitation of Satire in The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood. Ed. Marta Dvorak. Paris: Ellipses. 112-124.

  2298. DUBOIS, Dominique. “Appropriation et réappropriation du corps féminin dans The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood. Ed. Marta Dvorak. Paris: Ellipses, 1998. 77-87.

  2299. DURAND, Régis. “L’individu et le politique: Notes sur les romans de Margaret Atwood et Leonard Cohen. ” Textes publiés sur Margaret Atwood dans Études ca-nadiennes / Canadian Studies (1975-1997). [Ed.] Jean-Michel Lacroix. Talence [France]: Association française d’études canadiennes (A.F.E.C.), 1998. 7-22. Reprinted from Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies 1 (1975): 63-72. Cohen’s Beautiful Losers and Atwood’s Surfacing.

  2300. DVORAK, Marta. “What Is Real/Reel? Margaret Atwood’s Rearrangement of Shapes on a Flat Surface, or Narrative as Collage.” Études anglaises; Grande-Bretagne—États-Unis 51.4 (1998): 448-461. Primarily about The Handmaid’s Tale.

  2301. ______. “What’s in a Name? Readers as Both Pawns and Partners or Margaret Atwood’s Strategy of Control.” Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale / Le

  Conte de la servante: The Power Game. Ed. Jean-Michel Lacroix and Jacques Leclaire. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1998. 79-99.

  2302. DVORAK, Marta, ed. The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood. Paris: Ellipses, 1998. Individual articles in this book are indexed in this section.

  2303. DYMOKE, Sue. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: A Post-16 Study Guide. Sheffield: National Association for the Teaching of English, 1998.

  2304. ELSLEY, Judy. “A Stitch in Crime: Quilt Detective Novels.” Uncoverings 19 (1998): 137-153. Crime, detective, and mystery fiction in Atwood’s Alias Grace.

  2305. FEE, Margery, and Janice McALPINE. Guide to English Canadian Usage. Oxford UP, 1998. Looks at ways Canadians use language, relying on a variety of sources including Atwood’s Life Before Man, ©1979, and Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, 1982.

  2306. FETHERLING, Douglas. The Gentle Anarchist: A Life of George Woodcock. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998. Book credits Atwood’s poetry for giving Woodcock a new poetic self. He had left England as an “English poet of between the wars, for whom the most important figure to embrace or extricate oneself from was Auden, in terms of form.” Then, all of a sudden in the 1970s, “he found a new self after discovering the poems of Margaret Atwood and became an imagist poet.”

  2307. FIAMENGO, Janice. “Under Whose Eye? Two Versions of the Disciplinary Society in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Lectures d’une oeuvre: The Handmaid’s Tale de Margaret Atwood. [Ed.] Jean-Paul Gabilliet and François Gallix. Paris: Éditions du temps, 1998. 27-42.

  2308. GABILLIET, Jean-Paul. “Gilead, Canada, and the United States: Anti-Americanism and Colonial Critique in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Lectures d’une oeuvre: The Handmaid’s Tale de Margaret Atwood. [Ed.] Jean-Paul Gabilliet and François Gallix. Paris: Éditions du temps, 1998. 43-52.

  2309. GABILLIET, Jean-Paul, and François GALLIX, eds. Lectures d’une oeuvre: The Handmaid’s Tale de Margaret Atwood. Paris: Éditions du temps, 1998. Individual articles in this book are indexed in this section. The book also includes 3 appendixes: “Chronologie” (201-209), “Biblical References in The Handmaid’s Tale” (210-212), and “Bibliographie: The Handmaid’s Tale de Margaret Atwood.” 213 ff.

  2310. GABRIELE, Sandra. “Surveilled Women: Subjectivity, the Body and Modern Postopticism.” MA thesis. St. Mary’s University, 1998. 114 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1999). Also available in .pdf: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0001/MQ33842.pdf. This thesis “explores the ways in which surveillance enacts the power to limit the self definition and thus the subjectivity of the female subject. Understanding the body as being intimately connected to the development of an autonomous female subject, surveillance is examined as a means of maintaining social structures of gender, race, and class.” (Author). The Handmaid’s Tale is used as one of the author’s sources. For more see MAI 37.03 (June 1999): 829.

  2311. GALE, Marilyn Kravitz. “Lilith’s Garden: A Novella and, a Contextual Essay on the Development of Lilith’s Garden.” PhD thesis. Union Institute, 1998. 185 pp. Lilith’s Garden is a novella written in the first person that describes the empowerment of a contemporary woman struggling through the divorce process and patriarchal legal system. The author reviews works by earlier revisionist feminist writers (Jean Rhys, Adrienne Rich, Susan Griffin, and Margaret Atwood) and reframes Biblical narratives to produce literary role models that are the foundation for Lilith’s Garden. For more see DAI-A 59.8 (February 1999): 3243.

  2312. GALLIX, François. “Dire et écrire l’évasion dans The Handmaid’s Tale.” Lectures d’une oeuvre: The Handmaid’s Tale de Margaret Atwood. [Ed.] Jean-Paul Ga-billiet and François Gallix. Paris: Éditions du temps, 1998. 187-200.

  2313. GARNER, Lee. “Preface, Postface and Aporia: Telling Tales in The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood. Ed. Marta Dvorak. Paris: Ellipses, 1998. 162ff.


  2314. GENTY, Stéphanie. “Parodie et paradoxe: The Handmaid’s Tale comme dystopie féministe.” The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood. Ed. Marta Dvorak. Paris: Ellipses, 1998. 60-68.

  2315. GOPALAN, Kamala. “Weaving New Patterns in Alias Grace.” Margaret Atwood: The Shape Shifter. Ed. Coomi S. Vevaina and Coral Ann Howells. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1998. [75]-81.

  2316. GRACE, Dominick M. “The Handmaid’s Tale: ‘Historical Notes’ and Documentary Subversion.” Science Fiction Studies 25.3 (1998): 481-494. Commentary on the “Historical Notes” that appear at the end of the book.

  2317. GREENE, Michael. “‘In Its Own Way Eloquent’: Irony, History and The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood. Ed. Marta Dvorak. Paris: Ellipses, 1998. 103-111.

  2318. GREVEN-BORDE, Hélène. “L’espace dystopique: The Handmaid’s Tale et la dialectique de l’inclusion.” Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale / Le Conte de la servante: The Power Game. Ed. Jean-Michel Lacroix and Jacques Leclaire. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1998. 49-61.

  2319. HAMMILL, Faye Louise. “Inspiration and Imitation: Responses to Canadian Literary Culture in the Work of Frances Brooke, Susanna Moodie, Sara Jeannette Duncan, L. M. Montgomery, Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields.” PhD thesis. University of Birmingham, Department of American and Canadian Studies, School of Historical Studies, Faculty of Arts, 1998.

  2320. HARISHANKAR, V. Bharathi. “Correlatives of Love: A Study of Atwood’s Power Politics through the Rasa Theory.” Margaret Atwood: The Shape Shifter. Ed. Coomi S. Vevaina and Coral Ann Howells. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1998. [126]-134. “The concept of rasa is one of the prominent theoretical ideas of Sanskrit poetics, and it dates back to Bharata’s Natyasastra. Rasa may be defined as an emotion which is a ‘permanent major instinct of man...capable of being developed and delineated to its climax with its attendant and accessory feelings…[and which evokes an] emotional sympathy at the presentation.’ Thus, the basic assumption is that meanings cannot be generated without reference to some basic sentiments.” (Author).