The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood.

Published: September 2009, McClelland and Stewart.

ISBN: 0-7710-0844-9

The review:

Atwood’s cautionary tale that humans have a shelf life. Worship at the altar of Secret Burgers at your own risk.

(There’s a very cool website for Year of the Flood, too. – ed.)

*

Bio: Kimberly Walsh (aka @AliasGrace) is a geek girl, bookworm, writer, and PR thinker in one.

All ruled by a 15 lb. mini dachshund.

By day, she works as a web content producer and social media manager for the CBC in literary programming.

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It’s the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-shaped
vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell it.

We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn’t what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-seedlings
nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.

This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your surprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but against you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterised,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.

Margaret Atwood's Blind Assassin

Sometimes I write down an excerpt from a book I’m reading, and in reading Margaret Atwood’s Blind Assassin, I feel like typing out the whole book on my blog.

Of course, I can’t do that, so here’s a para I read last night:

She did understand, or at last she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive, and did forgive. But he can’t have found living with forgiveness that easy. Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast. He would have been helpless against it, for how can you repudiate something that is never spoken?

Good Bones and Simple Murders
by Margaret Atwood

Inside Flap: “In this collection of short works that defy easy categorization , Margaret Atwood displays the trademark wit and virtuosity of her bestselling novels, brilliant stories, and insightful poetry. Among the miniatures gathered here are Gertrude offering Hamlet a piece of her mind, the real truth about the Little Red Hen, a reincarnated bat explaining how Bram Stoker got Dracula all wrong, and the five home economist methods of making a man. These are parables, monologues, prose poems, condensed science fiction, reconfigured fairy tales, and other diminutive masterpieces–punctuated with charming illustrations by the author.”

My thoughts: I thought I’d try a little something different with this book review. As you have guessed from the above synopsis this is a difficult book to describe. It was rather like reading stream of consciousness, only more beautiful phrased and written than my own clumsy and often awkward thoughts. I did enjoy this book and as I hoped it was a good introduction to Margaret Atwood’s writing. I can certainly see myself reading more of her work in the future.

Good Bones is a book by Margaret Atwood that I had never heard of before and indeed found by accident. I always think it’s a delight when you are wandering aimlessly along shelves of books (though as book lovers I am also sure you will understand the awful crick in your neck you get from browsing book spines at an angle) looking for something delightful to take your fancy and this was such an occasion. It wasn’t in a book shops as November is my trial ‘no book buying month’ it was in the library. As soon as I spotted this, I always have a look at what Atwood’s they have, adored the cover and so grabbed it. I also thought it was a novella and have been trying to read more, but this book is something quite, quite different.

Good Bones is a selection of twenty seven short works by Margaret Atwood. I say short works as some of them read as fiction, some seem to be essays, some are fable like and others just seem to be the wanderings of the author. It’s like a note book filled with Atwood-like idea’s is possibly the best way to describe it, like a scrap book of possible idea’s for books and longer tales as the longest of this collection is fourteen pages.

The themes of the tales seem to be fables, fairy tales and dare I mention it ‘speculative’ pieces. You have a tale of the Little Red Hen who can’t quite work out what all the fuss is about that she grew a loaf of bread and the furore it caused. You have Hamlet’s mother Gertrude who actually wanted to call him George and who was not ‘wringing her hands’ but ‘drying her nails’. Wicked Stepmothers and Ugly Sisters fight their corner and for feminism (in fact feminist themes glimmer between these tales) as they stand up for themselves and make the point that tough love always seems to get the bimbo princess her man in the end doesn’t it? Despite moments of utter laughter such as when the Little Red Hen says ‘Then I’ll do it myself, I said, as the nun quipped to the vibrator’. It’s not all fairy tales and giggles though.

There is the very short but intense, sexy and passionate ‘In Love With Raymond Chandler’. The feminist ‘The Female Body’ when Atwood is actually discussing Barbie’s and other dolls and the image they project to young girls. There is the look at men with ‘Making a Man’ which includes the Gingerbread Method and the Clothes Maketh the Man Method which looks at the difference between the sexes. It’s all so cleverly done and you feel that though these two or ten page stories are fully formed there could be several books in here that just haven’t be written yet.  

With twenty seven tales in 153 pages it is a marvellous selection of, as the wonderful cover says ‘pure distilled Atwood’. It’s funny in parts, sexy in parts and dark in parts, but then aren’t most Atwood novels all of these things? I think fans of Atwood will love the darkness and the wry slightly knowing humour and for anyone new to Atwood it’s a way of getting to know what wonderful fiction you are getting into in digestible pieces.

Has anyone else read this collection? What are your thoughts on authors re-writing fairy tales? Have you been in a book shop (so jealous if you have) or library of late and found there is a gem of a novel/book that you had never heard of by one of your favourite authors and if so what was it?

Es gibt einen Grad von Unterdrückung, der als Freiheit empfunden wird. - Heiner Müller, Quelle

In seinem an die Payback-Karte angelehnten Titel – in der Schweiz müsste das Buch »Cumulus« heißen und darf nicht mit dem brillanten Essay von Atwood über den Umgang mit Schuld und Schulden verwechselt werden – beklagt der konservative deutsche Denker Frank Schirrmacher, der (post)-moderne Mensch sei nicht mehr Herr, sondern Knecht der digitalen Arbeitsmethoden. Während er glaube, den Computer zu benutzen – benutzt der Computer eigentlich den Menschen, um es pointiert auszudrücken.

Schirrmacher führt mehrere Argumente ins Feld:

1. Die Benutzung von Computern verändert uns physisch. Neurologische Prozesse führen zu einer Anpassung unserer Kognition an die Vorgehensweise von Rechnern, insbesondere erwerben wir die Fähigkeit zum Multitasken. Schirrmacher beschreibt im Abschnitt »Mein Kopf kommt nicht mehr mit«, dass er sich unkonzentriert fühle und vergesslich geworden sei – und wertet diese Veränderung somit negativ.
2. Die ständige Nutzung von digitalen Medien führt zu einer Unterdrückung der Menschen, welche sie glücklich als Freiheit erleben. Wer im Internet etwas sucht, findet auch – und meint, gefunden zu haben, was gesucht worden ist. Freier Wille wird suggeriert – tatsächlich wird aber durch mächtige Instanzen gesteuert, was man findet. Auch die totale Individualität digitaler Welten (iTunes sucht das Musikprogramm, das mir als Individuum entspricht) ist nichts als die Kontrollübernahme durch diese digitalen Welten (iTunes bestimmt, was mir als Individuum zu entsprechen hat).
3. Die mangelnden Filter im Internet führen zu einem ständig ablaufenden Entscheidungsprozess, was wichtig/unwichtig oder relevant/irrelevant sei. Diese Entscheidungen überfordern den Menschen, Sie führen zu einer »Ich-Erschöpfung« (Roy Baumeister; Entscheidungen zu fällen ist für Menschen ein Kraftakt, siehe hier). Es sei zu fordern, dass Informationen dem Hirn unterzurodnen seien – und nicht die Hirnaktivität den Informationen.
4. Es gibt einen »digitalen Darwinismus«: »fittest« heißt heute, am besten an die Informationen angepasst, als bestinformiert, und zwar nicht im Sinne von »wichtigen«/»relevanten« Informationen, sondern den Informationen, welche nach dem »Mätthäus-Effekt« als wichtig erscheinen.

Nun wird Schirrmacher zwar als konservativer Vordenker sofort breit und grundsätzlich positiv rezensiert vom Feuilleton, erfährt aber sofort auch Kritik der »digital natives«, der Menschen, welche mit dem Internet groß geworden sind. Diese Kritik ist sehr aufschlussreich, zeigt sie doch, wie Recht Schirrmacher eigentlich hat: Tim Cole moniert, Schirrmacher sei ein »digitaler Xenophobe«, der deswegen nicht mehr mitkomme, weil er keine Ahnung von der digitalen Welt hat. Damit nimmt er ein Argument auf, das in Technologiedebatten, wie die Zeit-Rezension erhellend anmerkt, seit einigen Jahren zu einer »self-evident truth« geworden ist: Wer technische Innovationen kritisiert, versteht sie nicht, sonst würde er sie nicht kritisieren (sehr verbreitet in der Gamer-Community: Wer Killerspiele verbieten will, hat noch nie welche gespielt oder nicht richtig, denn sonst würde er Spiele nicht verbieten wollen). Weiter schreibt Cole, Schirrmacher habe ein falsches Menschenbild, weil sich Menschen nicht beeinflussen liessen und sehr gut zwischen relevanten und irrelevanten Informationen unterscheiden können; um dann ein interessanten Evolutionsargument anzufügen:

Und Schirrmacher hat zweitens keine Ahnung von Evolution. Er kann – oder will – nicht erkennen, dass Homo Sapiens sich in den vergangenen Jahrtausenden stets und immer wieder einer veränderten Kommunikations- und Informationsumgebung anpassen musste, und dass er es ganz gut gemacht hat.

Die Informationsumgebung wird also eine natürliche Umgebung gesehen, an die sich der Mensch anzupassen hat – und nicht mehr als eine kulturell erschaffene Umwelt, welche auch verändert werden könnte (im Rahmen einer Anpassung, vielleicht). Die digitale Welt ersetzt also eine selektive Natur: Was nichts anderes als eines von Schirrmachers Argumenten ist, dass sich der Mensch der Technik untergeordnet hat und weiter unterordnen wird.

Soviel zur Kritik der Kritik, die mir im Moment noch sehr dünn erscheint. Nun aber zur Kritik an Schirrmacher noch meine Begegnung mit seinem neuen Buch:

1. Ich lese meine Tweets (nicht Tweeds, ein offenbar peinlicher Schreibfehler in Schirrmachers Buch) und stosse auf diesen von @Zeitonline_all:
2. Ich lese auf meinem iPhone unterwegs die Zeit-Rezension.
3. Ich lese auf meinem Laptop auf dem Weg zur Arbeit (nächster Tag) die Renzension in der Süddeutschen Zeitung sowie Blogeinträge zu Payback.
4. Ich drucke wichtige Texte aus und bearbeite sie mit dem Bleistift, ich lese sie also linear, wie Schirrmacher eine seiner Meinung nach gefähredete Tätigkeit bezeichnet:
5. Ich schreibe den Blogpost, ohne auch nur in dem Buch gelesen zu haben.

Das mag nun problematisch erscheinen, hat aber auch Vorteile, es ist ein modernes Vorgehen. Es scheint mir ausgewogen, mehrperspektivisch zu sein, es ist eine effiziente Art zu Arbeiten, welche nicht obeflächlich ist, aber oberflächlich sein könnte. Und nebenbei habe ich Tweets gelesen, welche völlig sinnlos und irrelevant waren und auch solche Blogeinträge; ich verfüge aber über eine relativ gute Filterkompetenz.

Fazit: Das Diktat der Technik ist eine realistische Gefahr. Die Technik kann aber auch gegen sich selbst gewendet werden oder dazu benutzt werden, die drohende Gefahr zu mildern oder abzuwenden, weniger, aber wichtigere Entscheidungen von uns zu verlangen. Und die Technik hat uns nicht zur Konsumenten und Rezipienten gemacht, sondern auch zu Produzenten (wie ich hier). Steven Pinker, der amerikanische Populärpsychologe, hat gesagt, man solle, wenn man das Internet (Facebook etc.) kritisiere, mal darüber nachdenken, worüber man denn bei einem Abendessen am Familientisch so rede:

I mention this because so many discussions of the effects of new information technologies take the status quo as self-evidently good and bemoan how intellectual standards are being corroded (the ‘google-makes-us-stoopid’ mindset). They fall into the tradition of other technologically driven moral panics of the past two centuries, like the fears that the telephone, the telegraph, the typewriter, the postcard, radio, and so on, would spell the end of civilized society.

After a long news and reviews section featuring a spoiler-free chat about the first episode of V and the possibility of a GATTACA TV show we have a relatively brief Challenge where Steve and Scott pitch two very different comics at each other. Remember our current book club choice is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. We’re going to be talking about this in episode 66 so you’ve still got plenty of time to get hold of it and join the discussion.

When you’re young you have this image of your life,
That you’ll be scrupulous and one day even make a wife.
And you make boundaries you’d never dream to cross,
And if you happen to, you wake completely lost

–lyrics from “Special Two” by Missy Higgins

***

In 5 years I’ll be 29.

Right now 29 feels like this magical age–an age that conjures images of freshly cut tulips, brownstone apartments, a vague and not-too-stressful media job, and an adorable little dog named Nino scampering down the leafy path of a gorgeous Queen or King West park.  

Last night I started thinking about what I wanted from life.  As I tried to drift off to sleep, rather than playing my usual Alphabet Game that helps calm a busy mind (here’s how you play: pick a topic and then go through the alphabet, thinking of a word that starts with each letter. Don’t think too hard though, or you’ll only make your mind busier!), I began to play that game I never play called Five Years From Now … Game, causing me to wonder what it really is that I want, hope for, and dream about, and if these hopes are useful in helping me achieve things or if they’re airy wishes which disappear in the cold air like dandelion fluff.

Five, six, seven years ago, I dreamed some pretty big dreams.  Like most kids about to embark on that scary, exciting venture of post-secondary education and “officially” becoming an adult, still sheltered by the loving arms of my supportive parents, I believed in the possibility of my wildest dreams.  I was going to get my education.  Be a professor.  Visit orphanages in Romania and maybe come back with an orphan.  Start my own magazine for teen girls specializing in healthy self-esteem and body image.  Give talks about eating disorders and self respect.  Sing in a band.  Travel extensively and then write about my experiences for a popular magazine column.  Have a successful writing career including poetry, fiction, children’s books, magazine and newspaper columns, and movie screenplays.  Entertain an eclectic group of friends and handsome gentleman in my spacious attic apartment in an old, yet well-kept Victorian home somewhere close to downtown Toronto (I believe the area I was thinking of was the Annex, but I didn’t know it at the time).  Get married.  Have a couple kids.  Live the life.  Very specific, I know, but I’m a writer and think in detail.  Can you blame me?

What happened?  I’m 24 and I’m an intern, living in my sister’s apartment, not sure where I’ll be in a month or what my situation will look like.  Which is not to say that I’m unsatisfied with where life has taken me and ungrateful for everyone’s support, because as my boyfriend always says, “When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade,” but I wonder where those dreams went.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to stop thinking about my future in such grandiose ways, shedding a sense of entitlement with the reality that putting too much stock in these fantasies can only result in disappointment and ungratefulness.  This is why I rarely play the Five Years From Now … Game.  

I’m in this awkward middle place between feeling insignificant, underqualified, talentless, and anxious about the future, and staying positive, continuing to dream dreams, believing in the impossible, and trusting my future with God.  Admittedly, some days are much better than others.  

I suppose a lot of my dreams have stayed along the same lines with some minor modifications.  Here’s a visual representation of my current dreams. 

Please tread softly.

Is it weird that the first thing I think about when I think of the future is puppies?  Or a hypoallergenic kitty so my family members can still come visit me?  That before relationships, career, living arrangements, I think of dogs?  That I can think of no bliss quite like sitting on a couch with a good book and a hot cup of tea or a novel being written on my laptop and a cute animal curled up at my side?  If you know how much of an animal lover I am, and how dogs make me go insane with their cuteness, then this should come as no surprise.

apartment story

I’ll leave the large house with the white picket fence to the dreams of others.  I’ve never wanted the magazine-perfect modern house with 5 rooms and 2.5 bathrooms.  Even many years ago, I wanted the apartment.  Ever since I read Margaret Atwood’s deliciously addictive The Edible Woman, I’ve wanted to live in the city, in an attic apartment on the top story of a Victorian house on a quiet, tree-lined street just a few minutes away from the heart of the city.  It’s always been the city, never the small town or the country.  The city is where it’s at, and where I want to be.  Toronto.  The Annex, Trinity Bellwoods, Leslieville, Bayview/Davisville, High Park, Roncesvalles.  They’ll all suffice.  Heck, I’d even take Hamilton if I really, really have to.  But no question, it’s got to be the city.  My dream apartment is spacious and sunny with eclectic, colourful furniture, an old-fashioned bathtub with the little brass feet, hardwood floors, bright colours, art on the walls, a tiny yet functional kitchen (I’m not much for cooking!), a bedroom with space enough for a queen-sized bed, plenty of room for all my books, sloping ceilings, ideally a cute little porch for reading and breakfasting.  And by myself.  I could definitely live well on my own for a couple years and long for this.

I would be lying to you–and myself–if I told you I didn’t want to get married someday.  Opinions on people who get married really young (ahem Christians, ahem small townies ahem), and the fact that in the city, people tend to put their careers first and as a result, end up getting married much later aside, I do want to get married at some point.  It’s something I’ve wanted since I was a little girl and hey, I’m a freaking romantic!  Even though I’m now one of the only people in my grade school graduating class that isn’t married and/or a parent, a point that makes me both embarrassed and causes me to roll my eyes (I went to a Dutch Christian Reformed School, so what do you expect?), I can’t ignore the little tune in my head that sometimes goes “dum dum dum DUM! dum DUM dum DUM!” 

I’ll he honest with you: it’s an area of my life which requires major trust in that thing called “God’s perfect timing.”

gotta raise 'em right!

Babies.  I’m divided on this issue.  I’ve always wanted to be a mom, but feel kind of guilty admitting that because by city standards, I’m still a baby myself.  Back home, where many friends/acquaintances are popping out the babies like nobody’s business, I’m practically an old maid.  It’s weird.  Some days I see bratty, wailing dictator/demons with perpetually snotty noses and ear-piercing shrieks on the streetcar and I’m like, Heeeeelllllllllll no!  I value my sleep, my sanity, and my independent life far too much to have it ruined by a spoiled little urchin.  Other days, I see these adorable little bundles of cooing, angelic, pint-sized goodness and my biological clock starts ticking loudly.

In any event, I’m probably becoming an aunt today and can barely contain my excitement!

the keys go tacka-tacka-tacka-tacka

 A full-time writing career.  This has not changed since I was 3.  As to what form this takes, I’m pretty flexible.  I’m working on it.  It’s a never ending process, and one that has not just magically materialized.  It actually takes work to find a career.  

Here are some more images which, in some way, relate to my dreams, however abstract:

Vegan rebels of the bio-apocalypse in “Year of the Flood”: Book review by Annalee Newitz (io9)

Playing human in Octavia Butler’s Imago: Essay by Erika Nelson (Tor.com)

In praise of banned books, day 4: The Giver: Essay by Rebecca (The Book Lady’s Blog)

Related:

• Retrospective: Octavia Butler
• Review: The Giver
• Review: The Year of the Flood

I love stationery. Probably a little too much. There. I said it.

I thought I ought to acknowledge this, particularly as, for the first time, stationery got a few mentions on the blog, in my post on writing.

First, there was the Wall Street Journal article, How to Write a Great Novel. Reading through it, it was clear that stationery is pretty central for many writers. It’s not just about scribbling on any old sheet of paper – each writer has their own needs and wants, when it comes to what to actually write on, and write with.

Orhan Pamuk writes in graph-paper notebooks. Hilary Mantel always carries a notebook. Kazuo Ishiguro collects notes in a binder. Michael Ondaatje has a thing for notebooks from Muji. Dan Chaon writes on colour-coded note cards.

Margaret Atwood is perhaps less fussy, scribbling away on napkins, restaurant menus, in the margins of newspapers. (Interlude: Working that way reminds me of an interview with Elvis Costello I read. He said that despite buying many notebooks with the intention of using them for lyric writing, they would often be left unused, as he would end up scrawling his ideas on whatever pieces of paper came to hand. He clearly can be in my Stationery Fan Club, as his intentions are good, but it is interesting that he and Atwood are not tied to a particular method for physically writing their work.)

I was then delighted to see that the world of WordPress has a few stationery fans too. Frances Bean commented, “There was nothing like a fresh compilation notebook and the possibility it holds.” There is definitely something special about that new notebook, ready to be filled. Sometimes it almost seems a shame to write in a good notebook. Almost.

So why do I love stationery? From a very, very young age I enjoyed having paper and pencils. Apparently, before I could write, I would scribble on page upon page, convinced I had written a story, and would then ‘read’ it back to my parents. When I was a little older I’d spend hours writing in A4 pads. Sometimes I’d write stories, sometimes I’d make up football scores, sometimes I’d make up entire discographies of imaginary bands. Paper and pencil was a means of channelling my imagination. I was as happy with a new exercise book as I would be with a bag of sweets.

As an adult I’ve continued to enjoy using stationery, especially notebooks. I’m a real sucker for Moleskine notebooks and have completely fallen for their marketing and stories of famous writers and artists using them in the past. I find them wonderfully tactile, sturdy and just right for carrying wherever I go. They are a bit of luxury, but hardly an extravagant one.

I can also be quite fussy with pens, although so far I’ve shamefully stuck to the disposable type. One day I’ll find the right ‘proper’ pen. One day.

My Significant Other shares this love, luckily for me. We’ll happily mooch around the huge Staples superstore near where we live, or smaller shops we find, like the pen shop we came across whilst holidaying in Eastbourne. As silly as it sounds, enjoying stationery has been a lovely, fun thing for us to share.

I suppose when it comes to me actually writing, with this blog or whatever else, I’m far more likely to use my laptop than pen and paper. But my notebooks are still really important to me. I enjoy having something to hand to jot an idea in, or write a list, or to simply play around with an idea. And there is something more satisfying for me to use a notebook for this, rather than a laptop, or smart phone (not that I have one), when I’m out and about. I look forward to, many years from now, looking through those notebooks and reading those snatches of my thoughts, those snapshots of a past me.

So, do you covet particular items of stationery? If you use pen and paper, are you fussy about the pen and paper you use? Does it depend on what you’re writing? Or where? Or do you think this is all stuff and nonsense?

Photo from mrbill via Flickr

Schriftstellerin Margaret Atwood wird 70

Mit einem Werk von mehr als 50 Büchern ist Margaret Atwood als Kanadas größte Gegenwartsautorin bekannt. Wer sie gelesen hat, weiß von ihrer Sorge um die Natur und die Zukunft der Menschheit.

via  Kleine Zeitung.

Genre: Short Stories

Year of Publication: 1977

Pregnant women, students and journalists, farmers and bird-watchers, ex-wives, adolescent lovers – and dancing girls: all ordinary people – or are they? This collection of short stories, by the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Cat’s Eye”, offers a study of human motivation.

DOWNLOAD LINK

http://ifile.it/me5ysrc

WORD

paragon [par-uh-gon, -guhn] n. 1. a model or pattern of excellence or of a particular excellence 2. Printing. a 20-point type 3. an unusually large, round pearl ∞ v. 4. to compare; parallel 5. to be a match for; rival

BIRTHDAY

Asa Gray (1810), Dorothy Dix (1861), George Gallup (1901), Imogene Coca (1908), Hank Ballard (1927), Don Cherry (1936), Margaret Atwood (1939), Linda Evans (1942), Graham Parker (1950), Delroy Lindo (1952), Kevin Nealon (1953), Elizabeth Perkins (1960), Owen Wilson (1968), Duncan Sheik (1969), Mike Epps (1970), Chloë Sevigny (1974)

STANDPOINT

OK. What’s irking the shit out of me today is quite simple. People keep asking me, “Why do you write so angry?”

Yes. I write angry. Yes. I am occassionally an angry person. But that doesn’t mean much of anything except I’m one of those folks who’s easily bothered by the people I come into contact with everyday. And you may not be one of those folks. And that’s fine. But maybe you should be.

You see, my problem with people thinking I’m too angry is there aren’t enough of you out there who are remotely angry enough. Being angry or annoyed is not cool because everyone wants everyone to just be cool. But, the truth is, there aren’t enough of you out there acting remotely cool enough.

And, so, if I tend to get a bit animated or a little too passionate about the current state of most everything, you’ll have to forgive me. I’m just not down with everyone being so goddam down about stuff.

QUOTATION

What I’ve learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means “to pull from.” Education does not mean jamming information into somebody’s head. Rather, it’s that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us; to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves. → Alan Arkin

TUNE

Tonight, I’m headed down, with Jer and Ezgi, to World Cafe Live in Philadelphia to see Blind Pilot. I hope I hear “The Story I Heard.” I really can’t imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t.

GALLIMAUFRY

→ Suddenly, pharmaceutical companies have come to the conclusion it might be a good idea to get into the preventive medicine business, instead of the curbing and/or curing side of it. In the next five years, there may be vaccines available for such maladies as Alzheimer’s disease, AIDS, Malaria, grass allergies and even something called traveler’s diarrhea. With the soaring prices of prescriptions and the subsequent scramble to find other options like the internet and Canada, maybe someone at one of these companies said somethig like, “Hey, what if we switch gears and actually try to find a genuine way to help people? I mean, we’ve tried everything else, right? Let’s give it a shot.” Funny, how a completely fucked economical situation can bring out the best in people.

→ A group of Native Americans, who’d filed a suit against the Washington Redskins over the use of the name “Redskins,” had their case tossed out by the US Supreme Court yesterday for, from what I can tell, is a complete technicality. I’m no lawyer, though, so I could easily be wrong. However, what I’m completely unwrong about is that the NFL franchise should just give up the name. We’re headed toward the future here, people, let’s keep our eyes on the ball. (Plus, the Redskins are so bad I’m sure hardly anyone would notice if they became the Washington Suckasses.)

→ Jonathan Safran Foer, author of one of my favorite books of all-time, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, has a new non-fiction novel coming out titled Eating Animals. Check out his interview with the AV Club.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution. Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Now she navigates the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules. Like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid’s Tale has endured not only as a literary landmark but as a warning of a possible future that is still chillingly relevant.

If you would like to revise the text and read a comparison to Nineteen-Eighty Four go here and find The calculus of love and nightmare: The Handmaid’s Tale and the dystopian tradition.

The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood’s newest novel, takes place in the desolate future of her prior novel, Oryx and Crake. If you’ve read Oryx and Crake, you’ll remember some of these characters and you’ll of course remember the bleakness of the setting.

The novel focuses on Ren and Toby, two members of God’s Gardeners religious group.  We see the characters in both flashbacks and in the present day – Ren as a 10 year old child and later as a “stripper” at Scales and Tails and Toby as Eve Six of the Gardeners and as a shut-in at the Anoo Yoo Spa.

Ren and Toby are both struggling to survive in a world that has encountered a “waterless flood.”  There are a limited number of survivors, most of whom were in the future version of prison/reality TV, and unusual animal splices like liobambs (lion/lamb) and rakunks (skunk/raccoon) graze the earth.

The Year of the Flood is a creative masterpiece – sometimes I wonder how Atwood can sleep at night if this is the future she envisions.   Atwood brings this scary future to your fingertips and we route for Ren and Toby’s survival and pray that the Gardeners will find each other once again.  I recommend reading this novel in conjunction with Oryx and Crake – the links between the two would be fun to compare.

What happens when you get the apocalypse you wished for? That’s what a band of eco-subversives called the Gardeners find out inMargaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood, a story of humanity destroyed for meddling too much with the environment.

Set in the near future,Year of the Flood is a retelling of Margaret Atwood’s apocalyptic classic Oryx and Crakefrom the perspective of characters who were only marginally involved in the massive act of bioterror unleashed by the previous novel’s sociopathic Utopian scientist Glenn (AKA Crake). While Glenn and his damaged, upper-class buddies were cooking up a virus to end the world, the peaceful Green separatist Gardeners lived in squats, tending vast urban rooftop gardens. The Gardeners’ leader, who goes by the name Adam One, preaches a kind of new agey Catholic environmentalism, complete with days devoted to saints (like Saint Rachel Carson) and hymns.

We follow two women, the young, credulous Ren and the toughminded Toby, after they join the Gardeners. Slowly they learn the skills necessary to survive the social collapse – the “flood” – that Adam One predicts will come about as the result of rampant genetic engineering and pollution. Circumstances sweep the two women back out into the “exfernal world,” and they begin lives as service workers – Ren works at a sex club called Scales and Tails, while Toby takes a job managing a spa called AnooYoo that does biotech beauty treatments on wealthy women.

While Ren is relatively happy dressing like a bird and doing trapeze stripping for her clients, Toy stays in contact with the Gardeners via a secret chat room. She knows vaguely that her former brethren have splintered into two groups: Those who prefer Adam One’s peaceful ways, and those who work with Glenn on acts of bioterror. Still, Toby is unprepared for what happens next: Trying to purge the Earth of its greatest threat, Glenn creates a human-targeted supervirus that spreads like wildfire across the globe, literally melting people in their tracks.

Ren and Toby manage to survive, but now they have to deal with fighting off genetically-engineered animals gone wild. The pigs with human brain cells and the half-lion, half-lamb creatures developed by Bible literalists who want lions to lay down with lambs are particularly pernicious. The two women inch towards their inevitable reunion across a landscape heaped with the refuse of scientific innovation gone horribly wrong, though we are never certain that they or any humans will ultimately survive.

Unlike Oryx and Crake, whose main characters come across as irredeemable, Year of the Flood is an oddly hopeful book. The Gardeners’ odd survivalist wisdom is exactly the kind of belief system you’d need to survive a global pandemic. Members of the group know how to forage in an urban wasteland, and what to eat in the forest. Equally important, they possess a reverence for the ecosystem that’s completely missing from traditional Western religion.

It’s clear that Atwood has thought a lot about the kinds of helpful myths she’d implant in human history if she could restart the world: That’s why every few chapters we hear a sermon from Adam One, along with a hymn. It’s an interesting exercise in speculative worldbuilding. If the Gardeners can survive – and seems as if they might – their beliefs could become the moral lifeblood of a civilization founded on renewable resources rather than environmental exploitation.

For this reason alone, Year of the Flood is an interesting companion piece to Oryx and Crake. In the latter, Atwood investigated what it would take to genetically engineer the perfect posthumans. Glenn and his colleagues secretly build these perfect beings by synthesizing hardy, disease-resistant humanoids who eat nothing but leaves, communicate through healing purrs and birdsong, and experience no sexual shame. Now, with Year of the Flood, she imagines what’s required to culturally engineer a new human society out of novel mythologies and social structures created by the Gardeners.

We never know for sure whether the genetic or social experiment will save what’s left of humanity, and that’s a good thing. Atwood pulls us into the lives of her characters so that we’re forced to contemplate the true and deadly precariousness of our future as a species. You may not agree with the way she’s framed the problem – the science in this novel is fanciful at best – but it’s hard to deny that she’s asking the right questions.

Year of the Flood via Borders

This quote spoke to me as I was reading the morning emails:

“Books written out of fire give me a great deal of pleasure. You get the sense that the world for these writers could not have continued if the book hadn’t been written. When you come across a book like that it is a privilege.”
Hisham Matar, author (b. 1970)

Books are born out of the frenzy of inner turmoil that lives within most authors. Life will not continue until every word on the page has its place in the ultimate symphony of the story.

I have come across many books that conform to Matar’s view. There are far too many to name but I will try. These are a few of my favourite authors and one or two of their, in my view, best works:

Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake; The Year of the Flood
Anthony Bidulka: The Russell Quant Mystery Series
Carol Shields: Larry’s Party
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter Series
Sharon Butala: Perfection of the Morning Star
Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient
Terry Goodkind: The Sword of Truth Series
John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman; The Collector; The Ebony Tower
Stephen King: The Dream Catcher; Bag of Bones

Next on my reading list is “Moral Disorder” by Margaret Atwood. In this collection Atwood traces the course of a life and the lives intertwined with it (parents, siblings, children, friends, enemies, teachers, animals, etc.) Her tales span an era beginning in the 1930s and ending in present time and are set in large cities, suburbs, farms, forests, etc. By all accounts most readers will find something of interest in this compilation.

Atwood is at her humourous, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal best. Her storytelling gifts and unmistabkable style are celebrated within the pages of these short stories.

(BIG HINT: This book is on the Christmas list.)

Other titles that make my list include:

Stephen King: Under the Dome
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale
Lawrence Hill: The Book of Negroes
David Adams Richards: Mercy Among the Children

Those are just a few of my favourites, one or two of my “must reads,” and a list of books that I wish were on my shelves.

Who tops your favourite authors and reading lists? Are there any books that specifically speak to you? Do have a collection that needs expanding? Which books are topping that list of must reads?

I attended a talk with Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson. Miss Atwood read from The Year of the Flood and Mr. Gibson read from The Bedside Book of Beasts. Individually, each of them is brilliant and charming and witty. Together they are unstoppably right.

We heard some of the hymns from The Year of the Flood and saw many images of beasts in the act of eating or being eaten. We learned about the books, and enjoyed a Q&A period that was both serious and hilarious.

On the way home we talked most about Gibson’s reading about willing compliance—an animal understanding of when it is time to be the one whose role is now prey, and a willingness to offer yourself up to that greater good. We talked about how the human political animal doesn’t have that willing compliance to act for the greater good. Much later, when I woke in the pre-dawn of the new day, I thought about what Pogo used to say: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “willing compliance” or on some topic suggested by the photo.

On November 18:

326 The old St. Peter’s Basilica was consecrated

1477  William Caxton produced Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres, the first book printed on a printing press in England.

 

1903 The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.

1916 : First Battle of the Somme ended when British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig called off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.

1918  Latvia declared its independence from Russia

1926 George Bernard Shaw refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”

1928 The release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon stars Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey’s birthday.

1939 Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer, was born.

1942  Susan Sullivan, American actress, was born.

1947 The Ballantyne’s Department Store fire, Christchurch, New Zealand, killed 41 people.

1963 The first push-button telephone went into service.

1978 Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult in a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them at Jonestown itself, including over 270 children.

 

1983  Jon Johansen, Norwegian software developer, was born.

1993 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed in the House of Representatives.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

After my previous post on a few things Book Group orientated and The Riverside Readers I said that I would come back with a post on my personal top Book Group reads as well as discussing my top Book Group tips. Those two things would actually make a bit of a Bible of a post and so I will do the top books today and a few tips and my own experiences for and of Book Groups on Thursday, so hopefully you are all still interested in all things Book Group related. Could I fit the words Book Groups in these previous sentences if I tried?

After seeing Novel Insights wonderful post on her personal top twelve books a group could read in a year I thought I would have a go. This isn’t plagiarism it’s simply joining in, ha. Having been in a few book groups (in fact I am currently in two though one is rather rogue and we only do one every so often when the whim takes us) I realised that I had a list of 38 books that I could choose from. Some of the books haven’t worked (Tales of the Jazz Age – we all had different editions which all featured a different selection of short stories), some have received indifference, some have been disliked and some have been loved, more on those in my list.

Though I haven’t featured the books that were indifferent or went wrong I have included one book which I didn’t care for but caused great discussion and that’s one thing I have noticed from book groups, I might not always like a book but that in itself when lots of people do can make for a great book group read as it causes debate. So what five things do I do in order to make a book group choice now, I may not have always done this in the past mind;

1. Books you wouldn’t normally read – one of the main points of a book group in my mind – but which are accessible, you don’t want to alienate your other group members.
2. Books which have been received with strong reviews/thoughts both positive and negative way when they came out, this could cause great debate.
3. Books that make you think and cause all sorts of discussions with yourself in your own head though you can’t always predict these in advance.
4. Authors you love and admire who other people might not have tried, though don’t be precious on these as they could get ripped to shreds.
5. Books that challenge and push you as a reader, if they are going to do this to you they probably will be to others.

Looking back at all the book groups I have been part of in the past which book would I recommend the most? Well after some whittling of the 38 I have read with book groups I came up with the final twelve (like Novel Insights I have chosen a years worth) that I think have caused the greatest discussion in no particular order.

• Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
• The Bell – Iris Murdoch
• In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
• On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan (close tie with Atonement to be honest)
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
• To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
• Animal’s People – Indra Sinha
• Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (the one I didn’t like – discussion was great)
• The Book of Dave – Will Self
• Kafka on the Shore – Hariku Murakami

So there it is. You can see the full list of all 38 books now on the “new and improved” Book Group page where you can also see what the next book group read is. You may be wondering why some of the above list are in bold. Well my Gran wants a list of five books, as I mentioned on a previous post, she could put forward for her book group. I am actually going to send her a list of new books she and her group are less likely to have read along with the five above in bold. More book group musings on Thursday when I will be discussing Book Group decorum and what made me sensationally (love the drama of that word) leave a book group I started after two years! Let me know what you think of the final twelve too can you spot any themes in them? Also please do tell me of any great books you have done in a book group in the past.

P.S Sorry no picture on today’s post I am not a big fan of posts with no images, if it drives me to crazy will be the shot of The Riverside Readers again!

Margaret Atwood and her life partner of 40 years Graeme Gibson read from their latest works at UNM this evening: The Year of The Flood, and The bedside book of beasts. Margaret kicked off the night with some music by Orville Stoeber, (who got his hands on Margaret’s manuscript through her literary agent Phoebe Larmore) that was directly inspired by her original hymns in The Year of The Flood. Margaret  continued by joyfully reading some passages from her book that depicted a future full of questions about natural resources, biohazards , and the eating of meat! (Margaret is strictly Veg!) Margaret took to the mic with authority as she read to the audience: “Do you want to eat, or be eaten? Kill or be killed? Hunt or be hunted? Give or take? Because you see all these questions are the same.”

Graeme then took the stage reading passages from his book, which concerned itself with  precisely the question of  hunter and hunted, and natural law.

The floor was then opened up for questions, and Margaret and Graeme took turns answering. It seemed that most questions revolved around matters of the heart and politics: How will we renew our fallen natural resources?, is civilization killing the planet?, Is it possible to have a relationship and be a writer?, How do we motivate people to conserve and do more? (Margaret called this the question of hope.) This all made me ask myself “why are we looking to fiction authors to answer our questions of the heart, and our concerns about the future existence of our planet?” But then I realized we’ve always looked to them for answers, by reading, and letting them imagine our futures and heartaches for us. Is it possible, that by reading into Margaret Atwood’s fictional future where Texas is no longer apart of the US, it can leave room for us to make the future different? By reading The Sorrows of Young Wurther do we not learn caution in romantic obsessions?

When one brave audience member raised her hand and asked: “How do you make Love work?” Margaret thought for a bit, and said

“If you’re looking for the stuff in perfume ads, we’ve past that point (though it’s a good place to start), but when it come to getting along everyday it takes a lot of patience.” Graeme then took the microphone,”And I’m known for having lots of it.”

Margaret opened her reading by saying that people have raised questions about the pessimistic future she portrays in her novel. She said she always tells them, “This is a book, it has a front cover and a back cover, and when you close it, all that stuff stays inside the book. Keep it a book, and your life will be much happier.”

We’re with you Margaret.

-The Editorial Board

P.S. Wish Margaret a happy birthday on Wednesday!

P.P.S Visit Margaret Atwood’s Tweets! and her blog!

Let me begin by saying that I love Margaret Atwood. The dream of touching the hands that created such beautiful poetic prose is one that I am sadly realising will never come true. I am an avid and faithful collector of all her works of fiction, committed to filling my bookshelves with Atwood’s creations, and, perhaps blasphemously, not minding about the dog-eared appearance of some of my charity shop lucky finds. I read her books regularly, repeatedly, owning the claim that I have read each item in my collection ‘at least once, of course!’ I am easy to buy for at Christmas due to the prolificacy of her writing; not only novels, but poetry, lectures and articles. I have a ready answer to the ice-breaker, ‘so, who’s your favourite author?’ I am lucky that I found her so young. I am blessed, and I am grateful for this every time I submerge myself in her mesmerising world. Several times a year my partner is an Atwood widower. She makes me want to write like her, to reveal these inner worlds, painful and infuriating and beautiful, challenging society from the safety of a dingy room and an internal turmoil. She gives me the belief that curled inside me is a powerful yet vulnerable tale of sexuality, oppression and rage. I am constantly amazed at the words she pulls out of the page in succession, and often I re-read phrases and paragraphs in order to digest it fully, to do it justice, to appreciate this work of art.

Imagine, then, if you will, my utter disappointment on reading The Year of the Flood. I consider myself well enough informed to comment, and I am not afraid to be damning. Her penultimate novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003 and I am the proud owner of the first edition hardback (a rarity on my student budget). This novel intrigued me at first- I was surprised by the political subtext, the scientific terminology and the gloomy futuristic outlook. The text was thick with biological language, describing a world that could easily have begun with the one we crave now (genetically modifying, gene splicing, eradicating disease and anger, creating the Perfect Human Being) which was shudderingly unsettling. I am not a science fiction fan, I am not particularly into politics, and I have never had a ‘Science brain’ but despite this unlikely combination, I thoroughly enjoyed the book (and have subsequently read it twice more). Snowman (born Jimmy) is living a meagre existence, struggling to combat hunger and protect himself from extreme weather conditions, battling with Crake’s legacy of a crumbling world. There are flashbacks to his childhood which explain the background to the apocalyptic present, and the sub-plot of the unfulfilling love affair with Oryx. I enjoyed the novel because Atwood continued to portray the human condition in all its ugliness and glory, its dreams and failures, grief and passion, whilst introducing us to a new world order. And so we come to The Year of the Flood. The long-awaited sequel to Oryx and Crake was published in 2009, and I could barely contain my excitement when I held my copy for the first time. Now, my test of a good book is this: if after browsing the first paragraph I turn to the next page without realising, I am committed to taking it home with me. However, The Year of the Flood did not draw me in. I did not suddenly lose all contact with the outside world to be immersed in Atwood’s prose. In fact, it took me several attempts to finish it with, I think, two other books in between. Of course, I had to finish it: this was unquestionable. I am a devoted Atwood fan and therefore I go with the rough and the smooth. I am loyal. But I will not refrain from dissuading people from buying this book.

The initial reason for my lack of engagement with the story was the structure of flitting from Ren to Toby without depth or insight, interspersed with the banal and time-wasting songs from the Gardeners’ hymn book. After the 6th song I just skipped them. I felt completely disconnected from the characters, caring not one bit about their plight. There were few additions to the world of Snowman, with the pigoons still wandering about and the weather being predictably bad. This was now boring. Atwood took us through the history of the Gardeners, introducing us to the world of the pleeblands that existed outside Jimmy’s secure compounds while he was growing up. Although I appreciated a little background and a fleshing out of this new world, I felt there was little depth added by continuing the same line. The characters lacked personality, they were heartless, aimless, dispassionate. I knew nothing about Toby’s motivations; nothing at all about AdamOne: his background, his personality, his looks for goodness sake!; and nothing about the soul of Ren, her sense of self, her raw sexuality, her inspiration. The one thing that has kept me hooked to Atwood’s prose since I was 17 was glaringly absent: the humanity. I am utterly disappointed, and quietly concerned about the next contribution from the Canadian. I think I will learn my lesson from this whole episode: when her next novel is announced, I think I’ll be a little more patient before I go diving in to the first page.