A Word on Words; 4128; Margaret Atwood

from nashville public television's do a celebrated authors literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word on where jobs just until the law once again too word on words it is mildly to walk or my guest today is margaret atwood she is a distinguished author of more than fifty volumes of poetry children's literature fiction nonfiction perhaps best known for her novels which include the handmaid's tale you're the flood blind assassin at his grace and gets it or it's been published in thirty five countries more than forty languages are writing career spans almost five decades received numerous awards honor agrees margaret it is my pleasure to have you here in a world where it's well thank you so much for coming in i think i'm so grateful to little public library of bring you here for this annual award and and and a normal for injured and beauty welcome you were were

huge it is i've said the internet the true on a heavier this is really in that career fifteen fifty volts you know how i can tell i want money in one hand and then i'll find one place and says she has written forty books and she's written almost fifteen and she's written more than fifty and on well or at the more than stage so i mean i'm more than fifty years old well more than forty movies that willing to go and do it and i wanted it and then i went back and checked and tennis courts a simple timeless presses less on that and we got no injury on where been another book another two books

this track is really i think maybe despite affected load is songwriting for nearly as it seems to me the poetry gregory first among all about that oh well he was like this and i always wrote all of the things i write now some poetry fiction and nonfiction prose but in those days which were the late fifties early sixties in canada was very hard to get novel published because people would say first of all the canadian literature doesn't really exist in and you needed to have an american or british co publisher and then i was able to canada doesn't really have an identity and and then the americans and the british will look out and said this is to canadian so there was a paradox but poetry you can publish in your seller a lot of his dead we

began by publishing inherent our sellers are other people sellers member them in the omission and my hands and my first book on fire and then perhaps now i'm putting the miners and we have a shortage of days so i had to set one prominent time and then disassemble it and sent the next one to that so a lot of this began so it looks as if i was doing poetry first because that got published published first hour but really i was doing all of them all along i hadn't noticed that the interaction is grace there is an airport that corner that really serves as a magnet pulling you into the book my wife read it and the union to fight to get away from assad to get back to town and but it and the clientele

wonder chef with i wondered whether wrong well you wrote your dog partners absolutely no way that i've i wrote them to standard hymn tunes but then my friend laurel the musician got into the manuscript when my agent was reading it and or will the musicians started channeling an m one and he started writing this wonderful him music so i said go oracle and he wrote the music for all the hymns i did say you know these are him czar of all ordinary people have to be able to sing them and he didn't always stick to that but he did write an hour for instance and i'm pretty good on the mole song i don't want to sign up for the yo most soldiers cultural and where the underground life when we really be finished

but nonetheless our bare hands and hymns are not the same as pawns in cern are made for congregational participation and that some of the rhymes are a little odd and real him so i made some of the rhymes a little london the hymns that i provided for the gods gardeners and iraq ryan umbrella with gorilla host thank you for a moment then adam and got gardeners of its strikes me that that there is a young man the effort had it on there is that there is in much of york sullivan and i'm urging religion and science and ecology and contemporary issues survey woman fries but that but the year of the flood

broken bookstore manager and a trillion leave a war a war everywhere and the us and you find out that this is a disease this is not the same in the waterless flooded citizens even as well as a lot in the noah story gone rather tripoli sense that he's not going to destroy the world again with a flood of some fine for not acknowledging you know a lot of wind and so allison this is another way i'm doing it which doesn't involve subversion but the guards gardeners because they do land scripture nature and end our science of times it's a bit tricky but they've manage it they say okay so is not going to be our flood with water in it next time but it's going to but there's going to

be a next time and so they are preparing for that they're also the alternative in this world to aim two the power elite which is now a merger of government and corporate please don't want to sell it now i noticed this is a growing up a warning sign in of detour here don't go there because you don't want government and corporations to be in the same thing you have no recourse of the city if that is the case we don't want that anymore than you wanted a theocracy if you're interested in and individually creative you know i've been on the other side of a camel there's a whole audience are your friends and they may read two or three or four five of those books are more along and each of

them has a favorite i have a favorite alone they lose crates five never heard that story interestingly i am always through alias grace before i realize the grace marks indeed was a woman did go to prison did suffer unassuming did marry we don't know don't know whether she married now dave and then we did try to research absolutely everything really occurred which was a noise is it but we did find the moment when she leaves not to spoil the ending he does get out of the prison and there's the warden's notes and he takes her across to the united states to quote a home prepared or so somebody there was going to take her in and then she did what anybody would probably did under the circumstances her name changes she disappears from the historical record there is an account written by journalist that we don't really entirely

believe and twenty years later in which he says that his now her and that she is married and has children and then she armed cheery pants on a curb they asked him again which essentially daring the impact we we actually don't know and i know that there are little excerpt and on taking and taking from the little excerpt of her confession that fashion and that's from a record that's what that's what pena's paper put out as her confession vision but it's not really actually that you know it is not to to nail what she says in their text with we actually went to what what actually happened well what we know is that she told according to be a record she told three stories about an abandoned remember she was barely sixteen years she said first of all search me i don't know

her second story was when nancy the murdered woman did not come home for dinner i was worried yes and their story was i saw i saw the key is to her fellow and his first in dragging nancy by her hair to be seller drought so there is a big jump between search me i don't know and writing by the hair when there is a large amount of territory covered they're so what lead you to think that that there's a fourth story but she never told so we actually really don't know you know that she ran away with the murdered woman's wardrobe and they didn't get their testimony is that she was really that the witnesses were offended by the fact that she showed up and as one or being i guess we should wade centuries of a

famous ward and some would say infamous for you dilling in the world science fiction which you prefer course but the kind i write that i wanted to talk about that because it might confuse some of our view we could call an all science fiction writer to me anyone in the clark yes it was a lovely book and the end of the week so if you could put a big banner over the top of it and call it wonder jails and under wonder tells it might have dr gil over here and maybe some morals and and in present day terms some zombies paid to brag in cuba haven't been any real zombies yes let's call it one details and you could have the on a planet in a galaxy far far away and then another time we can have star wars weekend star trek reagan of war of the worlds margins arrive in huge tin

cans and then waited of nineteen eighty four and we did have a brave new world and we could have all are actually you know about real estate lies on this planet and are simply more of things of things that we already know our somewhat how to do impact orwell was taking the soviet union and just flipping the dates so the stuff that we could do far far away it's here it's on the earth and to me there's a big difference between that kind of story as much as i love that a planet far far away with with dragons for those of you just joining us i'm talking with margaret atwood about her distinguished were in fiction nonfiction poetry and children's literature and it's great to have you here so i'd i can write because i lacked the skills for a planet are broken gallon same in another time much as i wanted you know i'm quite well versed in and i

can do and its allies still shout it seems to leave it seems real occasion you did take us tomb upon not very non at any great length not enough and that the earth has been adrift eleven twelve years i haven't embedded stories within the blind assassin because a right to one's us yes i mean i think that the bonds us and dogs what's going on sort of the picture of the cover which has wanted to cover and find out it's not a murder mystery about a blind assassin it's a it's the blind assassin is a book within that was a new book in which there isn't blinded as there is an excess of murdering person yes so in the thirties the golden age of the sideline and with weird tales and many another call it was possible to make a living

writing along these kinds of tales for the pope's under many different names of you wrote very quickly inside ray bradbury gonna start doing pretty much exactly the so my my protagonist my my younger man in the book that's how he makes his living so when he appears in the narrative it's partly as a tale tale teller in business to have chemistry as you are that from long ago that relates to something that as i just interview authors it seems to me you sometimes in portland an anthem as i think about your worth it strikes me that voice is in park is important maine is maybe you love it maybe merrimack out of it but then it also

it also could be great marks or to be laura our roots and then jimmy carter would be jimmy handed and i just wanta you know in the end their terms in some of the books you go from first person to narrative third person back the first person and all that involves finding a voice not just that you're comfortable with but that the readers can because they have to delay the political naturally only sometimes there are false starts for instance i started alias grace in the third person and i am really and pages and in the end i was actually in france on a train and i got number one a blinding headache and number two in the realization that i had to throw about hundred pages and i had to you know i had to let gray's tell her own i had letters they can the first person because only that way when she'd be able to manipulate her

listener as it were which of course she would give alms you selling the best version of herself but you are led to wonder about what might be behind us but i couldn't do that in the third person with the blind and assassin i hadn't started three different times on the first time i started the fire as character was downed and she was being discovered by a new younger relative through the proverbial hat box of letters n o no so i went and i started again and this time she was alive the container and got bigger it was a sin against and had a photograph album minute and she was being discovered through to nosy journalists in marilyn and unfortunately they started having an affair and took over the novel so i had to put them in a drawer own either side and what they're doing in there and start again and this time i had to let her speak for herself and when she did that it was

fine that there was often the races the container it even bigger became a steamer trunk and in that steamer trunk to this very day you'll find it in the chapter called surprisingly the steamer exactly well i guess a piece i guess your friends are out there saying see i'm going please get on the lam its tail you know that that is the most controversial thing to an awful lot of people it's even threatening to some people i think some critics have suggested aren't be some commentators have suggested that it is a warning oh the coming mayo a backlash against the feminist movement was one way of looking at it and being having been born in nineteen thirty nine two years two months after candidate went into world war two

of course grew up in wartime and have always been very interested in totalitarian essence so the handmaid's tale is one way of looking down if the united states were to go totalitarian what would that look like so under under likely candidates for using what when such a system which is not meant against women because if it were then all the men would be having a lovely time and none of the women would the executive talent terry and there's a narrow is pyramid shaped they're always run from the top of the people at the bottom are always pretty and free and those at the top have a lot more perks as you say in maine and men's tales of course studying the soviet union now we know a lot more about it we can get at them documents much more looking at nancy germany looking even at what

happened to mao is china so it's more like that so it's not clear how can hear how would it happen what would you say to the idea that even though let alone late late last century knows till late twentieth in la twentieth century and part of that maybe early twentieth century the rules governing women and the rights of women summers says is an art form ooh oh isn't addictive it is that unfair no no i mean i've tried nothing into the handmaid's tale that human beings have not done at some time in some flights a shocking thing was i sat in on cambridge massachusetts yes you do

so what we think of as being home of level of democracy but it was not always such so you don't have to go back too far in history before you find in fact a big deal of the off a theocracy in place in puritan new england and indeed in many other places around the globe and being a person of my own time and place and against theocracy because if if you aren't about religion whenever maybe you're a heretic so you really have no you got know squeezing room for alternate it occurs to me that there will be some people will read to him again to get rid of and fun out those conditions and so moving states was yours because they're if that in so far as their pr person will remain open the shell and we want the

absolutely no residual ruin allan go away whoa is the place that that was true slaves under slavery in this country was in the la marine was that was illegal ah and so one of the characters in the handmaid's tale zone while we let them we were not going to make that mistake again and that's why scrabble as agent daily subversive think it's a wise oh yes absolutely bad but lettuce not get to our self righteous about that because we were doing the same things in our own culture not so very long ago and every a very controlling culture always wants to control women one where the other and they all they all want to have a handle on you can you marry harry show have children and how many children job i have now you can you can document this country by country going back

twenty episode fridge that would've been stripping away and a waste of money and the laundry and boy but then if you're going again it really took some dusty and vision and boeke and the emergence of now and human on derivatives but it seems to me it took that movement too and it is back where we were at a shallow things was back and forth and ends and everything's connected so first of all women's comparative freedom right now as angelo the pentagon on cheap energy it's just just for starters number two it has a lot to do with what kinds of jobs an economy depends on and hiv is a quiet today those jobs so in an agricultural society heavily dependent on upper body strength and physical labor there was a big division so if you

were a farming family women than them in the kitchen garden in their hands because this had been plowing and on this was my grandparents and so you know they these people debate these things those people that those things you actually want a lot of children to help iran the park china's growing rice so in terms of cheap labor typewriters secretarial positions of big retail stores these are jobs that women can do big surprise all of a sudden they started doing them that may be a backlash we have just a couple minutes can you believe is a life and so great to be we try asking activist about all killed him a long long long long time ago you know be me ups gaudy bawdy doesn't that person turns into a lot of pixels and then and then suddenly on the alien planets dealing

dealing with things so what the long pen does is a beam me up scotty you are creating original yourself you can drop it and it flies through the air and peers in physical form in another location if you wish you can also store all of that digitally and that is when you age and it's in a company now calls and raffi as y n g r a f f i are from the old roman form of making a true copy killing off the book jurors that we're really known for is a bolus in sound and it's it's mostly in banking up right now particularly in morgan's signing so that you do not have to wait five days aren't drive a lot of hours in a car in signed a document and you can talk to somebody by video negotiate the whole thing and then complete the transaction sagan have a video conferencing with transaction completion longer

than the sword is gone this has been wonderful having you hear i mean i think all of you for watching with another time and dancing and all of your own words the treaty