Margaret Atwood goes to the front

This is a new book by Margaret Atwood. As with any famous author, mixed feelings appear. On the one hand, Atwood has published a lot, and has performed successfully in all genres. He has also won many awards. For example, the Booker Prize, which he won twice. But he also won the Prince of Asturias, the Montale Award and the Governor General's Award, among others.

To complete its impressive resume, it has been translated into more than forty languages. But, above all, the Canadian Margaret Atwood is the author of The Handmaid's Tale, a dystopian novel published in 1985 that has given to talk until the present, after it was put back into circulation thanks to the sad actuality of its predictions and a Netflix series inspired by the book.

One wonders: Does Atwood never tire of publishing? Apparently not. At eighty-four, a collection of essays and reviews has just been published, under the title Hot Issues, which deals with the author's production in this field from 2004 to 2021. The nature of such essays is eclectic: it ranges from articles published in media such as The Guardian to acceptance speeches, forewords and lectures.

As for the subjects, they're as varied as you can imagine, and Atwood doesn't disappoint for a moment: her essays are bold, engaged, sweetly ironic, and charmingly mundane. In the prologue, where she takes care to give context to this extensive production, she poses to the readers and to herself the fundamental questions that cross these texts: "What happens to writing and writers? Should they be, should we be, mere spokesmen who are shelling topics or truisms for the supposed benefit of society or do we have some other role? And if others disapprove of our function, should our books be burned? Why not? It wouldn't be the first time. There is nothing inherently sacrosanct about a book."

No, there is nothing inherently sacrosanct about a book, although even today there are people who still think that "reading is good" and want to encourage reading at any cost. But, speaking of unraveling clichés and truisms, let's say in passing that Atwood is a master at that, and in fact that (shelling the obvious) is the center of her style.

Let's look at an example. In a speech he gave in 2013, published in Burning Issues with the title "How to change the world?", he begins this way: "When I saw the title of this congress, 'How to change the world?', I asked myself three questions. First, what does 'change' mean? Second, what does 'how' mean? And third, what does 'the world' mean?" Atwood likes to go "to the bone" and never seems to be afraid to bring truism truths to the table.

From Canada to the world Another example. In "Literature and the Environment", published in 2015, he makes clear his simple position on the subject: "The conservation of an environment more or less similar to the one we have is a precondition for literature. Unless we manage to preserve that environment, my writing, yours and anyone else's is doomed to be irrelevant, because there will no longer be anyone to read it." How he manages to go from this obviousness to talk about how human beings are born telling stories, to conclude that art is not the opposite of nature but is, precisely, our nature, it is part of his narrative talent.

It does not seem at first glance that Ana, the one from Tejas Verdes represents a "burning issue" in itself, but the essay dedicated to her is especially revealing. Not only does he delve into the emotional twists and turns of the readers of the famous orphan of the Canadian writer (Canada is also Atwood's country of origin) Lucy Maud Montgomery, but he tells us about the translation and reception of the work in a country as far from Canada as Japan: "Anne was an orphan, and in Japan, just after World War II, there were so many orphans, so readers identified with her."

Atwood learned this fact on a trip she made to that country for work, which gives us the clue, as is clear throughout these long pages, that the attention she devotes to almost everything around her is exhaustive.

So that fans of his most famous novel do not worry, it should be mentioned that there is enough information here about the circumstances of the creation of The Handmaid's Tale. In "Reflections on The Handmaid's Tale", an article originally published in 2015, she traces a course on the rights conquered by women (and their regression) from their childhood to the present day.

Its reading is particularly enlightening. "I thought two things," he says, "(1) that if true believers say they will do something, they will do it as soon as the occasion arises; (2) that whoever says that 'this cannot happen here' is mistaken; Anything can happen anywhere, as long as the right conditions are in place, and that is something that history shows us again and again. To those two, I now add: (3) power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

In conclusion, these essays by Atwood are interesting reading for everyone, but, for some reason, they seem especially useful for young people. Margaret is well aware that, in her years, she has somehow become "the old Aunt Margaret", and that is why she does not skimp on recommendations, explanations and advice of all kinds. Nor does he hesitate to ridicule himself.

When she talks about Kafka, for example, she tells us that at the age of nineteen she wrote about him without having a clue, and waiting for the outbreak of madness that would confirm her as a writer, which of course never came. Who has not desired, in his early youth, some similar incoherence. Saying so is another matter. Aunt Margaret does it, as with so many other things, with a grace difficult to match.

Burning issues, Margaret Atwood. Trans. David Paradela López. Salamander, 496 pp. $8,999

See also

Margaret Atwood and those who prepared us for the end of the world

See also

Margaret Atwood and the Black Night of the Universal Plague