Margaret Atwood on History and Novels

 I have read a big chunk of Margaret Atwood's Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983 - 2005 (Carroll & Graf, 2005) since yesterday. She has gotten me itching to be writing again. This has always been true about me: I am only as good as my inspiration and I am a counterpuncher.

I cannot agree with her review of John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick. She finds it charming - not a word that came to my mind when I read the novel years ago here at Fort Dix.  However, Ms. Atwood makes me think I do not belong to the generation that would have taken Witches to heart. Could be I was also in place where charming does obtain much traction.  I will also confess being infected by the movie version.

About writing itself, on the novel and history:

Here is the conundrum for history and individual memory alike, and therefore for fiction also: How do we know what we know? And if we find that, after all, we don't know what is that we once thought we knew, how do we know we are are who we think we are, or thought we were - for instance -  a hundred years ago? These are the questions one asks oneself at my age, whenever one says, Whatever happened to old what's-his-name? They are also the questions that arise in connection with Canadian history, or indeed with any other kind of history. They are also the questions that arise in any contemplation of what used to be called 'character"; they are thus central to any conception of the novel. For the novel concerns itself, above all, with time. Any plot plot is a this followed by a that; there must be change in a novel, and and change can only have significance if either the character in the book, or, at the very least, the reader, can remember what came before....

p. 161; "In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction"

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...And I think that's part of the interest for writers and readers of Canadian historical fiction now: by taking a long, hard look backward, we place ourselves.

P. 170

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What does the past tell us? In and of itself, it tells us nothing. We have to be listening first, before it will say a way; and even so, listening means telling, and then retelling. It's we ourselves who must do such telling about the past, if anything is to be said about it; and our audience is one another....

p. 175

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...And so it is with stories about the past. The past no longer belongs to those who lived it; the past belongs to those who claim it, and are willing to explore it, and to infuse it with meaning for those alive today. The past belongs to us because because we are the ones who need it.

p. 176

What she applies to Canadian history can be - needs to be - applied to American history and to Indiana history. Especially since there are those claiming once upon a time in American history the country possessed a greatness it no longer possesses. Colson Whitehead did just thing in his Nickel Boys and so did Philip Roth in The Plot Against America and Toni Morrison with Beloved and Jessamyn West in her Indiana novels. And doo not forget Raintree County. When we do not know our history we will not only repeat our mistakes but also allow its perversions.

sch 

2/12/20