Now there is snow covering everything, and the cold is bitter even when the sun is shining, so I read this week’s story and lecture inside, under an afghan, tucked into the corner of one of the warmer rooms (saving the warmest for later winter months—like being in training, for weather-aware sitting).
“Debt as Plot,” the third lecture in the Massey series for Payback (which I started in MARM2022 Week One), left me feeling distinctly underread. Somehow, in the earlier chapters, I did not expect that I’d remember my studies on mythology and religious stories, so I followed along like this was my introduction to the materials, but here Atwood refers to novels and stories I’ve actually read, but I have such a hazy recall of them that I wonder why I bothered to read them in the first place, and I still sit passively while she explains their significance to the topic at hand.
But never mind, because even if you haven’t read any of them, you’ll learn the entire story in a paragraph or two, including who dies and how (because debt as plot is often a tragic affair). So if you’re spoilerphobic (as I am), you’ll want to steer clear, unless you don’t care what happens in A Christmas Carol (the least tragic, but with a key reference to Old Scratch, the devil), Dr. Faustus, “The Devil and Tom Walker” (a Washington Irving story with interesting connections to the former two stories), Pilgrim’s Progress (yes, I read this in school, didn’t you?), the Grimms’ fairy tale “The Girl with No Hands, Mill on the Floss, Madame Bovary, House of Mirth, and Vanity Fair.
As with the earlier lectures, and because I lack a deeper familiarity with these stories, I found the parts that intersect with Atwood’s personal experience most engaging. And, I related to this bit about her reflection on her own encounters with Victorian fiction, because, like her:
“When I was young and simple, I thought the nineteenth-century novel was driven by love; but now, in my more complicated riper years, I see that it’s also driven by money, which indeed holds a more central place in it than love does, no matter how much the virtues of love may be waved idealistically aloft.”
From this point, she succinctly summarises the events of Wuthering Heights, one paragraph containing all but one plot point, and illustrates her point with both clarity and a dramatic flourish. “The best nineteenth-century revenge is not seeing your enemy’s red blood all over the floor but seeing the red ink all over his balance sheet.”
Remember, from MARM2022 Week Two, she knows that the bloodiest bits make for the best story. “Without memory, there is no debt. Put another way, without story, there is no debt.”
This connects nicely with the third story in Dancing Girls, “Polarities,” which has a deeper layer about class and privilege, than I likely would have noticed as a “young and simple” reader but which, in my “riper years” (hee hee), seems vitally important. This setting, for instance, which speaks of impermanence and scarcity:
The house was one of the featureless two-storey boxes thrown up by the streetful in the years after the war when there was a housing boom and materials were scarce. It was stuccoed with a greyish gravel Morrison found spiritually depleting. There were a few older houses, but they were quickly being torn down by developers; soon the city would have no visible past at all. Everything else was highrises, or worse, low barrack-shaped multiple housing units, cheaply tacked together. Sometimes the rows of flimsy buildings—snow on their roofs, rootless white faces peering suspiciously out through their windows, kids’ toys scattered like trash on the walks—reminded him of old photographs he had seen of mining camps. They were the houses of people who did not expect to be living in them for long.
This is where Louise lives—in a basement apartment. Which we are to read as a place of even greater impermanence, even more intense scarcity. But in that younger, simpler reading? The story could be about whether the connection between Morrison and Louise will develop into a more serious relationship. In a “riper years’” reading, it’s about Louise’s opportunities.
When she has a psychological and emotional breakdown, she is hospitalized; from that point, her choices are increasingly limited, and Morrison feels increasingly helpless:
“Most of those inside were getting worse rather than better; many had to stay there because no one would take the responsibility of looking after them, even if they were drugged into manageability. They were poor, without relations; the hospital would not let them go away by themselves.”
There are glimmers, too, of Atwood’s first novel, Surfacing (1972), with the question of how Canadian and American identities contrast. Morrison is not in Canada as a “draft dodger” but he knows that people assume otherwise and he doesn’t contradict their narrative. He’s “not overjoyed” by the anti-Americanism that Leota and Paul exhibit, but “the best defence was to agree.” He makes light of the situation, for Louise’s sake, because they are her friends.
“’You Yanks are coming up and taking all our jobs,’ Paul would say, and Morrison would nod affably. ‘That’s right, you shouldn’t let it happen. I wonder why you hired me?’ Leota would start in about how the Americans were buying up all the industry, and Morrison would say, ‘Yes, it’s a shame. Why are you selling it to us?’”
Even here, it’s the economic concerns that underscore Paul and Leota’s “bitter sallies” and spark Morrison’s retorts. It’s easy to see why Margaret Atwood recommends the writing of Jess Walters, most recently (in a thread about books to read when you’re home during the pandemic) The Cold Millions. Last year, for MARM, I read a few of the authors whose books she had recommended: Vincent Lam, Claudia Rankine, Madeline Ashby, and Louise Erdrich.
Even though I’ve only read a couple of Jess Walter’s short stories and Beautiful Ruins, he’s a contender for my MRE (MustReadEverything) author list based on how I’ve heard him speak in interviews and podcasts. What he values in stories as a reader and as a writer is akin to my own priorities, so I don’t care where he sets his stories, I’m keen to read them. Having said that, I was surprised to find myself in the Pacific Northwest United States, in the early twentieth century. Surprised to find myself queuing a documentary about the Wobblies on Kanopy.
The Cold Millions opens with an apt and evocative quotation, and I’ll close with it, to offer a cool breeze to the visitors from warm places and to offer some recognition to others in northern climes just now:
Darkness came on that town like a candle being snuffed. This was my wife’s primary complaint about Spokane after two years of me copping there, what Rebecca called the ‘drastic sark’ of autumn. We’d come from Sioux City, a town she still called home, and where I’d walked an easier beat. I found Spokane im a land-spec ad, but the piece I bought turned out to be cliff-face basalt and not arable, so we took four rooms in a brick apartment north of the river, and I got on with that roughneck police force. These were hard years, ’08 and ’09, everything about Spokane hard, bringing to mind Rebecca’s word, drastic. Steep hills, deep canyons, cold winters, hot summers, and those dark autumn evenings that made her so melancholy, when five felt like midnight.
Have you ever read a book because another author recommended it (via a blurb perhaps)? Or, perhaps even discovered a new favourite writer in this way?
I can’t think of a writer recommended by a writer. Eve Langley in The Pea Pickers (a very Australian reference, I know) mentions 100 writers because I counted them but I wasn’t motivated to read any of the ones I hadn’t read. I made sure I read LoBRL’s comment so I wasn’t caught out and damn, now I’m going to have to google Sherman Alexie before I read him (he may well have been my 12th North American).
Lucky you, having one room for each season. All I can do is turn on the fan or heater as needed. Or on really hot days, retire to the lounge, which has aircon.
Not even out of a hundred, you weren’t tempted by even ONE of them? Wow, that’s resilience. I would have typed out the list and made a plan (but, then, I probably wouldn’t have been able to squeeze any of them in anyhow heheh).
I understand the instinct to speak out in support of someone who is alleging abusive behaviour and treatment, but is it supportive to assume that one sex is always telling the truth and the other sex is always lying? When you don’t have personal knowledge about the situation? IIRC, there were two women online who made allegations about SA’s behaviour, but I was never able to find any information that verified their claims; around the same time, allegations were made against other writers too, like Junot Diaz, for instance, and allegations against him sounded very damning initially but were later debunked or, at the very least, were part of a much more complicated scene than any of the headlines suggested (depending on your interpretation). What to do, when clicks equate with profits–and everyone wants your attention–and the truth doesn’t have any value?
Hahaha, oh that did sound rather grand. LOL More accurately: the smallest room in the house, which barely holds some toys and the bunkbeds where little ones sleepover, has turned out to be the warmest room so, when the icicles are winning, I’m gonna curl up and read in there, even though it’s not “my space.” But…you have a lounge? With a smoking jacket and a decanter?
You write somewhere in the BIP posts I read this week – maybe even here – that MA read no Canadian Poets. Eve Langley (1904-1974) names as her biggest influences poets Henry Kendall and Adam Lindsay Gordon and short story writer Henry Lawson – all of the Australian Bush Realism (1890-1910) period, though Kendall is a little earlier and a bit more ‘Romantic’. After them, her names are disappointingly all English and especially Byron. I am astonished that MA, who is a generation younger, was so little influenced by early Canadians.
I think it was one of the Random Facts that Naomi included in her MARM post? Maybe the way that Australian/NZ lit developed was actually nourished by being more isolated (i.e. an island rather than being next door to the U.S.. and you’ll remember how pivotal those tensions are in Surfacing, at least I think you read that a couple years ago). There were Canadian poets here pre-Confederation (when a few, not all, provinces declared themselves part of a nation–disregarding, of course, the fact they were all settlers on Indigenous homelands) and I forced myself through a collection a few years ago, thanks to an online reading group (defunct). But Cdn literature wasn’t “real” literature–English literature was the real stuff. In Naomi’s post, she mentioned that both her daughters have read The Handmaid’s Tale in school, but neither Naomi nor I studied MA in high school, not even in university, because that’s a more recent development–we studied “important writers”, “writers from important places.” In that context, it makes sense that MA found her literary influences elsewhere when she was a young student (because she’s an earlier generation than mine), but of course one can wish that nobody prioritised “important countries with important writers.” Agreed, wholeheartedly.
That red ink quote is wonderful! I had a similar experience with Victorian literature – now that I’m older I pick up much more on the practicalities of how to live which those novels consider.
Hah! That’s charming. And just as sensible as the chess-piece concept, I’d say.
I’m not sure if you follow Laila of Big Reading Life, but I believe she is a big fan of Jess Walters as well. I don’t think I’ve read much by him, I can’t remember, but I’ll make sure to pay more attention if you are a fan – I trust your recommendations, and MA’s of course 😉
You mean Laila of Big Reading Life whose comment is right here? THAT Laila? Heheh How are you leaving comments and not able to see the other comments? Oh, maybe you’re in the WP app? Or maybe I’ve forgotten how it all works…I’m behind with reading and commenting these days. (Where’s the emoji for simultaneously eye-rolling and laughing-at-one’s-self.) Geographically, I think you’re closer to JW territory than either Laila or I am!
Yes that Laila! I saw her comment right after I hit send. Lol embarassing!
Hahahaha Just had a feeling it was the same Laila. So far, I don’t think she’s noticed you not noticing her…I think your secret is safe with…well…everyone else here.
I love that quote about 19th century revenge.
I find it so interesting that we look at things differently the older we get. My favourite example of that, you won’t be surprised to hear, is the huge difference in the way I think about Marilla now compared to when I was a kid.
I haven’t read anything by Jess Walters, but am still a little embarrassed to admit that all this time I thought he was a woman. I do have Beautiful Ruins on my bookshelf…
Hooray! Jess Walter! He’s one of my top 5 authors. I have his new book of short stories sitting on my nightstand (yet unread.) I saw him give a reading and answer questions when he was promoting Beautiful Ruins and he was funny and charming. He used to have a podcast with Sherman Alexie (before we all knew about Alexie’s ickyness) that was so very entertaining.
JW’s got a great sense of humour in my opinion, too: that’s exactly what made the interviews so enjoyable. Kind of a dry wit, too, similar to MA’s in that way maybe. And self-deprecating!
Those allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards SA weren’t part of any investigation though, were they? Twitter accusations? I recall that when the rumours were circulating, that I mentioned somewhere (maybe on your blog?) that I had heard talk about his ego as a writer, and I’d heard talk about how some younger writers felt that he should have done more to support their careers, and he’s also taken some heat from other Indigenous writers for not writing the “right kind” of Indigenous stories. I think anyone who has achieved the kind of success SA has achieved (well, for a writer, but he’s hardly Stephen King or Danielle Steele!) makes a convenient target, sometimes for legitimate reasons and sometimes not, especially if their work is at all political in nature: from the sidelines we simply can’t know the truth of it all.
I read Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Soderberg because Atwood recommended it in a book of essays by writers on books they wish more people read or something like that. 🙂
Ohhh, good one: I read it on her recommendation as well!
I’ve not read anything of Jess Walter’s yet, but I’d like to. I’ve heard the most about Beautiful Ruins.
It’s not even that cold yet and already we’re realizing how un-winter-ready our house is … sigh. There will be much more insulating to be done before next year.
I hope M.A. is having a lovely birthday 🙂
Yes, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to MARGARET ATWOOD.
That seems to be the best known, maybe because the Hollywood angle is something that captures people’s attention more readily?
But I also had writer friends mention Financial Lives of the Poets, before that, too.
Anytime I read an article about a writer whose work I’ve liked and they say what they’ve just read, I look it up and read it. I’ve found lots of good books that way, especially science fiction.
Same here. I think my entire TBR is half what other readers have recommended and half what other writers have recommended. And I agree…especially useful with SFF!