This is the fifth year that I’ve been reading Margaret Atwood in November, in the month of her birthday (November 18) and in every other one of those years I’ve borrowed books from the library that I did not manage to read. This year, I selected only two books written by her and only two books by other writers whose work she recommended—and only finished one of each. But, like other years, I felt like I was just getting warmed up, getting reacquainted, and…then it was December.
Warm thanks to those who shared in reading or exploring Margaret Atwood this month (Bill, Brona, Karen, Naomi, Rebecca—let me know if I’ve overlooked anyone who has posted in public)—each of you made me want to read or investigate another aspect of her work in a different way. And thanks to those who quietly joined, connecting to the work privately but—perhaps—contributing to the spirit of the event off-stage, whether snuggled under a quilt or turning pages with sweaty fingers sitting in the sun.
The final week’s story in Dancing Girls was a mournful read for me. At first glance, a couple are on a getaway, looking for “The Grave of the Famous Poet” but of course the destination is a burial site. The poet appears to have been long dead (there aren’t any definitive clues as to his identity, that I could see) but the relationship is just beginning to wither. There is a growing sense severance, even before the couple reaches the gravestone: “I pull him into me, wanting him to be with me, but for the first time I feel it’s just flesh, a body, a beautiful machine, an animated corpse, he isn’t in it anymore, I want him so much and he isn’t here.” And despite the sea air and the waves and the light, the darkness feels inescapable (but in a recognisably Atwoodian way): “What keeps me is a passive curiosity, it’s like an Elizabeth tragedy or a horror movie, I know which ones will be killed but not how.” This is what keeps the character, yes, and it also keeps the reader. It feels like an inevitable story and all the weightier for it.
The last chapter/lecture of Payback reminds readers of where Atwood has led us, through mythological and religious ideas about debt, and through classic texts, particularly A Christmas Carol. I can imagine audience members, attending this final of the five Massey Lectures in person, having dutifully listened to the previous four when they were delivered in other cities, making final preparations for even more references and allusions—then, being completely delighted to have the lecture transition into a sort of retelling, a revisioning of the trio of ghosts and that oh-so-familiar, haunted Scrooge. Yes, it’s insightful but also quite entertaining. Here, Scrooge has a corner office and a corporation—more than one, actually: “He collects them—it’s a hobby of his.” No, wait, he’s “wearing a hemp suit” and he’s “signing several enormous cheques for conservation organizations” The different iterations of Scrooge…well, you can see how it would be even funnier in her deadpan delivery.
In all, Atwood reminds us that because debt is a mental construct, “how we think about it changes how it works.” Which brings me to having watched the last of the current episodes in season five of “The Handmaid’s Tale”.
Don’t worry: spoiler-free chat to follow.
My relationship with this series has been all over the place—I’ve been in the watch-immediately, avoid-watching, binge-watching, through-my-fingers watching, and re-watching camps—with the only consistent element being that I always knew it was worth watching.
There were times when it felt so incisive that I couldn’t bear to look, while witnessing and coping with other personal and global difficulties and griefs. There were times when I felt that I had to watch because there were possibilities and solutions there, that didn’t seem to exist in headlines and data.
It’s suitable that my responses have been so extreme—with extremist beliefs undergirding the story, particularly in the television series, which is not only viewed from Offred’s/June’s perspective.
(One of the elements that makes the novel so successful is that readers have only Offred’s view—and only an offhand remark in that novel allows readers to recognise that, in her life before being a handmaid in Gilead, Offred the handmaid was a woman named June with a family—but one of the elements that makes the televised narrative so powerful, is that the scope is broadened, so that other characters, who are barely fragments on Atwood’s pages, take centre stage on the screen…even some elements from The Testaments, which are set to unfold in the next/sixth/final season.)
It’s fitting that I found my fists clenched and my sleeve wet after many episodes: there is so much injustice in this story, so much suffering. I probably can’t count how many times I felt sad and angry while watching this show; but I can count on one hand the number of times—in my lifetime—that I have leapt from my perch to cheer and holler at a story on television with a overwhelming sense of triumph and that happened twice with this series.
(I rewatched one of these episodes after a few months, and I still felt just as breathlessly invigorated by one of those scenes, even knowing EXACTLY what was about to happen.) Okay, maybe you’re thinking—twice is not a lot; but, if there are only five times in a lifetime of watching TV, well, that’s nearly half!
At least one episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale” was filmed here, in Lower Bay Station in Toronto (dressed up to look like Boston’s subway system), a station which is closed to the public, that you’d recognise from many a film if you were obsessed with strange details like this.
In the most recent season, the theme of women’s anger and how one processes trauma is even more prominent—because the series’ pov is broadened once more (nope, I’m not saying how). And even if you have not watched the series, you have probably seen a close-up image of Elisabeth Moss playing Offred/June and staring furiously outwards, directly at…you.
Remember when Naomi not only had time to co-host but to bake this phenomenal cake? /bigclap
The writing in the series affords the opportunity to follow many different women’s stories, so that we can see how their different coping mechanisms succeed and fail (and vacillate between those states). There are extremes here too, with some women being complicit, some only appearing complicit, and some openly resisting oppressive power structures.
There are handmaids and commanders’ wives who obey; there are handmaids and wives who resist. Nothing is simple. Without getting spoilery, I’ll just say that the opportunities for male characters in the series are more nuanced; what Atwood does with Offred’s relationships with men in the novel provokes all kinds of questions about how traditional power structures support and strain men, too, but the television series affords an expansive view of the architecture supporting Gilead and how much dissent exists within the system, even among those who profit most there. No community holds a single set of views, and there’s much food for thought here, particularly in an era which prioritises false dichotomies rather than acknowledge inherent complications.
I watched so many episodes of one season close together, that I started to feel like the real world was too bright; I had gotten so accustomed to the Gilead filter. (I won’t say which season, because even that risks spoilers. There are times when most of the story is in Gilead, but other times when the past and other storylines are more prominent.) So many that I started thinking about colours in the world as “Handmaid Red” and “Serena Joy Blue”. So many that I wanted to start rewatching from the beginning, because there are so many striking visual motifs that repeat, recognisable details that someone deliberately arranged as not only story but art. So many that I started to rewatch an old favourite series instead, because it was all too much.
This flipping, like a coin, is unsettling in some ways; usually a TV show is something I like or don’t like—it’s simple. And because I often turn to TV as an escape (more often than books) I’m doubly unsettled when I’m unsettled. But I return and, now, after five solid seasons, I am anticipating a satisfying resolution, trusting in whatever comes next.
Naomi’s post mentions the new Maddaddam ballet and you’ll see a couple of arts sections from recent weekend editions of the Toronto Globe here, including an image from the performance. And another featuring with Sarah Polley (who adapted the “Alias Grace” mini-series and is everywhere now with talk of her adaptation of Miriam Toews’ Women Talking and because her book of non-fiction has just won the Toronto Book Award). Handmaid’s Tale was made into a ballet and performed in Winnipeg in 2013 too, and of course there have been many other adaptations of Atwood’s work. But there’s something about having read the trilogy and then trying to imagine these stories as a ballet, which is truly disorienting. Maybe because it’s speculative fiction. (This bit’s for you, Bill. I can see you smiling and shaking your fist at the screen.)
In an interview with Susan Krashinsky Robertson, Atwood says that, when she first heard about the idea of the trilogy as a ballet, she was immediately curious too: “Because it’s not obvious. It would be impossible to do in a linear way.” Choreographer Wayne McGregor asked Karen Kain to introduce him to Atwood and now we can all buy tickets. “Even if you’re watching something seemingly abstract, you’re telling yourself a story,” McGregor says: “That’s how we live.”
I enjoyed living with some of Margaret Atwood’s stories again this November. I hope you did too, whether on your own terms or by following along with these posts and posts by other public participants. (The page is uptodate, I think: let me know if something is missing!) I’m looking forward to next November already.
[…] Margaret Atwood Reading Month – will go ahead as usual this November (here’s a link to MARM2022/5) and that she hopes to put up preliminary posts in September and October. For those not BIP […]
I started watching The Handmaid’s tale, in fact I got a trial subscription to Hulu or whatever just to watch it, but I found it quite upsetting, essentially for the reasons you listed, so when my trial ran out I gave up on it. I found it too…taxing…I suppose. It’s so well done, but just to real and intense for me. I can read books that include that kind of visceral pain, but I can’t watch movies or shows, it’s just too overwhelming for me…
It’s scary because all of these things are happening (in different guises) around the world right now, but if we can’t even watch a TV show about it, how can we even begin to resist and work towards change? I guess this is a rhetorical question because I don’t know the answer. I have felt–and do, still, feel–that way about some films and series myself, but I know the solution can’t be to look away (and I think I know you well enough to know that you aren’t saying that’s the solution either)…
Yes you’re totally right Marcie. And I still listen to International news for this reason – it’s not ok for us to just turn it off or look away – these are people’s lives. Handmaid’s Tale though – it’s essentially meant as entertainment, and I just can’t handle it to that degree
Same. There are days when I am wholly engaged with the day-to-day news and days where I just check headlines and duck out, and I’m guessing that if I were to track it, the days that I watch more demanding shows (like this one) or documentaries are probably the headlines-only days. Balance is key.
I am not an Atwood fan, but I am always happy to follow along with your close analyses of her stories, indeed with all your close analyses.
I find it interesting how many stories get a life independent of their authors, as The Christmas Carol has done. I wonder what is the most recent example – if not A Handmaid’s Tale then maybe the concept of Gideon, as Big Brother did from 1984 (now that Big Brother is here, the idea of it as a malign presence seems to have died).
And I know you don’t watch much television either, so week five would have had even less possibility of interesting you, I suppose! Heheh
Your second paragraph brings to mind a book I just started to read yesterday, Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, another way to bring Dickens to life, retelling David Copperfield and giving it a modern twist (an ordinary twist, not an Oliver)!
I love seeing where you take your Atwoodian reading each year, and I love revisiting some of her stories that I read preblog via you and the other posts.
(by the by I think I may have worked out that I can get to your blog via the feedly app. Way to trick WP!!)
Thanks for hosting once again.
Thanks, Brona. I think I’ve finally absorbed the fact that there’s not only an opportunity to read Australian literature in January (with Bill) but also in November: hopefully I’ll keep that in my mind from December through October next year! Heheh (Good trick, btw!)
I’ve very much enjoying exploring Atwood’s non fiction this month – such a treat. And I see she now has a Substack which is most entertaining so far!!
Her ability to engage with, and curiosity about, new technology is a real inspiration for me: it’s very easy to stagnate and resist change as one ages, and her approach reminds me that one can choose to grow and respond instead.
Here’s the link, for anyone else who’d like to subscribe. Thanks, K!
Me too! https://bookishbeck.wordpress.com/2022/11/18/margaret-atwood-reading-month-the-door-marm/
Haha! I just spotted that and amended it, but if you’re reading in your feed, it might not reflect my update. I’m sorry! I also poured myself a second coffee…clearly I’m a flobberworm today.
I) I hadn’t even heard of Substack until now. MA is amazing.
2) I know, I know… I really need to start watching The Handmaid’s Tale. Hmm… But is it on NF? Or CBC Gem?
3) Aww, the cake. Maybe again sometime…
4) That last Payback chapter does sound entertaining! Maybe even a good read for the Holidays!
5) Yay for another year of #MARM!!
I was so careful this time… I really was!
LOL As soon as I saw this comment flash up as a notification (I still don’t understand the notification system), I knew exactly what had happened.
🙂
I appreciate that she models another way of ageing, remaining engaged and active in ways that many (much younger) people do not.
It’s on Hulu, I believe, so you might have to try Anne’s trick of the free trial and binge watch? lol Alternatively, I see that the Halifax library has 1-4 on DVD and it seems like they’re all available (I mean, they’re a bit older now, not to call you “out of date” heheh) so maybe that would be an option.
Maybe Youngest Daughter will have an independent study project.
Actually, it would be. Along with the Muppets.
Hard to believe next year will be the sixth.
Oh, our library has it too! Duh.
Hahaha, really!? Too funny.