The Making of Margaret Atwood | Hacker News Reader

The Making of Margaret Atwood

thewalrus.ca

44 pointsapollinaire75 comments

I gave a book of her poetry (Penelopiad) to a friend of mine, a talented poet herself. She said it made her angry: this was what she'd been aiming for her whole life, and Atwood made it look easy.

I'm glad that Handmaid's Tale has brought her to a wider audience. It would be easy for her to be shunted into "genre fiction" for that book, or into "chick lit" for most of her other novels. But she's one of the most gifted prose stylists I've ever read. Her nonfiction book Payback, about debt, is actually quite insightful as well -- it came out at the heart of the financial crisis, but was developed before it began and is a very astute criticism of the entire financial system.

I'll have to read payback, I was unfamiliar with it, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I have to say, though, this comment seems an odd mix of praising Atwood and seriously underestimating the scale and longevity of her fame and international regard. Like yes, her standard fiction novels are written by a woman and have female main characters, but nearly all of them were nominated for major international literary awards and many of them won - I don’t think any would qualify as “chick lit”, unless you’re taking the extremely broad stance of putting any novel written from a female perspective under that umbrella.

And assuming that your poet friend was unfamiliar with Atwood seems bizarre to me - I’m not a poet or in a literary field at all, but I was under the impression that she is one of the most well-known living poets (as a poet, not only a novelist), it’s just that poets/poetry don’t tend to be that well known in general.

She is well known in literary circles, but I didn't think of her as a household name. My friend the poet knew her from Handmaid's Tale, but her poetry was less well known. (There are so many poets that even people who read a lot of poetry can easily miss a great one.)

The context is that various authors comment on Atwood:

>> The office of Jonathan Franzen: While he was pleased to receive your invitation, he must decline due to the fact that, although he is aware of Ms. Atwood’s love of birds, and he loves her for it, he’s never birded with her personally and can’t speak to any specifics regarding her conservation work.

She looks down her nose at "science fiction" and claims that her work is "speculative fiction" instead. It is a pretentious, pedantic distinction and, as a lifelong scifi fan, it makes me deeply ambivalent to anything she produces. Even if it is good science fiction.

It’s a fair enough position but I think you’re also being pedantic here. I try to separate these matters from the creation and judge everything on its own merits.

She writes well, but the snobbery towards "genre fiction" irks me enough that I generally refer to her as a science fiction writer who does other stuff.

I get the impression I'm not alone and a whole lot of people who enjoy good writing that may or may not be science fiction just wish she'd accept it and move on.

To be fair to Atwood, there was a lot of junk sci fi over the years that she would want to distance her work from.

Hell, even some of the most popular sci-fi today (cough—Three Body Problem—cough) would fit that bill. If I was an author in complete command of my craft like Atwood is, I wouldn't want to be explicitly associated with the genre, either.

I'll bite: what's wrong with Three Body Problem?

I’d love to hear your opinion on Three Body Problem.

Exactly - look at what kind of work dominated scifi in 1961, the year of her first published work.

The 1961 Hugo Award was given to Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, a work about the discovery of an alien artifact on the moon. The only women in this book are vapid arm candy for the bold, intrepid male explorers.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_Moon

>> Claire Pack, Barker's girlfriend, who flirts with both Hawks and Connington but knows she prefers the manliness of Barker. She has some sort of sado-masochistic bond with Barker; even when he hits her face in public, she says without irony, "Isn't he grand? Isn't he a man?"

This kind of treatment is pretty much par for the course in popular science fiction of the time. Bold, violent men riding around in spaceships and shooting rayguns at hostile aliens to save giggling, helpless women.

It’s also a marketing strategy. She’d serve a wider audience as speculative fiction than as science fiction.

She is beyond doubt pretentious and pedantic. She is also brilliant and can wield words in a way others wield deadly weapons in a theatre of war. You might have trouble listening to her say it, but it's almost always worth listening to what she says and how she says it.

Also, it's been a long time since I've seen science fiction and sci-fi jumbled together as a single genre.

For context: When I was growing up and going to school (in Canada in the 80s), all of her work was generally classified as Canadian Literature, aka canlit. She was (and still is) considered one of our biggest home grown literary giants.

I don't think anyone here even thought of her work as science fiction back then.

I think this is a Canadian thing. Friends who emigrated to Nelson BC comment on how in the library, every book by a Canadian author has a maple leaf on the spine. Canada seems to have a bit of an underdog complex about maintaining its cultural identity in the shadow of its neighbor. The museum in Nanaimo has a whole shrine dedicated to famous Canadian entertainers...such as Loverboy and Bryan Adams. They also have a very comprehensive and delightful display covering the gem of Canadian desserts, the Nanaimo Bar.

I've grown up and lived in British Columbia, and I think I can understand the attitude given the cultural attitude compared to the US.

When I look at Australia, a commonwealth nation that's similar in some ways, but with a much more developed domestic media industry I very much feel like a vassal state of US culture.

Kind of like Slaughterhouse Five in the US. It clearly fits the mold of science fiction except for being "serious".

I can't get behind "looking down" at scifi, but the distinction between scifi and speculative fiction isn't necessarily pedantic. Speculative fiction creates a world sufficiently different from our own that we need to situate to it, which makes it similar to science fiction. But in terms of technology, everything matches what we have right now.

As long as you don't disparage a particular genre, it's an entertaining and thought provoking distinction, especially when you get right out on the line. For instance, the episode of Black Mirror "Nosedive" gets right out on that line. There isn't much technology that doesn't already exist, they've just gone a little farther with it in terms of electric cars. Then you could go in the other direction - all fiction is speculative to some extent, so when does it cross the line? I'd say it happens when you need to situate yourself to the rules of a very different world, in a broad sense, but very hard to say...

The Handmaid's Tale feels like science fiction to me, probably because it's in a vague future date. But I'm having trouble thinking of anything technology oriented that would have to exist and doesn't already.

I'm still flabbergasted that she and others seriously proclaimed Trump's election would bring about the scenario of the handmaids tale. I guess she should be excused for being ridiculous because of her old age, but I've lost all interest in her work.

(downvotes incoming in 3...2...1....)

To many of us, Trump's election felt like some kind of discontinuity in the timeline - sort of like the train had jumped tracks and now was on a different course.

I wonder if it always feels like that during stressful times, or whether it's a product of multiple worlds being a prominent sci-fi theme.

As for your original point, we've yet to see whether Roe v Wade is overturned, whether the rule of law will prevail, and whether the tide of isolationism, authoritarianism and nationalism will corrode the liberal internationalism that emerged after WW2.

Please don't take HN further into off-topic generic (in this case political) tangents.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Please don't post political flamebait to Hacker News, and please don't downvote-bait. Both those things are in the site guidelines, and if you'd review and follow them, we'd be grateful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Doesn't that apply to the submission about Atwood, though? It seems to me the "political flamebait" rule is applied rather selectively on HN.

No. Work with political implications and articles about it are just that, not 'flamebait'. 'Old lady I disagree with lol' is "political flamebait" only through an exceptionally stoic application of the principle of charity.

I honestly don't understand the distinction? The article is legit, because somehow it has authority by being published in a random media outlet? Is that it? Whereas my opinion is "flamebait" because I don't have authority?

Yes, I disagree with her. Not because of her old age, but because she seriously claimed the scenario of Handmaid's Tale was near. There were people demonstrating in Handmaid's Tale costumes, and she was cheering them on.

If anything, THAT is "political flamebait" - claiming we are entering Handmaid's Tale territory. It was and is ridiculous (unless you believe fundamentalist Islam will take over eventually, which for PC reasons I assume we don't), and that is why I don't hold much stock in her writings anymore. Not because of her old age.

And the article is applauding her for "political flamebait", so by extension, it pretty much also is "political flamebait".

That's my opinion anyway. But I'm sure it will be considered "political flamebait" by HN.

The distinction is the article is some personal recollections about an author whose, you know, actual literary work many (including plenty who don't agree with her) consider important and your comment is a generic dismissal barely even related to said article. As distinctions go, it doesn't seem like a very difficult one to make.

So it's wrong not because it's political but because it's "generic"? Or because you believe it's a poor argument? Those aren't against HN guidelines. "Political flamebait" seems to involve in no small part disagreement withtm the majority.

Generic tangents are indeed against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and there's a long body of explanations about why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... If you take a look at that and there's still something I haven't addressed, I'd be curious to know what it is.

It's important that moderation based on "political flamebait" not simply reduce to the political preferences of the moderators. We work consciously at that, and have years of practice. I don't think there's any political position that we haven't moderated (and even banned) users for expressing in ways that break the site guidelines.

One dynamic that affects this is that when people are disagreeing with the majority, they often feel defensive, which causes them to lash out more in ways that break the site rules more. Then we moderate them for that, which makes them sure that they're being moderated because of their views, which makes them more defensive and lash out even more. This is a tricky one. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

What about my "dismissal" is generic? I gave a specific reason for my dismissal. "Ok Boomer" or "she is old" would have been generic, but that is not what I wrote. I didn't mention her age at all.

I didn't mention her age at all.

"I guess she should be excused for being ridiculous because of her old age" is about half your comment.

I forgot I mentioned the age - but still, it is in the opposite sense. It is not part of the reason I "dismiss" her now, I only mentioned it to soften the criticism.

In any case, why shouldn't her actions be relevant? To me, it changed my opinion about her. Why wouldn't it be relevant for others, too?

Maybe they are relevant but you'd have to put it in some way that describes their relevance. "Old lady, trump, fite me!" is not a meaningful attempt to start a discussion which is why you got groused at by a mod and flagged by users. It's not even clear she ever actually made the type of claim you're describing but the form of the comment is so poopy that's mostly beside the point.

Again, that is not what I said. I said she endorsed a specific claim about the development in US society, that is absolutely ridiculous. It has nothing to do with Trump or her age.

And what do you mean by "it is not even clear"? That is your criticism, that you flat out don't believe me? Then just say so right away, and don't make up phony reasons to dismiss my tweet.

I don't care enough about you to google for her specific statements, though. If you don't believe me, fine, whatever.

And my comment is "poopy"? I mentioned a specific reason why I don't hold her in high regard anymore. Yeah, she is a woman and she is old, but I am still allowed to not revere her. I know that is hard for liberals to grasp.

Let me reproduce your original comment in full here, just for easy reference.

(downvotes incoming in 3...2...1....)

On its face, the intent of this seems inflammatory and you got the votes, flags and moderator talking-to for your efforts. This is definitely unpleasant - nobody likes being berated in public and I sympathize. As psychologist Don Vincenzo Coccotti puts it:

That smarts, doesn't it? [...] Fucks you all up. You get that pain shootin' through your brain, your eyes fill up with water. That ain't any kind of fun

In my personal experience, the effect does not last days but I'm no psychologist. Perhaps it's an explanation for the long sequence of curious defenses you've offered. Briefly summarized, they include:

- The comment isn't flamebait, the real flamebait is the article itself.

- The comment is not dismissive.

- The comment does not mention her age.

- The comment does mention her age but calling her viewpoint ridiculous while suggesting it may be a result of age-related cognitive decline is practically a compliment.

- The comment has nothing to do with Trump or her age.

- The comment is not an inaccurate caricature of her views but your interlocutors are not worthy of being shown the error of their interpretation.

- It is wrong to call the comment poopy.

Here I want to point out I didn't call the comment poopy, I called its form poopy. Whatever you meant by it, it's expressed in ways the HN guidelines strongly disapprove of. You'd be right to object that calling the form of a comment poopy is also contrary to the guidelines. I appologize and want to assure you it was intended strictly in the Pickwickian sense - a lapse into familiarity I hope you can understand and forgive in light of our long conversation.

I'll also admit I have some trouble believing that someone whose previous commentary here includes a suggestion Wikipedia is controlled by feminists and 'SJW's once held Atwood and her work in high regard but recently changed their mind. I'm prepared to accept this is unreasonable bias on my end.

Lastly, I agree with you that if liberals are, as you suggest, responsible for your comment, they deserve our opprobrium and contempt.

It takes a certain amount of myopia to reduce the work of an acclaimed author of 60 years to just whatever her position on your favourite President is.

It's not about Trump, it is about claiming the US is close to devolving into the state of handmaid's tale. I don't know how many people here have read it (the book, I mean). I have read it. It is a ridiculous claim.

How to handle politics on HN is a hard question. We've worked out an answer over the years that derives from the site guidelines, is not rooted in any particular politics, and so far seems to be stable.

To see why it's a hard question, look at the two extremes of the solution space. One would be to ban every topic that you find politically provocative—i.e. that anybody finds politically provocative, since there's no reason to privilege one user over others. That would exclude most stories that get posted here—certainly everything about economics, history, philosophy, literature, city planning, etc., but also most stories about business and industry. Even many stories that appear purely technical would have to go. Probably everything would, once people got done being provoked by what remained. As some are fond of pointing out, everything is political when you get down to it.

The other extreme would be to allow every political topic and all escalations and flamewars. That would turn this place into scorched earth and kill it as a site for intellectual curiosity, its mandate (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Since both extremes are impossible for HN, we need to draw a line somewhere. Where should it be? If we're optimizing for intellectual curiosity, we have to cast a wide net, because curiosity likes to meander. Any topic that supports intellectual curiosity is ok, even if it has political overlap. The topics that aren't ok are the ones that are (a) purely political, (b) purely sensational, (c) have usually turned into flamewars in the past.

What about stories that don't gratify your curiosity? Well, that's always the case, in the sense that no one likes every story and no story is liked by everyone. It suffices to gratify curiosity for some segment of the audience. If you run into one that doesn't work for you, there are plenty of others to read. If you run out, the 'past' link in the top bar is guaranteed to find popular threads that you missed. And if a submission really breaks the site guidelines, you can flag it. What's not ok is to start posting comments in the thread from a place of provocation rather than curiosity. That's not in the spirit of HN and the guidelines ask you not to.

All these concepts require interpretation, so any line we draw is fuzzy. Other moderators might make different calls. But the OP is obviously on topic by that standard, and while I understand how it can appear that we apply the rules selectively, I'd caution against leaping to a belief in moderation bias motivated by secret political preferences (inevitably opposed to your own of course! See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (later edit: and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870)). All political sides get moderated and/or not moderated at times. When it comes to politics, the mods do something for everyone to dislike—which unfortunately distorts how people perceive moderation (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).

If you see a case that violates this standard, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything on HN. The second-likeliest explanation is that we thought it over and came up with some reason that is based on the site guidelines. Sometimes that leads to counterintuitive places. People are always welcome to ask.

If that's not enough, there are plenty of prior explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Take a look, and if there's still something I haven't addressed, I'd be curious to know what it is.

Thank you for taking the time trying to explain!

Obviously, I disagree with many things about the approach HN has taken, but of course it is your site, you can do as you want.

For starters, if you say people can just skip things that don't satisfy their curiosity, I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to political controversies. I can understand if you want to moderate the "root articles" (the once that are listed on the homepage), but why do you care about the comments? If people discuss something, obviously it interests them (strikes their curiosity). What does it matter if they make a 10000 comment thread about it? I think you have some sort of algorithmic counter measures against long threads, which does nothing but enrage (presumably based on some heuristic PG once made, when he felt long comment threads signal flame wars)

Ultimately it seems to me all about the people you attract here to vote on things. I've just tried to read that article about Atwood, and it is entirely too long-winded for me. If HN had been founded by some famous literary professor, you would probably get only submissions like that, and nothing about technology or science. But it was founded by PG and now it is associated with YCombinator, so it draws a different crowd.

Just saying I don't think the "curiosity" rule is really what makes HN, it is the people you manage to attract.

And to that I personally can say, I wouldn't mind some other user ripping into me in comments for some political or other reasons. I do mind HN itself telling me I am not wanted here , which it does in so many ways.

Of course, again, that is your right to do, as it is your site. It just makes me sad (unsurprisingly), having been on HN since the early days. And ultimately it does seem to boil down to political opinions, even if you don't consciously target certain opinions above others, as you claim.

It matters what people post in the comments because the comments very much affect what sort of people HN manages to attract. You seem to be treating these two things as independent, but they are intensely interdependent.

Since the value of HN is its community, we have to regulate the comments carefully. The main tool for doing that is https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Not to do so would cause HN to suffer the default fate of internet communities, which tend eventually to become burnt-out husks of their former selves. The idea here is to stave that off for as long as we can: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....

That's why we keep asking you to follow the site guidelines. It's not just because your individual comments get better when you do that. It's also because the feedback loops involved (the effects of comment quality on the community) are large and existential for HN.

Where did she say that?

I learned about it from her Twitter account, not sure if she talked about it elsewhere.

Edit: it is also right on top of the article - "her long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, was released, and she became something else entirely: a worldwide cultural phenomenon. The novel, set in a not-so-distant United States where fundamentalist fascists have gained power and stripped away women’s rights"

(Although I was referring to her comments before the release of the new book, but the new book confirms it).

I think you just misunderstand the sentence. It describes the setting of the novel.

Yes I know that, but it confirms that it is now a realistic scenario for her. But as I said, my information was from her comments on "Handmaids Tale" demonstrations she made on Twitter, which she made before publishing the novel.

I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the meaning and purpose of speculative fiction.

Again - I was referring to her tweets, commenting on the real US. Not her fiction.

There were demonstrations inspired by her fiction. In the real world. She commented on those.

Since then she has released a whole book about the US becoming a handmaid's tale world. That book is fiction. Here Twitter comments before that were not. They refer to the real world.

So it is just the (alleged) twitter comment which you consider political flamebait?

I didn't consider ti flamebait, I considered it ridiculous. Not just one Twitter comment.

She do get a lot of press, may be perhaps that is so because she is tune with the political fads of the time, rather than anything else. But shorn of their topicality, does her work has lasting value?

Even considering women writers writing in English only, she'd be considerably behind writers like Marilynne Robinson, Donna Tart, A.S Byatt or Arundhati Roy in the accomplishment of her work.

Considering that The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, I’d say her work has lasting value.

>does her work [have] any lasting value?

'Oryx and Crake' and 'Handmaids Tale' are some of the most vivid and impactful speculative fiction that I have ever read. Margaret Atwood will forever go down in history for both the prose and scope of her literature.

"A worldwide cultural phenomenon"? I have never even heard her name, not a single time. Maybe your world is smaller then I thought.

What they mean is that her books were popular and read throughout the (developed I guess) world. And this is true. They were also made into tv series many people watched and radio plays. So obviously producers thought they would be popular. The books are also very critically acclaimed.

I think it would be hard to somewhat regularly buy books or go to a (typical English language) bookstore without seeing anything about Margaret Atwood.

But maybe there is a large world of English speaking people who don’t at all follow book releases or tv or even headlines in the mainstream news (where her winning of awards would be announced).

> I think it would be hard to somewhat regularly buy books or go to a (typical English language) bookstore without seeing anything about Margaret Atwood.

The past month you cannot have entered any decently sized bookshop carrying new titles without encountering her name with The Testaments out. In my local bookshop I find the hardcover original English edition, its Dutch translation, The Handmaid's Tale in English and Dutch in editions ranging from paperback to luxury hardcover, and a bunch of her other works.

Before that, The Handmaid's Tale has been prominently displayed ever since the TV series came out.

"The Handmaid's Tale" was all over Norwegian book stores when I was there in the summer.

I read a ton of books, and recall only briefly hearing of it maybe a year ago. Didn't read it; too culturally-political for my taste, and didn't hear of it again. I'll admit, however, I don't go to bookstores much anymore.

It? What is it? The Testaments? The Handmaid's Tale?

Margaret Atwood has written much more than those two books - she is a prolific author. According to Wikipedia she's she has published 17 books of poetry, 16 novels, 10 books of non-fiction, eight collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and one graphic novel, as well as a number of small press editions in poetry and fiction. Her works are popular, both with the general public and with critics.

_The Handmaid's Tale_, which seems to be her best-known work. See above as to why I didn't read it. I didn't specify an antecedent as I meant to reply to Freak_NL's comment; mea culpa.

She actually has other far more important and well-known books and has won many prestigious international literary awards for them. A few have even been made into successful TV shows, if your knowledge of literature is based on what is available on internet streaming services.

Right. I've heard _of_ her in passing, but wasn't that interested in what I heard; that was my point. It seems her work is targeted at a different demographic, so fine. Most of her work appears to be "feminist literature", which is not how I prefer to spend my free time. Not necessarily bad, just not that high on my reading list. Anyway, my point was that there are plenty of people who aren't as familiar with this particular author. I don't subscribe to streaming services; that did not influence my opinion.

Just read the book. It's not "Feminist literature", although I suppose it could be, it's just a damn good book, with a distinctly feminine perspective. As a not particularly 'woke' British bloke, it's one of my favourite ever books.

I love how the book has a strong first-person perspective, and you're often not seeing all the workings of the dystopian society, but the moments where you do get a bit revealed to you (eg: the US congress being attacked) are incredibly satisfying to read since it's so built up.

> Most of her work appears to be "feminist literature"

That reads to me like a post-facto characterization based on perspective rooted in today's political climate. Personally, I find her books to be somewhat overrated compared to other works of "genre fiction", but having read some of her books, the "feminist" characterization as you are presenting is misleading.

https://www.google.com/search?q=margaret+atwood+-feminism&rl...

So this is what I genuinely don't understand: Why post on a public forum that you haven't read a certain book? What relevance do consider this to have for anybody?

I'm always amazed about why people brag about their ignorance. If you are curious you can google her name faster than you can write a comment complaining you haven't heard about her.

Ironically enough in firefox the google search is broken when searching for that term: https://www.google.com/search?q=the+handmaid%27s+tale

I see a large gray box and little else!

Wild, I've never seen that before ... but if you scroll to the bottom of the page you can see the navigation widget, and on page 2 of the results, no such problems

Now fixed, clearly some googlers reading this thread ...

Works fine for me, looks like any standard google search results. I'm curious why yours does not.

When I was a young woman in the 90s, you couldn't go to another friend's house without seeing her catalogue on the bookshelves, or at least the Handmaid's Tale.

There are probably plenty of people on HN who don’t know who the Kardashians are. Heck, I bet plenty of people in the US who can’t name a Democratic presidential candidate.

But if you read English books in an English-speaking country and you semi-regularly visit a English language bookstore, she is a big deal.

If you look at the first picture of this article in the New Statesman:

https://www.newstatesman.com/%E2%80%8Beimear-mcbride-goldsmi...

She is the person right in the middle.

How many living female writers do you know? She'd probably be #2 on some "most influential" list, and definitely in the top 10.

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