Margaret Atwood Read online

  Margaret Atwood

  A Reference Guide

  1988-2005

  Shannon Hengen

  Ashley Thomson

  The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

  Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  2007

  SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

  Published in the United States of America

  by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

  A wholly owned subsidiary of

  The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.scarecrowpress.com

  Estover Road

  Plymouth PL6 7PY

  United Kingdom

  Copyright © 2007 by Shannon Hengen and Ashley Thomson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hengen, Shannon Eileen.

  Margaret Atwood : a reference guide, 1988-2005 / Shannon Hengen, Ashley Thomson.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5904-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-8108-5904-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  1. Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, 1939—Bibliography. 2. Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, 1939 — Interviews. 3. Women and literature-Canada-Bibliography. I. Thomson, Ashley. II. Title.

  Z8046.947.H46 2007

  [PR9199.3.A8]

  016.818'5409–dc22 2006038788

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Preface

  Shannon Hengen

  The work of a bibliographer such as Ashley Thomson, who compiled this work, is as meticulous and invaluable as it is thankless. An exhaustive compilation, this book represents something like a monument in Canadian literary criticism, belied by its modest title: a reference guide. For to peruse these pages carefully is to make a passage through significant moments in the life not just of the writer, Margaret Atwood, but of her generation. The critical reception of her forty-four published books having been recorded, we chart cultural history.

  Why, for example, have so many scholars been drawn to the 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale? What important ethos in North American or indeed Western life was so articulated by Offred and those who oppressed her? While many scholarly treatments of the novel address the literary issue of genre—Is it dystopian? feminist? anti-feminist? anti-utopian?—concerns beyond the literary never fail to emerge, most importantly among them: Is North America’s future to be guided by the religious right? If not, then by whom or what?

  That Atwood’s work stimulates opposing views seems an indication of its ability to observe a segment of North American life—middle class, mainstream—with striking clarity. Critics do not agree if the oeuvre is, for example, baldly nationalistic, or if its wide international appeal implies much broader concerns than those involving Canada’s identity. Is it modern or postmodern—that is, does the work seem deliberately well wrought, a thing complete unto itself, or do experimental techniques such as indeterminacy and lack of closure express profound contemporary uncertainties? Does the oeuvre qualify as postcolonial in the extent and kind of views of imperial power expressed in it? Why is her work, so engaging on the page, so challenging to adapt to film, among Western culture’s most easily consumed media? While critics agree that myth and folklore underlie many of her stories, we disagree in her attitude to them: Are they destructive and unavoidable in their appeal, or are they malleable and useful? And, is she a comic writer; if so, how?

  The growing scholarly field of cultural studies has opened literary analysis to issues that connect Atwood’s work intimately with its material contexts: attitudes to madness and illness, for example, and to violence, the body, social mores, youth and aging—all issues that recur in Atwood’s writing. While literary critics often address one another and strictly technical questions, we also increasingly move into dialogue with the greater world and so analyze Atwood’s work in relation to forces beyond fiction. Atwood and nature, a theme to which critics have returned again and again over the years, for example, becomes a question of Atwood and the environmental movement.

  Influenced by the cultural imagination, Atwood is also a shaper of it. How influential her work has been is made obvious by the sheer heft of this volume, one that all readers of her work will need.

  Introduction

  Ashley Thomson

  Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005 is the successor to Judith McCombs and Carole L. Palmer’s Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide (Boston: Hall, 1991). Both books celebrate the impact of Canada’s best-known living author—so well known in fact that she is sometimes mistaken for an American.

  While the new book picks up where McCombs and Palmer left off, retaining the chronological arrangement of entries from the original as well as author and subject indexes, it is different from its predecessor title in three significant ways. First, instead of concentrating solely on Atwood’s books as did McCombs and Palmer’s, this book attempts to include all of Atwood’s works, from books, to articles, to short stories, to letters to the editor, to individual poetry. Adaptations of Atwood’s works are also included as are some of her comments that have been quoted publicly. Second, references about At-wood are more finely arranged. Rather than listing them alphabetically by author, the new guide sorts them first by type: Interviews, Scholarly Resources, and Reviews. Third, while the new book attempts to provide annotations for many Interviews and Scholarly Resources, unlike McCombs and Palmer, physical limitations of the new manuscript precluded extensive excerpts from reviews.

  As far as possible, the individual citations in this guide reflect the Modern Language Association (MLA) format, although sharp-eyed readers will note some variations that deserve to be explained. The pure MLA format is possible in a research paper with an alphabetical list of citations at its end. The citations in this reference guide are not, of course, initially organized alphabetically but by date. This explains why the book does not follow MLA, which places the date of original publication ahead of the date that an item was republished (MLA 5.6.17). Instead this book lists the dates of republication first, with date of original publication second, as, for example, 1988 ©1972. Similarly, reprints of scholarly articles are not listed by date of original publication (MLA 5.6.7) but by date of republication with a note that the article is “Reprinted from.” In addition to being primarily organized by date, this reference guide is indexed. That explains why it does not follow the MLA style for translations (MLA 5.6.13) which make no reference to the language of the original work.

  There are other instances where the MLA style has not been followed primarily for reasons of clarity. For example, in numbering pages, MLA prescribes page ranges like this: 57-59 when they are under 100; over 100, 157-59, dropping the 1. We have included the complete run. We have also provided fuller information for newspaper articles than MLA typically suggests (5.7.5). On the other hand, our format for book reviews is far more compact than MLA prescribes (5.7.7). This time, space was the dictator.

  Like its predecessor, this book grew out of the annual checklists prepared for the Margaret Atwood Society, an affiliate of the Modern Language Association. Since 1988 these checklists have bee
n published in the fall issue of the Newsletter of the Margaret Atwood Society. As joint authors of annual checklists, the authors of this book are painfully aware that citations come to light sometimes several years after their date of publication. Thus in preparing this book, extensive research took place to verify existing references and to uncover new ones. Almost all references are available through interlibrary loan (and those that could not be obtained in this way were dropped from the guide). The major exception to this rule of thumb were theses, some of which are only available from the university of origin. The authors thought, however, that knowledge of the existence of such theses would be of interest to students beginning to undertake their own.

  In 2006-2007, the Margaret Atwood Society newsletter will begin to publish peer-reviewed articles on Atwood, as well as the ongoing checklists, designed to be annual updates to this book, and the newsletter’s title will change to Margaret Atwood Studies. Next year’s issue, covering references by and about Atwood for 2006, will include At-wood’s new books The Tent (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2006), “a highly imaginative collection of mini-fictions,” and Moral Disorder (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2006), which the publisher describes as “her moving new book of fiction, [which] could be seen either as a collection of ten stories that is almost a novel or as a novel broken up into ten stories. It resembles a photograph album—a series of clearly observed moments that trace the course of a life, and also the lives intertwined with it—those of parents, of siblings, of children, of friends, of enemies, of teachers, and even of animals. And as in an album, times change: the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, the 70s and 80s, the present time—all are here. The settings are equally varied: large cities, suburbs, farms, northern forests...”

  In the area of scholarly resources, the 2006 checklist will include at least three other new books. The first is The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood, edited by Coral Ann Howells (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). All chapters in this book will be indexed, including one by the coauthor of this book, Shannon Hengen. The second title is Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood, edited by Earl J. Ingersoll (Princeton, NJ: Ontario Review Press; New York: Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co., 2006); the book is a collection of recent interviews. The third title is Atwood on Her Work: “Poems Open the Doors. Novels Are the Corridors,” edited by Christine Evain and Reena Khandpur (Nantes: Université de Nantes, 2006). This work, which reprints some of Atwood’s poems, also includes four critical essays, including one by Hengen. Its highlight, however, is an extended interview with Atwood herself by the two coeditors. In many ways the book symbolizes Atwood’s international appeal.

  Readers of this guide will find at least one significant value-added in the annual checklists which appear in the Atwood newsletter and forthcoming journal—a complete section devoted to Atwood “In the News.” To get a flavor of her many activities, consult the Atwood Chronology on pages xiii-xiv, although this short synopsis really does not do justice to her (almost daily) activity. Of course, those not wanting to wait for the checklists could do worse than set up an alert for Margaret Atwood on Google Alerts, (http://www.google.com/alerts), one of the more useful tools of its kind.

  There is now so much information about Atwood in print that readers may be shocked to discover that a simple Google search on “Margaret Atwood” will generate nearly 2,330,000 other references. Because not all users of this guide will have ready access to the citations in it, the authors asked Alain Lamothe, the electronic reference librarian at Laurentian University, to provide a succinct guide to the best of what is currently available. Lamothe’s chapter appears on pages 378-386.

  The authors want to thank not only Alain Lamothe but several categories of other contributors. From the Margaret Atwood Society these include predecessor bibliographers who have graciously permitted us to use their work as a basis of our own: Carol L. Palmer (1988-1991), Loretta P. Koch (1991-1994), Barbara G. Preece (1994), Danette Dimarco (1995-1999), and Cynthia Kuhn (2000-2001). Ashley Thomson has been working on the checklists since 1995, and in 2002, Shannon Hengen joined as coauthor. Also to be thanked are Jerome Rosenberg, who edited the newsletter until 2005, and Ted Sheckels, who replaced him and who will be the founding editor of Margaret Atwood Studies.

  From the University of Toronto, which houses the Margaret Atwood Archives, we owe thanks to Jennifer Toews, who is in charge of the Atwood collection and who has been most generous in sharing her knowledge, including some extensive verification of entries.

  At Laurentian University, thanks are due to Dr. Liette Vasseur, Associate Vice-President (Research), Dr. Susan Silverton (Vice-President Academic), Dr. John Isbister (Dean of Humanities), and Lionel Bonin (Director of the Library), all of whom supported this project both financially and otherwise. In the library we owe thanks to Diane Tessier and Dan Leduc (interlibrary loans), and we received assistance from researcher Rachel Desjardins. Dr. Lisa Laframboise, a freelance editor, contributed significantly to the preparation of the indexes. Mel Chomiak, a professor of computer science, also assisted in this area.

  At Scarecrow Press, we owe thanks to Martin Dillon, who enthusiastically embraced the project; Stephen Ryan, our patient editor; and Sally Craley, one of the most personable production editors we have ever known.

  An Atwood Chronology

  1988–2005i

  1988 Cat’s Eye; promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada; receives Aggie, a bronze statue named after the YWCA’s founder, Agnes Blizard, upon being named a Woman of Distinction by Metro Toronto’s YWCA

  1989 Writes screenplay for Cat’s Eye, 1989-1991; wins Canadian Booksellers’ Association Award and City of Toronto Book Award; writer-in-residence at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas

  1990 Selected Poems: 1966-1984 (Oxford) and For the Birds; receives Order of Ontario and Centennial Medal from Harvard University; attends Berlin Film Festival for premier of Volker Schlondorff’s film The Handmaid’s Tale

  1991 Wilderness Tips; Clarendon Lectures at the University of Oxford; family spends winter in France (1991-1992)

  1992 Good Bones; receives Trillium Award from Ontario Government for Wilderness Tips

  1993 The Robber Bride

  1994 Good Bones and Simple Murders (Doubleday); wins Trillium Award for The Robber Bride; named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France; receives Sunday Times’ Award for Literary Excellence

  1995 Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature; Morning in the Burned House; and Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut; The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English (coedited with Robert Weaver); series of radio interviews in French with Quebec writer Victor-Lévy Beaulieu; receives Trillium Award Morning in the Burned House and International Humourous Writers Award from the Swedish Humour Associationii

  1996 Alias Grace, which wins Giller Prize; The Labrador Fiasco; receives Norwegian Order of Literary Merit and is named Canadian Booksellers Association Author of the Year

  1997 The Journals of Susanna Moodie (with illustrations by Charles Pachter); A Quiet Game and Other Early Works; In Search of Alias Grace

  1998 Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965-1995 (Virago); receives honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford

  1999 Receives London Literature Award

  2000 The Blind Assassin, which wins Booker prize; Empson Lectures at the University of Cambridge; attends premier in Copenhagen of Poul Ruders’s opera The Handmaid’s Tale

  2001 Wins Hammett Prize for The Blind Assassin from the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers; receives honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge and from Algoma University College; wins place on Canada’s Walk of Fame, the first fiction writer so honored

  2002 Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

  2003 Oryx and Crake and Rude Ramsey and the Roaring Radishes; attends London premier of The Handmaid’s Tale opera

&nbs
p; 2004 Bottle (Hay Festival Press); Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda; and Moving Targets: Writing with Intent, 1982-2004; Toronto premier of The Handmaid’s Tale opera; receives honorary doctorate from Harvard University

  2005 Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing, 1970-2005; receives honorary doctorate from the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Parisiii; The Penelopiad

  Footnotes

  i Based on chronology provided by Atwood finding aid available in the Fisher Library at the University of Toronto. 5-7. See http://www.library.utoronto.ca/fisher/collections/findaids/atwood.pdf.

  ii Once asked about the best award she ever won, she replied: “Well, I’d never pick and choose, but who would have ever guessed I’d win the Swedish humor award? My publishers went to accept it and the prize was a crystal ball or bowl—I never did find out because they took it back to their office and someone stole it.” See Finbar O’Reilly, “Atwood on Awards and Almost Dying.” National Post 13 June 2001: A13.

  iii According to Atwood, “My most intoxicating honour was having a 236-ton sewer tunnelling machine in Hull [Quebec] named after me.” See The Express 18 October 2003: Section: Columns: 51.

  ~ 1988 ~

  Atwood’s Works

  1.“Adrienne Rich: Of Woman Born.” Prose Pieces: Essays and Stories [by] Sixteen Modern Writers. Ed. Pat C. Hoy and Robert Diyanni. New York: Random House, 1988. 491-493. Book review with some questions. Reprinted from Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, ©1982.

  2.“Afterword.” A Jest of God. By Margaret Laurence. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988. 211-215.

  3.“An Angel.” Translation 20 (Spring 1988): 43-44. Prose poem.