I walked into this essay with my hackles raised — “Oh, dear, what’s some faux-intellectual fascist twit got to say now?” — but I was pleasantly surprised to find Atwood criticized not from the Right but from the Left. Your close reading of The Handmaid’s Tale won me over to your thesis that the show’s writers have largely missed the point. I agree that Atwood can be staggeringly tone-deaf in her public displays of politics.
I don’t know enough about your examples of Atwood’s personal failings to pass judgment, but I’m suspicious of your claim she wants teachers to go to jail. Copyright cases seldom involve imprisonment; they’re usually about financial damages. Is a teacher uniquely entitled to break copyright law? To make a class set of a book by photocopying it whole, rather than having the school order a class set? Why? Because education? I say this as a teacher who has photocopied things for my students — within the legal limits of copyright. “Educational purposes” is not a blank check, only a limited carve-out. Check the law.
Appropriation of marginalized people’s trauma? Okay, I can see the merits of the argument. At the same time, I don’t think the blame is to be laid at the feet of Atwood’s narcissism, and I think the reason you’re mistakenly laying it there is that you’re overlooking a key way in which dystopia works. This isn’t surprising, considering your low opinion of the genre, something you think only intellectually fit for teenagers to read.
The point of Nineteen Eighty-Four is not to fear-monger about communism. (Orwell was himself a socialist. Read his earlier books.) The point is to critique totalitarianism — that in particular, whether it takes a communist or a fascist guise — and, as a dystopia, it does this by taking things to the furthest extreme imaginable. Yes, it’s a slippery slope argument. Yes, it’s not very nuanced about the threat. But that’s not the point. Orwell is painting a picture of what such a system does to a person’s soul — how it grinds down even someone aspiring to be a freethinking rebel. Winston Smith’s last thought in the story is that he LOVES Big Brother. He loves Big Brother in spite of the fact that he’s seen all the way behind the curtain of the totalitarian state and he knows how evil it is. This ironic tragedy could not be achieved without the image of “a boot stomping on a human face forever.” It’s Winston’s face, in the end. And he’s an everyman character, no one particularly special, to drive home the point that this is what totalitarianism does to everyone.
Offred is an everywoman. Think about when The Handmaid’s Tale was published and where representation in literature was at the time. Think about where the depiction of marginalized experiences was at the time (you alluded to Roots, a good reference point for thinking about this). Think about where the discourse about race was. Would Atwood have made the dystopia clearer by wading into race, writing from a perspective she didn’t understand? No. She focused on a particular theme — women’s autonomy — and in service of it, she anonymized Offred as much as possible to make her situation relatable to the widest readership possible. Atwood made Offred a formerly privileged person to emphasize her oppression now — it would not land the same way if it was just a continuation of the sort of treatment Offred had already come to expect in life. She took away Offred’s real name in the dystopian world-building, then made fine literary hay out of it — not the other way around.
Suggesting that Atwood was an “appropriating” racist to do things this way, on the one hand you’re asking something of her dystopia that it doesn’t set out to deliver — and that would hamstring it if it tried to deliver. And on the other hand, you’re slipping a bit into the historian’s fallacy — the idea that people in the past had all the same perspectives and information as people today — and judging the author THEN by the standards of NOW (or even your personal standards, your particular moral compass). That’s an impossible bar for 1985 Margaret Atwood to meet.
Tear Atwood apart for being a problematic feminist now, if she is one — be my guest! But this presentist shredding of The Handmaid’s Tale as narcissistic fantasy is beneath your acumen as a reader (as I take it from your facility with close reading). You’re looking so closely at the trees, you’ve forgotten what sort of forest you’re in.
Thanks for the thoughtful, measured response. I enjoyed reading it as a circumspect companion piece to the essay. Both make interesting points. I’m an almost fifty-year-old Canadian woman and Atwood was absolutely sacrosanct in my adolescence when I started reading her novels. Some of my critical responses were quashed because, of course, the inadequacy could only be my own: a naive young reader failing to appreciate literary greatness. And this ambivalence continued into my adulthood. I realize that Atwood has always had her critics, but she has enjoyed an undeniably privileged position in the Canadian literary establishment. It is this aura of untouchable genius and my resistance to it on principle that ignited a little schadenfreude in me while reading the author’s takedown.
But I’m old enough to know better and your response was clarifying. As a stylist, I think Atwood is top-notch.
Well put. I thought the same thing; you put it much more concisely than I could have. I watched a "behind the scenes" clip from the show where the writers talked about some elements that they changed, mainly with race. In the book, Gilead "deports" anyone who isn't white and doesn't have the right genes, meaning anyone with genetic disorders, etc. The showrunners said they wanted the show to reflect 2017, versus 1985, so they did not make race part of Gilead's criteria for labeling some as "undesirable." I think it's easy to forget how long ago The Handmaid's Tale was written because of the show, and she is still alive.
I guess I'll never know if this article had anything substantive to say because of the repulsive, puerile writing style. How tedious to come across someone that feels the needs to swear every other sentence.
Abso(bad word)lutely! Once I was so frustrated in the late 90's with the deviousness of politics I told my very proper extremely well-read and well-educated mother "I am sorry I am just going to have to use the word "cr@p". I admit I find my self using more bad language these days - to 2 people only. Then I apologize to them and my mom who died in 2005. 🤣
I understand the frustration with the arrogant idiots who purport being experts - but I do aim for eloquence. I admire your fortitude with vocabulary!
They’re Canadian. They have absolutely nothing of interest to say about their moribund, incredibly boring culture so they make up for it by employing the shock tactic of profanity, which last worked for 14 year-olds in 1990. Today it just makes them doubly boring and even more predictable.
How utterly predictable you seem, since you aren’t even willing to state where you come from. Which, to me, as a Canadian says you’re ashamed of your country, which neither Ms. Atwood nor I are ashamed to state. If you find that statement belittling, that is on you, not either of us.
In addition to the above, we voted for a person who can actually speak in complete sentences. Imagine that marvel in the “USAmerica” of today, (speaking of “moribund, incredibly boring culture”. Ferme ta bouche!
I want to list out ever swear I can think of just for fun: fuck bitch ass cunt butthole stupid dumb vagina boob breast jesus god penis anus cock whore the n word pussy fart nut-sack the r word Satan asshole turd
Alias Grace was one of my favourite books in high school. I read that chonker twice. Her writing is so good, it felt like braille against my brain.
But I could never get into her as a person.
And your issue with race is spot on. Race swapping violates reality so subtly, you can hardly put your finger on what’s wrong. But I realized that it’s because race comes with its own realities, experiences and perspectives. Like, I HATE seeing a black, female mercenary with a hood accent and braids or weave in movies. A woman who hasn’t bleached AAVE from her vocabulary isn’t worldly enough to have the connections and powers of a international mercenary. She is not sitting in the salon for seven hours. She does not have a predictable routine…. Anyway.
"It is “about” the United States, but its ideological usefulness has been in propagandizing against our “illiberal” Islamist enemies in countries like Iran and Afghanistan. Much like the United States used to airdrop copies of Nineteen-Eighty-Four over Soviet nations, Iranian women are given copies of The Handmaid’s Tale and begin dressing up like handmaids in protests backed by US intelligence. The recognizable symbolism resonates with Western liberal readers of the book when they see it on TV, and this can be used to manufacture Western consent for destructive regime change operations—and with it regional instability and countless dead which will leave the aforementioned women even worse for wear (see similar “humanitarian” concerns about Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. and how those turned out)."
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!
Cuz the regimes in Iran & Afghanistan, and the former one in Libya, were AWESOME. So GREAT!!!! Everybody is/was so happy in those countries! Especially the women.
Afghanistan War Enjoyer, please tell the families of the hundreds of the thousands of dead living with their destroyed infrastructure and failed reconstruction how much "better" this sought to make things. Easy to simp for the destruction of other countries via foreign intervention when you don't have to live in the aftermath.
Least I’m not “simping” (PSST- pretty sure it’s SYMP-ing. Like SYMPATHY? Alas- Let’s not get bogged down in semantics.) for a regime of illiterate hillbilly religious maniac pederasts. At least when the Coalition was there a woman could have a job in Kabul & a few other cities. There was some culture- like music! I mean ANY MUSIC. At all. Kids could play football- can’t do that anymore!
But, yeah… It’s a fucking paradise under the Talibs.
Did I say anything about anyone “thanking” me? Or even thanking the US/NATO? No, no I did not. “Simp” isn’t a word. Neither is “symp” for that matter, but at least it’s a part of THE CORRECT WORD, you fucking illiterate Trotskyite wannabe.
It's slang, and it doesn't derive from "sympathy." You're aware that people continued to coin informal vocabulary after your childhood back in the fucking Stone Age, yes?
As for "Trotskyite," Christ, that IS an insult. How dare you compare me to those cultish compulsive newsletter-printers. I'm a damn Tankie.
In the 1960's Afghanistan had more female students in University than male and females even comprised over 50 percent of the faculty. One of their biggest exports was Elvis impersonators. Then some self-righteous folks started funding religious extremists in order to "give the Soviet Union its' own Vietnam". Guess where that money came from. No need to feel left out though. Current trends show the same transition at work in many western nations. I am sure religious fundamentalism will work out so much better this time.
Afghanistan was objectively better for women under the communists before America gave tens of billions — through Pakistan — to radical Islamists like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Because they wanted to bleed the USSR.
When the Soviets withdrew after a decade, and the Islamist warlords and then the Taliban took power, women's lives became hell. So yeah, women in Afghanistan were better off before the United States intervened the first time.
A minor point, but as I recall, the propaganda and rationale for regime change against our "radical Islamic terrorist" enemies consisted mainly of three things – revenge for 9/11; fear of the WMDs we were assured were there; and trying to prevent any further terrorist attacks on American soil. I don't recall anything much being said about the oppression of Islamic women. The aim of the war was to kill jihadists, not liberate the women of Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq. It's hard to picture the government bothering to provide copies of The Handmaid's Tale to Islamic women. They didn't really give a crap about them, and didn't need that to stir up war sentiment in the U.S.
I like a vitriolic takedown as much as the next man, but if you demand rigour (copyright theft = car theft is indeed lacking it, and the point about spaceships is well made) you ought to provide it yourself. Describing someone as “a prolific mass murderer of indigenous people” and linking to an article with the headline, “until not a single Indian remains” which is itself a strategically snipped excerpt from what the guy actually said (“until not a single Indian remains unassimilated”) is just a better-disguised example of double-dealing. The guy sounds like an ocean-going asshole: why not just say that?
Duncan Campbell Scott was one of the major architects of Canada’s residential school system. You can read about his role in these schools in basically every single book on the subject—pick one almost at random and you’ll find him. He presided over its greatest expansion and the period of its greatest death toll. His letters (as reproduced in John Milloy’s book “National Crime”) show a wanton disregard for human life, acknowledgement of the mass deaths, and general callousness about the situation. Disregarding this, he continued to expand the system and continued to enforce its application—you can read more about the specifics of this in the first volume of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If you’re seeking to litigate whether Scott was indeed a “murderer” I would refer you in light of the preceding information to s. 229(b) of the Criminal Code of Canada.
This piece is just a stretch of juvenile ranting. I swear like a trooper, but lacing this article with so much personal abuse, and so much of it pathetic and childish, just made me despair. Plus, the fucking writing was shit.
And like the whole little crew of Canuckistanis who "hate" Margaret Atwood, this "person"'s shit writing is all you need to understand where said hate comes from.
The biggest problem with the show is they make Gilead right. The societal fertility collapse thing was mentioned in passing in the last chapter as one possible explanation. In the show it become a near societal wide crisis that consumes all other problems, and thus make the Gilead response into something harsh but still rational.
They even have other countries accepting that this problem is so bad that Gilead’s methods are worth emulating. It’s just a bizarre choice. They were trying to write a show dealing with the evil that lurks in human nature while holding an ideology that asserts that unconstrained human nature is intrinsically good, so I guess even the religious theocrat rapists must actually have a rational historical materialist basis?
Wow. I’m teaching Oryx and Crake this semester as an excellent treatise on the way in which language shapes power and knowledge (Foucault et al). As a professor of literature, I will argue that Atwood is one of the most talented authors I’ve ever read. Anyone who reads this screed with tacit agreement does not only not know how to appreciate literature—but lacks a fundamental grasp of its purpose.
My wife is a professor of English literature and has also written academically on Atwood's Cat's Eye and disagrees with your assertion, so by the rules of the appeal to authority game we're playing here I guess you two cancel each other out.
Note that I never called Atwood necessarily "untalented"—I've historically enjoyed The Edible Woman and Surfacing, for instance—but I have used The Handmaid's Tale here as an example of what I find to be rather thoughtless about her work. But even there, I think Atwood's grapling with language is her best merit, I even admitted that my favourite portions of the novel are the ones, for instance, which deal with Offred's relationship to her true name, I think that the reflections on naming and power are quite poignant in that book.
That being said, though perhaps you weren't meaning it to these ends, I think even Atwood herself would push back against someone calling one of her novels a "treatise," I think that based on my experience of her through interviews and her writings (and what I know of her from a number of friends who know her personally) that she would consider that to be a reduction of her work to didactic tool. If this is, however, what you meant, then I would offer that as far as I am concerned—and in anticipation of another appeal to authority, I imagine my many award-winning writer friends would back me up on this, including the Giller-shortlisted novelist whose work I've published on this very site—you may be lacking a fundamental grasp on the purpose of literature, because literature's necessary purpose is not to instruct or to teach. It CAN do those things, but that is not its "purpose."
Well, ok then! Be proud of your wife she must be good with ambiguity!! All of Atwood’s novels are “treatises” like most well crafted Lit ; it makes a point. Cats Eye is a trauma Bildungsroman much like O&C— Atwood is a genius, but there are many literary geniuses. Still, Atwood rocks it literarily #Faucault #Sauserre -#Hegel #Kant #Nietzche etc etc, your wife should know all that #criticaltheory.
I just read Handmaid’s last year for the first time and what struck me as the most disturbing is how the left has co-opted it as a story for the pro-choice effort, when it’s really a far more compelling case against surrogacy, which few people seem to be questioning right now, especially on the left. The only group that has taken a stand against it are Catholics. I then found Atwood’s actions when it comes to talking about abortion so disingenuous and opportunistic. Like you said, abortion wasn’t even legal in Canada when she wrote this, and I just don’t think it was about abortion at all really. How we came to wear the handmaids garb at prochoice marches makes almost zero sense to me — though I haven’t seen the show, so maybe that’s the problem for me.
Surrogacy is indeed very disturbing. Atwood didn’t have to courage to do anything groundbreaking. By her own admission (or so I read) she modeled her dystopia on the actual lives of Islamic women.
Yes interesting point about surrogacy. There are feminists and campaigns going on against baby-selling, and against removing newborn babies from their mothers. (They don’t do that to puppies before they sell them). There’s Surrogacy Concern, and various women’s rights organisations.
Women’s Declaration International is anti-surrogacy but they are also for women’s sex based rights, which it appears Atwood and the left couldn’t care less about.
I knew atwood was bad but didn't realize she was this terrible. these contemporary dystopias are usually very facile and boring. another ridiculous example of a 'dystopia' is "the plot against america". I am guessing since the reality is not so bad for middle class jewish people or women, they need to try and get "victim" points by imagining a disastrous future. but their imaginary future is neither interesting not is it convincing. the issue is, both their knowledge is history and their political imagination are lacking. they can only imagine fascism as it appeared in the early 20th century. but fascism won't come with goose steps and brown shirts once again. as one american theologian said, it will come with smiley faces. but even that is a little false because 'fascism' as defined by the complete merger of capital and the state, is already here. it doesn't even need a set of symbols anymore because it is automatic and invisible. If that is the case then the series' "color-blind" fascism might make sense because that is what we have, a supposedly non racist, non symbolic but effective fascism.
I understand that you can disagree with opinion, but I cannot understand demonising her with insults. Do you really think at her age, with the amount of press she published, YOU are going to be a perfect being for everybody on this planet? Do you really think we are not going to be called from future genarations as "barbaric, conservatives", we will, because we, including you haven't reached to realise how wrong we are as a species. So it's easy to humiliate others, hope this flow of immaturity doesn't become a spot on your far greater lagacy and impenetrable ideals.
I used to live right by her in the Annex in Toronto. I’d chat with her long-suffering and sweet, kind husband Graeme Gibson, almost daily. Old Peggie herself would never say hello. That poor man. She also happens to be a big NIMBY, fighting attempts to build a medium-density condo that may shade her urban estate. She’s pals with the likes of Galen Weston and Adrienne Clarkson of the same parish, also NIMBY capitalist bullies all.
Yeah and one of the other bloggers here also wrote about her connections to arms-profiteer Scott Griffin—she's not the most principled woman in the world, that's for sure.
I remember sitting in the background of an on-stage interview she did with Matt Galloway at Inidgo at the Manulife Centre about a decade or so ago. I was gagging the whole time as Matt fawned over her uncritically.
This bitch hates cats. What else do we need to hear? (I joke I kid you should really read her artist stand-in in Cat’s Eye—who grew up in the same neighbourhood as Marg, with the same history of violence against women—debate the victimhood of a young woman who was raped and murdered while walking home. And then later go on to say she hopes a woman dies of her botched back-alley abortion. Author isn’t narrator blah blah blah except in this case where it has been literally substantiated. Plus, you’ve already discussed all of my more serious and direct attacks on her as a political entity.)
That book!!! I read it a few years ago and got a distinct flavour of "Other women are such bitches; I wonder why they all hate me?" from her self-insert character.
What a disgusting hateful rant. Your points even if valid are lost in your nasty acidic vitriol. You use hatred and insults to try to bolster yourself and it just looks childish churlish and dare I say it Trumpian. Hatred begets hatred.
IIRC, the novel ends abruptly. Offred plans to escape to Canada with her lover and her diary is “found.” That’s when I realized Ms. Atwood had written herself into a corner and couldn’t figure out how to resolve her dilemma. The movie version shows us a pregnant Offred & her lover climbing the mountains in the snow, much like the von Trapp family.
I assume the mini-series will end with the Handmaids, led by Offred, leading a rebellion against TPTB, and establishing an Amazonian Utopia.
"IIRC, the novel ends abruptly. Offred plans to escape to Canada with her lover and her diary is “found.” That’s when I realized Ms. Atwood had written herself into a corner and couldn’t figure out how to resolve her dilemma."
Interesting - I didn't know this. I couldn't get into Handmaid's Tale as a book, so I never got this far. But she was never my cup of tea, so to speak. We had to read Edible Woman in college, and I didn't get into that, either. My favorite book of hers is not one that is critically acclaimed - Lady Oracle. I loved that one because it was so funny. But, getting back to your point - she ended that one abruptly, too. It's like she couldn't figure out what to do after the character faked her death and then decided to come back to get her friends out of jail for the crime so just stopped.
Interesting. Stephen King is another author who seems to have difficulty writing a satisfying ending to his novels. His short stories are better, IMHO.
I walked into this essay with my hackles raised — “Oh, dear, what’s some faux-intellectual fascist twit got to say now?” — but I was pleasantly surprised to find Atwood criticized not from the Right but from the Left. Your close reading of The Handmaid’s Tale won me over to your thesis that the show’s writers have largely missed the point. I agree that Atwood can be staggeringly tone-deaf in her public displays of politics.
I don’t know enough about your examples of Atwood’s personal failings to pass judgment, but I’m suspicious of your claim she wants teachers to go to jail. Copyright cases seldom involve imprisonment; they’re usually about financial damages. Is a teacher uniquely entitled to break copyright law? To make a class set of a book by photocopying it whole, rather than having the school order a class set? Why? Because education? I say this as a teacher who has photocopied things for my students — within the legal limits of copyright. “Educational purposes” is not a blank check, only a limited carve-out. Check the law.
Appropriation of marginalized people’s trauma? Okay, I can see the merits of the argument. At the same time, I don’t think the blame is to be laid at the feet of Atwood’s narcissism, and I think the reason you’re mistakenly laying it there is that you’re overlooking a key way in which dystopia works. This isn’t surprising, considering your low opinion of the genre, something you think only intellectually fit for teenagers to read.
The point of Nineteen Eighty-Four is not to fear-monger about communism. (Orwell was himself a socialist. Read his earlier books.) The point is to critique totalitarianism — that in particular, whether it takes a communist or a fascist guise — and, as a dystopia, it does this by taking things to the furthest extreme imaginable. Yes, it’s a slippery slope argument. Yes, it’s not very nuanced about the threat. But that’s not the point. Orwell is painting a picture of what such a system does to a person’s soul — how it grinds down even someone aspiring to be a freethinking rebel. Winston Smith’s last thought in the story is that he LOVES Big Brother. He loves Big Brother in spite of the fact that he’s seen all the way behind the curtain of the totalitarian state and he knows how evil it is. This ironic tragedy could not be achieved without the image of “a boot stomping on a human face forever.” It’s Winston’s face, in the end. And he’s an everyman character, no one particularly special, to drive home the point that this is what totalitarianism does to everyone.
Offred is an everywoman. Think about when The Handmaid’s Tale was published and where representation in literature was at the time. Think about where the depiction of marginalized experiences was at the time (you alluded to Roots, a good reference point for thinking about this). Think about where the discourse about race was. Would Atwood have made the dystopia clearer by wading into race, writing from a perspective she didn’t understand? No. She focused on a particular theme — women’s autonomy — and in service of it, she anonymized Offred as much as possible to make her situation relatable to the widest readership possible. Atwood made Offred a formerly privileged person to emphasize her oppression now — it would not land the same way if it was just a continuation of the sort of treatment Offred had already come to expect in life. She took away Offred’s real name in the dystopian world-building, then made fine literary hay out of it — not the other way around.
Suggesting that Atwood was an “appropriating” racist to do things this way, on the one hand you’re asking something of her dystopia that it doesn’t set out to deliver — and that would hamstring it if it tried to deliver. And on the other hand, you’re slipping a bit into the historian’s fallacy — the idea that people in the past had all the same perspectives and information as people today — and judging the author THEN by the standards of NOW (or even your personal standards, your particular moral compass). That’s an impossible bar for 1985 Margaret Atwood to meet.
Tear Atwood apart for being a problematic feminist now, if she is one — be my guest! But this presentist shredding of The Handmaid’s Tale as narcissistic fantasy is beneath your acumen as a reader (as I take it from your facility with close reading). You’re looking so closely at the trees, you’ve forgotten what sort of forest you’re in.
Thanks for the thoughtful, measured response. I enjoyed reading it as a circumspect companion piece to the essay. Both make interesting points. I’m an almost fifty-year-old Canadian woman and Atwood was absolutely sacrosanct in my adolescence when I started reading her novels. Some of my critical responses were quashed because, of course, the inadequacy could only be my own: a naive young reader failing to appreciate literary greatness. And this ambivalence continued into my adulthood. I realize that Atwood has always had her critics, but she has enjoyed an undeniably privileged position in the Canadian literary establishment. It is this aura of untouchable genius and my resistance to it on principle that ignited a little schadenfreude in me while reading the author’s takedown.
But I’m old enough to know better and your response was clarifying. As a stylist, I think Atwood is top-notch.
Thank you, Meaghan!
Islamic women live the handmaid’s tale every single day.
Eh?!
Well put. I thought the same thing; you put it much more concisely than I could have. I watched a "behind the scenes" clip from the show where the writers talked about some elements that they changed, mainly with race. In the book, Gilead "deports" anyone who isn't white and doesn't have the right genes, meaning anyone with genetic disorders, etc. The showrunners said they wanted the show to reflect 2017, versus 1985, so they did not make race part of Gilead's criteria for labeling some as "undesirable." I think it's easy to forget how long ago The Handmaid's Tale was written because of the show, and she is still alive.
I guess I'll never know if this article had anything substantive to say because of the repulsive, puerile writing style. How tedious to come across someone that feels the needs to swear every other sentence.
You're fucking missing out
Bro really said "deplorable, milord" after this one
There’s no one as tiresome as someone offended by useful words like fuck.
I wasn’t offended, but I did think the writer came off as a bit immature.
Plus the adjective is “principal,” not “principle.”
Haha. That’s amusing. Repulsive and puerile apparently aren’t used to express offense.
I didn’t say it was puerile and repulsive—that was someone else!
But for what it’s worth, “puerile” definitely doesn’t express offense. Only disapproval.
And that gets you a new subscriber from someone of a similar mind. Gratuitous swearing is basically verbal farting.
Only if you use farts for emphasis. I prefer the word fuck.
Farts are hilarious, as was this article
Abso(bad word)lutely! Once I was so frustrated in the late 90's with the deviousness of politics I told my very proper extremely well-read and well-educated mother "I am sorry I am just going to have to use the word "cr@p". I admit I find my self using more bad language these days - to 2 people only. Then I apologize to them and my mom who died in 2005. 🤣
I understand the frustration with the arrogant idiots who purport being experts - but I do aim for eloquence. I admire your fortitude with vocabulary!
Ivan out here clutching his pearls
They’re Canadian. They have absolutely nothing of interest to say about their moribund, incredibly boring culture so they make up for it by employing the shock tactic of profanity, which last worked for 14 year-olds in 1990. Today it just makes them doubly boring and even more predictable.
How utterly predictable you seem, since you aren’t even willing to state where you come from. Which, to me, as a Canadian says you’re ashamed of your country, which neither Ms. Atwood nor I are ashamed to state. If you find that statement belittling, that is on you, not either of us.
In addition to the above, we voted for a person who can actually speak in complete sentences. Imagine that marvel in the “USAmerica” of today, (speaking of “moribund, incredibly boring culture”. Ferme ta bouche!
As a Canadian. Fuck you. Not sorry.
Hear hear!
I want to list out ever swear I can think of just for fun: fuck bitch ass cunt butthole stupid dumb vagina boob breast jesus god penis anus cock whore the n word pussy fart nut-sack the r word Satan asshole turd
(…) someone “who” feels the need (no s) (…)
Well when I use puerile it’s definitely an insult
So good. And I hate long essays.
Alias Grace was one of my favourite books in high school. I read that chonker twice. Her writing is so good, it felt like braille against my brain.
But I could never get into her as a person.
And your issue with race is spot on. Race swapping violates reality so subtly, you can hardly put your finger on what’s wrong. But I realized that it’s because race comes with its own realities, experiences and perspectives. Like, I HATE seeing a black, female mercenary with a hood accent and braids or weave in movies. A woman who hasn’t bleached AAVE from her vocabulary isn’t worldly enough to have the connections and powers of a international mercenary. She is not sitting in the salon for seven hours. She does not have a predictable routine…. Anyway.
Good post.
Hmmm… Started strong there. Then you went full CREEP.
"It is “about” the United States, but its ideological usefulness has been in propagandizing against our “illiberal” Islamist enemies in countries like Iran and Afghanistan. Much like the United States used to airdrop copies of Nineteen-Eighty-Four over Soviet nations, Iranian women are given copies of The Handmaid’s Tale and begin dressing up like handmaids in protests backed by US intelligence. The recognizable symbolism resonates with Western liberal readers of the book when they see it on TV, and this can be used to manufacture Western consent for destructive regime change operations—and with it regional instability and countless dead which will leave the aforementioned women even worse for wear (see similar “humanitarian” concerns about Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. and how those turned out)."
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!
Cuz the regimes in Iran & Afghanistan, and the former one in Libya, were AWESOME. So GREAT!!!! Everybody is/was so happy in those countries! Especially the women.
Afghanistan War Enjoyer, please tell the families of the hundreds of the thousands of dead living with their destroyed infrastructure and failed reconstruction how much "better" this sought to make things. Easy to simp for the destruction of other countries via foreign intervention when you don't have to live in the aftermath.
Least I’m not “simping” (PSST- pretty sure it’s SYMP-ing. Like SYMPATHY? Alas- Let’s not get bogged down in semantics.) for a regime of illiterate hillbilly religious maniac pederasts. At least when the Coalition was there a woman could have a job in Kabul & a few other cities. There was some culture- like music! I mean ANY MUSIC. At all. Kids could play football- can’t do that anymore!
But, yeah… It’s a fucking paradise under the Talibs.
Sure, and now they have both the Talibs AND the aftermath of twenty years of war. Are they supposed to thank you for that, yankee?
Also--the word is "simp" you boomer dipshit.
Did I say anything about anyone “thanking” me? Or even thanking the US/NATO? No, no I did not. “Simp” isn’t a word. Neither is “symp” for that matter, but at least it’s a part of THE CORRECT WORD, you fucking illiterate Trotskyite wannabe.
It's slang, and it doesn't derive from "sympathy." You're aware that people continued to coin informal vocabulary after your childhood back in the fucking Stone Age, yes?
As for "Trotskyite," Christ, that IS an insult. How dare you compare me to those cultish compulsive newsletter-printers. I'm a damn Tankie.
In the 1960's Afghanistan had more female students in University than male and females even comprised over 50 percent of the faculty. One of their biggest exports was Elvis impersonators. Then some self-righteous folks started funding religious extremists in order to "give the Soviet Union its' own Vietnam". Guess where that money came from. No need to feel left out though. Current trends show the same transition at work in many western nations. I am sure religious fundamentalism will work out so much better this time.
Yeeeeaaaah. None of that is true, but it’s fun to pretend!
Did you seriously write down “one of their biggest exports was Elvis impersonators”? 😂😂😂😂😂🤣 In the 60’s???
Afghanistan was objectively better for women under the communists before America gave tens of billions — through Pakistan — to radical Islamists like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Because they wanted to bleed the USSR.
When the Soviets withdrew after a decade, and the Islamist warlords and then the Taliban took power, women's lives became hell. So yeah, women in Afghanistan were better off before the United States intervened the first time.
If you really believe that- I have a bridge to sell you in New York.
Thanks so much for taking it upon yourself to speak on behalf of all women and our global problems, you dipshit.
Clearly I was only speaking for ALL THE WOMEN in Iran, Libya, and Afghanistan. Not the entire world. But your comment is still very stupid.
No. The handmaid’s tale is their reality, and Atwood stole it to fear monger for middle class white women.
A minor point, but as I recall, the propaganda and rationale for regime change against our "radical Islamic terrorist" enemies consisted mainly of three things – revenge for 9/11; fear of the WMDs we were assured were there; and trying to prevent any further terrorist attacks on American soil. I don't recall anything much being said about the oppression of Islamic women. The aim of the war was to kill jihadists, not liberate the women of Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq. It's hard to picture the government bothering to provide copies of The Handmaid's Tale to Islamic women. They didn't really give a crap about them, and didn't need that to stir up war sentiment in the U.S.
I like a vitriolic takedown as much as the next man, but if you demand rigour (copyright theft = car theft is indeed lacking it, and the point about spaceships is well made) you ought to provide it yourself. Describing someone as “a prolific mass murderer of indigenous people” and linking to an article with the headline, “until not a single Indian remains” which is itself a strategically snipped excerpt from what the guy actually said (“until not a single Indian remains unassimilated”) is just a better-disguised example of double-dealing. The guy sounds like an ocean-going asshole: why not just say that?
Duncan Campbell Scott was one of the major architects of Canada’s residential school system. You can read about his role in these schools in basically every single book on the subject—pick one almost at random and you’ll find him. He presided over its greatest expansion and the period of its greatest death toll. His letters (as reproduced in John Milloy’s book “National Crime”) show a wanton disregard for human life, acknowledgement of the mass deaths, and general callousness about the situation. Disregarding this, he continued to expand the system and continued to enforce its application—you can read more about the specifics of this in the first volume of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If you’re seeking to litigate whether Scott was indeed a “murderer” I would refer you in light of the preceding information to s. 229(b) of the Criminal Code of Canada.
Have you read Grave Error?
This piece is just a stretch of juvenile ranting. I swear like a trooper, but lacing this article with so much personal abuse, and so much of it pathetic and childish, just made me despair. Plus, the fucking writing was shit.
Exactly why I liked it
Indeed.
And like the whole little crew of Canuckistanis who "hate" Margaret Atwood, this "person"'s shit writing is all you need to understand where said hate comes from.
The biggest problem with the show is they make Gilead right. The societal fertility collapse thing was mentioned in passing in the last chapter as one possible explanation. In the show it become a near societal wide crisis that consumes all other problems, and thus make the Gilead response into something harsh but still rational.
They even have other countries accepting that this problem is so bad that Gilead’s methods are worth emulating. It’s just a bizarre choice. They were trying to write a show dealing with the evil that lurks in human nature while holding an ideology that asserts that unconstrained human nature is intrinsically good, so I guess even the religious theocrat rapists must actually have a rational historical materialist basis?
Wow. I’m teaching Oryx and Crake this semester as an excellent treatise on the way in which language shapes power and knowledge (Foucault et al). As a professor of literature, I will argue that Atwood is one of the most talented authors I’ve ever read. Anyone who reads this screed with tacit agreement does not only not know how to appreciate literature—but lacks a fundamental grasp of its purpose.
My wife is a professor of English literature and has also written academically on Atwood's Cat's Eye and disagrees with your assertion, so by the rules of the appeal to authority game we're playing here I guess you two cancel each other out.
Note that I never called Atwood necessarily "untalented"—I've historically enjoyed The Edible Woman and Surfacing, for instance—but I have used The Handmaid's Tale here as an example of what I find to be rather thoughtless about her work. But even there, I think Atwood's grapling with language is her best merit, I even admitted that my favourite portions of the novel are the ones, for instance, which deal with Offred's relationship to her true name, I think that the reflections on naming and power are quite poignant in that book.
That being said, though perhaps you weren't meaning it to these ends, I think even Atwood herself would push back against someone calling one of her novels a "treatise," I think that based on my experience of her through interviews and her writings (and what I know of her from a number of friends who know her personally) that she would consider that to be a reduction of her work to didactic tool. If this is, however, what you meant, then I would offer that as far as I am concerned—and in anticipation of another appeal to authority, I imagine my many award-winning writer friends would back me up on this, including the Giller-shortlisted novelist whose work I've published on this very site—you may be lacking a fundamental grasp on the purpose of literature, because literature's necessary purpose is not to instruct or to teach. It CAN do those things, but that is not its "purpose."
Well, ok then! Be proud of your wife she must be good with ambiguity!! All of Atwood’s novels are “treatises” like most well crafted Lit ; it makes a point. Cats Eye is a trauma Bildungsroman much like O&C— Atwood is a genius, but there are many literary geniuses. Still, Atwood rocks it literarily #Faucault #Sauserre -#Hegel #Kant #Nietzche etc etc, your wife should know all that #criticaltheory.
Bless. This was awesome.
I just read Handmaid’s last year for the first time and what struck me as the most disturbing is how the left has co-opted it as a story for the pro-choice effort, when it’s really a far more compelling case against surrogacy, which few people seem to be questioning right now, especially on the left. The only group that has taken a stand against it are Catholics. I then found Atwood’s actions when it comes to talking about abortion so disingenuous and opportunistic. Like you said, abortion wasn’t even legal in Canada when she wrote this, and I just don’t think it was about abortion at all really. How we came to wear the handmaids garb at prochoice marches makes almost zero sense to me — though I haven’t seen the show, so maybe that’s the problem for me.
Surrogacy is indeed very disturbing. Atwood didn’t have to courage to do anything groundbreaking. By her own admission (or so I read) she modeled her dystopia on the actual lives of Islamic women.
Yes interesting point about surrogacy. There are feminists and campaigns going on against baby-selling, and against removing newborn babies from their mothers. (They don’t do that to puppies before they sell them). There’s Surrogacy Concern, and various women’s rights organisations.
" How we came to wear the handmaids garb at prochoice marches makes almost zero sense to me" - forced birthing is the common thread.
Re surrogacy - radical feminists have always opposed it as inherently exploitative, but true radical feminists don't have a high profile these days.
Women’s Declaration International is anti-surrogacy but they are also for women’s sex based rights, which it appears Atwood and the left couldn’t care less about.
I knew atwood was bad but didn't realize she was this terrible. these contemporary dystopias are usually very facile and boring. another ridiculous example of a 'dystopia' is "the plot against america". I am guessing since the reality is not so bad for middle class jewish people or women, they need to try and get "victim" points by imagining a disastrous future. but their imaginary future is neither interesting not is it convincing. the issue is, both their knowledge is history and their political imagination are lacking. they can only imagine fascism as it appeared in the early 20th century. but fascism won't come with goose steps and brown shirts once again. as one american theologian said, it will come with smiley faces. but even that is a little false because 'fascism' as defined by the complete merger of capital and the state, is already here. it doesn't even need a set of symbols anymore because it is automatic and invisible. If that is the case then the series' "color-blind" fascism might make sense because that is what we have, a supposedly non racist, non symbolic but effective fascism.
I understand that you can disagree with opinion, but I cannot understand demonising her with insults. Do you really think at her age, with the amount of press she published, YOU are going to be a perfect being for everybody on this planet? Do you really think we are not going to be called from future genarations as "barbaric, conservatives", we will, because we, including you haven't reached to realise how wrong we are as a species. So it's easy to humiliate others, hope this flow of immaturity doesn't become a spot on your far greater lagacy and impenetrable ideals.
Well said!
I used to live right by her in the Annex in Toronto. I’d chat with her long-suffering and sweet, kind husband Graeme Gibson, almost daily. Old Peggie herself would never say hello. That poor man. She also happens to be a big NIMBY, fighting attempts to build a medium-density condo that may shade her urban estate. She’s pals with the likes of Galen Weston and Adrienne Clarkson of the same parish, also NIMBY capitalist bullies all.
Yeah and one of the other bloggers here also wrote about her connections to arms-profiteer Scott Griffin—she's not the most principled woman in the world, that's for sure.
https://discordiareview.substack.com/p/griffin-canadian-poetry-bullshit
I remember sitting in the background of an on-stage interview she did with Matt Galloway at Inidgo at the Manulife Centre about a decade or so ago. I was gagging the whole time as Matt fawned over her uncritically.
This bitch hates cats. What else do we need to hear? (I joke I kid you should really read her artist stand-in in Cat’s Eye—who grew up in the same neighbourhood as Marg, with the same history of violence against women—debate the victimhood of a young woman who was raped and murdered while walking home. And then later go on to say she hopes a woman dies of her botched back-alley abortion. Author isn’t narrator blah blah blah except in this case where it has been literally substantiated. Plus, you’ve already discussed all of my more serious and direct attacks on her as a political entity.)
That book!!! I read it a few years ago and got a distinct flavour of "Other women are such bitches; I wonder why they all hate me?" from her self-insert character.
Good point!
Hate this hate that… seem like nice folks, must be big fun at parties.
What a disgusting hateful rant. Your points even if valid are lost in your nasty acidic vitriol. You use hatred and insults to try to bolster yourself and it just looks childish churlish and dare I say it Trumpian. Hatred begets hatred.
Are you volunteering yourself as an example?
IIRC, the novel ends abruptly. Offred plans to escape to Canada with her lover and her diary is “found.” That’s when I realized Ms. Atwood had written herself into a corner and couldn’t figure out how to resolve her dilemma. The movie version shows us a pregnant Offred & her lover climbing the mountains in the snow, much like the von Trapp family.
I assume the mini-series will end with the Handmaids, led by Offred, leading a rebellion against TPTB, and establishing an Amazonian Utopia.
"IIRC, the novel ends abruptly. Offred plans to escape to Canada with her lover and her diary is “found.” That’s when I realized Ms. Atwood had written herself into a corner and couldn’t figure out how to resolve her dilemma."
Interesting - I didn't know this. I couldn't get into Handmaid's Tale as a book, so I never got this far. But she was never my cup of tea, so to speak. We had to read Edible Woman in college, and I didn't get into that, either. My favorite book of hers is not one that is critically acclaimed - Lady Oracle. I loved that one because it was so funny. But, getting back to your point - she ended that one abruptly, too. It's like she couldn't figure out what to do after the character faked her death and then decided to come back to get her friends out of jail for the crime so just stopped.
Interesting. Stephen King is another author who seems to have difficulty writing a satisfying ending to his novels. His short stories are better, IMHO.
At least that sequel might be bad enough to be good
Sooooo good