November 2023 #MARM Margaret Atwood Reading Month (Week Three): November 15-21

Welcome to Week Three, MARMers: the midpoint of the sixth iteration of this reading celebration. And, of course, there’s cake to come, because it’s the birthday week. But, in the meantime, back to the books.

Coincidentally, I also discovered Margaret Atwood in the Giller-nominated Girlfriend on Mars (2023) by Deborah Willis recently; Amber calls her bookshelf a “history of her mind” which includes “George Monbiot, Naomi Klein, bell hooks…Brian Greene, Yuval Noah Harari, Michael Pollan, Doris Lessing” and, yup, you guessed it: Margaret Atwood. (I’ve been itching to read Deborah Willis’s novel since I “met” Amber in a short story with the same title: a clever and entertaining indictment of consumerism and consumption.)

From a character recommending Atwood to Atwood recommending characters: I’ve also just finished the short story collection Good Citizens Need Not Fear (2020) by Maria Reva, one of the books Margaret Atwood recommended on Twitter at the height of the pandemic. (The jacket includes rave blurbs from Miriam Toews and Anthony Doerr among others.)

These linked stories are divided into two parts, depicting life in a Russian/Soviet apartment building “Before the Fall” and “After the Fall”. I plan to dedicate a separate post to focus on this collection because it was so smart and, surprisingly, funny: the same kind of dark, dry wit I find in these Atwood short stories.

But here’s a peek from an early story of life in 1933 Ivansk Street (I can’t quote from the later stories without risking spoilers):

“Smena’s building, her entire town, now felt like a death trap, but she convinced herself that the concrete walls of her own apartment were secure. After a year-long renovation, none of the windows or doors creaked. The new checkerboard linoleum felt smooth and sturdy under her feet. As long as she stayed in her space, twelve by twelve steps, she would be safe.”

This passage stands out to me because it connects thematically with one of the short stories in Dancing Girls that’s up for discussion at the end of this week. I just read the story last night after dinner and Mrs. Burridge and her pickles this morning leapt into my mind when I woke up this morning. Somehow the decades between this farmwife’s view of the horizon and the view from my bedroom window aligned in such a way that I can’t shake it.

MARM 2023 PLANS

Each week I’ll share links to some online sources, so that anyone with a few minutes can join in the celebrations. Some poetry and flash fiction, some interviews and reviews, some fresh reads and rereads: mostly reading with a little viewing and, in particular, short stories.

Launch (November 1)
Dancing Girls, “Rape Fantasies” (November 3)
Week Two: Update and Check-In (November 8)
Dancing Girls, “Hair Jewellery” (November 10)
Old Babes in the Wood, “First Aid” (November 12)
Dancing Girls, “A Travel Piece” (November 17)
Margaret Atwood’s 84^th Birthday (November 18)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Two Scorched Men” (November 19)
Dancing Girls, “The Resplendent Quetzel” (November 24)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Morte de Smudgie” (November 26)
Wrap-Up (November 29-30)

Over a second cup of coffee, I opened Graeme Gibson’s The Bedside Book of Birds to the section on ravens. This is a book I’ve previously read cover-to-cover, over a period of weeks, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, akin to reading a poem in the morning (another habit I’ve set aside but wish to resume) but thought I wouldn’t necessarily revisit. Even when it arrived from the library, I remained hesitant.

But as I reacquainted myself with the story of Odin’s ravens, it transformed into a story about a parrot Graeme had adopted but, then, released to the care of an aviary when the bird grew despondent. It’s a moving memory which ends with this—“We think of our captive birds as our pets, but perhaps we are their pets, as well”—but I shan’t spoil the heart of it all. It would double for the poetry-in-the-mornings selection too. Hmmmm.

Speaking of memories and Graeme, his is a strong presence in the 2019 CBC Docs POV “The mind behind “The Handmaid’s Tale”: Canadian author Margaret Atwood tells all.” The film (45m) opens with one of the series’s Emmy wins, announced by Oprah, wherein the author appears onstage with producers and stars of the show.

It’s all very glamorous and then it’s not, as the scene shifts to Atwood joking about anyone filming her emerging from a hotel in London or walking on a street (such ordinary events, being filmed as she joked) which is soon followed by her attendance at an art gallery.

I’m fascinated by this bit because she talks about the dirt and grime invisible in the painting, which reminds me of the idea that she expresses in the other short story I read this week, how people do not want to be disturbed. This is what artists do, they reveal what they see, even disturbing things (Governor General Adrienne Clarkson says, quoting Akira Kurosawa).

Then she’s stopped by a patron who’s an English-language bookseller in Montreal and eager for a photo with her (demonstrating her not-so-ordinariness). She makes conversation with the gentleman about the book trade, and then shakes the hand of his son after he takes the photograph, who offers that he was made to, errrrr had to (he quickly corrects, but not quickly enough to distract) read The Handmaid’s Tale in school and she laughs. Nobody made her, but Nancy read THT for the first time recently too, inspired by MARM; so many online bookish events have encouraged me to pull a longtime-shelf-sitter into my stack too, and I’m glad to return the favour.

If you’re looking for a shorter video, a few days ago, while searching for the original publication date of “When It Happens” in Canadian women’s magazine Chatelaine, I found this fun snippet wherein Atwood retakes the same quiz she took thirty-four years ago. It’s two minutes long and her original responses appear in text alongside her present-day answers; it’s interesting to see what’s changed and what remains the same.

Speaking of short, I’ve been dabbling in comics more often than poems these days. I never cared for Little Lulu when I was a little girl—I loved Tweety and Sylvester, Tom and Jerry, and other animal pairs—but Margaret Atwood’s essay, included in the John Stanley collection Little Lulu: Working Girl, gave me a new appreciation of Lulu. (It’s edited by FrankYoung and Tom Devlin and was published by Drawn &

Quarterly in 2019.) She has a list of five life lessons absorbed from Little Lulu, which include “It’s okay to be short.”

Atwood describes how the LL comics were traded as eagerly as all others in her childhood, “bratty kids were universally appealing to bratty kids” and as I approached them with the idea of reading for a few minutes rather than settling into a story, I found myself enjoying them. “And, in an age somewhat devoid of female title characters, she was the title character. One could therefore be little, and a girl, and nonetheless the title character. Move over, Jane Eyre!” You can also read this short piece on TNY website.

Later this week, there’ll be more posts on short stories and, next week, I’m going to reread an essay in a collection on hand—either one about maps or one about Ursula K. LeGuin—any guesses as to this collection?

Also, I’m going to read from another collection as well and you can choose the selections: pick a number from one to thirty-five, share in the comments below, and I’ll report back.