November 2023 #MARM Margaret Atwood Reading Month Week Two: November 8-14

Happy Week Two, MARM-ers. The clocks were turned back on the weekend, so it’s dark before five, but no snow quite yet. Most of the bigger trees have lost all their leaves but the sun is shining brightly this afternoon, while I’m munching on roasted pumpkin seeds and thinking about books.

You already know about the short stories I chose, down there in the planning widget, but what you don’t know is I’ve finished reading a previously unpublished novella by Simone de Beauvoir—in translation by Sandra Smith: Inseparable with an introduction by, yes, you’ve guessed it, Margaret Atwood. It’s simultaneously a peek into an intimate friendship between two French girls, from families with different perspectives on religion and status, and a social commentary on how culture shapes the choices available to girls and women.

It’s funny to think of Margaret Atwood being terrified of de Beauvoir as she describes in her introduction. Once someone is established in the public eye, it can be difficult to remember that they weren’t always there. There’s also an afterword by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, and some letters between Simone and her real-life friend Elisabeth “Zaza” Lacoin, on whom she based the character of Andrée, included and these add to the novel’s poignancy.

Atwood responds to the comments that Sartre apparently made to de Beauvoir after he’d read the novel and dismissed it, as recorded in de Beauvoir’s journal:

“Ah, but M. Sartre, we reply from the twenty-first century, these are serious matters. Without Zaza, without the passionate devotion between the two of them, without Zaza’s encouragement of Beauvoir’s intellectural ambitions and her desire to break free of the conventions of her time, without Beauvoir’s view of the crushing expectations placed on Zaza as a woman by her family and her society—expectations that, in Beauvoir’s view, literally squeezed the life out of her, despite her mind, her strength, her wit, her will—would there have been a Second Sex? And without that pivotal book, what else would not have followed?”

You can also find this piece included in Burning Questions: Essays & Occasional Pieces 2004-2021 but, if I’d read it there, I wouldn’t have read de Beauvoir—so that’s a good thing, because I find her intimidating too.

In another essay there, Atwood briefly describes her life as a young writer. She includes details like which food remnants were most commonly discovered in a rooming-house bathroom when rooms lacked sinks for rinsing dishes and other not-glamorous realities. For instance, this passage about an early public appearance, which fits with Bill’s recent post:

“It was there [Edmonton, Alberta] that I did my first-ever book signing, in the men’s sock and underwear department of the Hudson’s Bay Company. I sat at a table near the escalator with my little pile of books, with a sign proclaiming the title: The Edible Woman. This title frightened a lot of men—ranchers and oil tycoons, I like to think they were—who had wandered in at noon hour to buy their jockey shorts. They fled in droves. I sold two copies. This was not my vision of the writing life. Proust never had to flog his books in a women’s lingerie department, I reflected. I did wonder whether or not I had taken a wrong turn on my career path. Perhaps it was not too late to go into insurance, or real estate, or almost anything other than writing. But then, as Samuel Beckett said when he was asked why he’d become a writer, ‘Not good for anything else.’”

In the same essay, she shares that The Handmaid’s Tale was the last novel she wrote in long-hand (published in 1985) and with a typewriter; thereafter she used a computer, and she’s certainly kept up with technology. Here’s a brief video excerpt (just two minutes!) from a 2013 interview, in which she describes the Bibliomat; that’s a vending machine that dispenses books, as if you needed another reason to visit Toronto.

Speaking of technology, if you know you should understand more about ChatGPT and generative AI, in particular how it impacts artists and writers (and teachers and students) but don’t know where to begin?

Next week, I’ll have finished my reading of a ringlet-laden heroine and I might have finished my reread of The Edible Woman too. I’ll also have something to say about a short story collection that Atwood recommended in the early days of the pandemic for readers who were locked down and looking for something smart and funny. Any guesses?

And how about you: are you brushing the crumbs off your favourite cake recipe for MARM? Or, are you wondering how it’s already week two, when you thinking it was barely November?