The Edible Woman's Return

The closest I ever got to Margaret Atwood (apart from one reading that she gave in French in around 2010) was in 1992. I had just submitted my Gazette review of her poetry book Good Bones, the day before, and I was standing in line at the post office with a novel manuscript that I had packaged and was mailing off to an agent in NY.

Ahead of me in line was a tall young woman with long curly black hair. She half turned and glanced at my package, probably seeing my name in the upper left corner. Then she swiveled around and from three feet away stared straight into my face. She had luminous green eyes, and looked like a younger version of Margaret Atwood. At the same time, she held up the envelope she had come to buy stamps for, so I could clearly read the handwritten names: Mr and Mrs C Atwood in Don Mills, Ontario, and the sender "J Atwood".

It was the way she casually and pointedly displayed it beside her ear with a little smirk, that put me off. Normally I would have spoken up and broken the ice - I mean, why not? Her approach, half friendly, seemed to indicate her bloodline needed no introduction. And what was I supposed to say? "Oh hi, you must be Margaret Atwood's daughter. I'm also a writer...”

And then there was the fact that my review of Good Bones -- set to appear the next day -- was probably the most negative review Atwood would get from any Canadian newspaper.

We stared at each other silently for several seconds until she gave up and went back to waiting in line. She left the store with her stamps and I got my novel weighed and shipped.

My writing career took a dive after that. Eventually I published that novel myself after I moved to Greece.

So I looked up Jess Atwood Gibson, and found out she is an actress. She has starred in one movie, Black Moon. Makes sense because, tbh, she was spooky. I wonder if she's working on a memoir about her famous mother.

****

Having read the first downloadable chapter of her new memoir, I would say with little reservation Atwood has very strong narcissistic traits which have not weakened at 86. She still seems schoolgirlishly obsessed with her own reputation as a "Medusa-like" figure. No one would claim that she can't write. She does many things well. She is brilliant.

She has always had a dystopian outlook that might have started when she was living in tents in northern Quebec with a dad who studied insects. Starting school at 12 she was an outcast, surrounded by nasty little girls -- yet in later life became a feminist. Doesn't quite add up, but early on she felt denigrated as a woman. That battle won, she moved on to bigger things.

I watched an interview where she was asked about "God" and every time she spoke the word "God" her mouth went into spasm. She's a very odd, reclusive introvert and that would be fine for a writer but she's also been placed in a position of power over Canada that fiction writers dont normally achieve. She's been in that position since the mid 1970s. Who gave it to her and for what purpose? It was a Tavistock project to encourage writing that predicted a dismal future for humanity- man against woman and Nature against us All. Atwood fit that bill.

She was also very active in setting up the Writers' Union of Canada, based in Toronto and treating the rest of the country with entitled disdain. Atwood's legacy -- what is it really? Where did it originate? Was it as colonial and hierarchical as it appeared?