Margaret Atwood
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Has anyone read Oryx and Crake?
>>By Noudjali (Wednesday, 21 Apr 2004 17:05)
I think Margaret Atwood is a great Canadian writer. Shes not a raving feminist though...just a feminist....and thats not an insult. To really appreciate her stuff though you have to be able to analyze it and pick up on the sub-themes. I was bored with surfacing, at first, but then i got into it after the first chapter and discovered so much. I've never read a book where the Narrator was so discredible. I think it's a very clever technique.
>>By Pappie170 (Monday, 3 May 2004 01:32)
WOW- This is the most offensive authors site I have been on in a while!!
Isn't it typical of illiterate children to lash out at what they don't understand. The only question I have is why would they spend their time this way. It's akin to writing 'Fuck You' in a bathroom stall -a little pointless and pathetic don't you think???
So little baby boys, I think the site for 'Clifford the Big Red Dog' is awaiting your insightful literary critique's.
>>By Celtgal (Friday, 7 May 2004 00:24)
Well, I understand how some people might take a liking to Atwood, but I'm more inclined to agree with the person who described her as a one-trick pony. She's obviously got some skill, but I think that in fifty years she'll be looked upon as little more than a marginal writer, certainly not a seminal one, except for possibly in Canada. I get the impression from interviews and from reading her work that she is not passionate about writing, but about being a writer. Her work never gets beyond her trying to be a great writer, and convincing everyone that she is a great writer. Those who are truly great don't write to prove it, but because something compels them to. In this respect, she annoys me more than anyone out there except for Tom Robbins, who's the master of "Look at how clever I am!". Cheers, y'all!
>>By Herbtrane (Thursday, 13 May 2004 09:55)
Atwood is not a show-off. She writes to tell a story, and it's not the same one in each book. Oryx and Crake has common points with The Handmaid's Tale, The Robber Bride includes themes from other books, but they're all distinct. Alias Grace is a story based on historical research, it stands on its own merit, even if you don't know anything about the author. So, why are Atwood and other writers perceived negatively sometimes? I guess what people see in a lot of writers is mostly a reflection of who they are, not only as readers but as human beings.
>>By Noudjali (Wednesday, 11 Aug 2004 12:38)
I like "Lady Oracle"! I think it's good!!!
>>By Miss Krux (Wednesday, 11 Aug 2004 15:35)
ohh man....this is the funniest shit ever.....has anybody read sum of atwood's poems.....cuz they are actually pretty good. the thing is i have a problem with analyzing and breaking down these poems in english class.....ma teacher is really dark, deep and meaningful. And it's like i don't give a shit....i like the poem i don't know why but there's sumthing about it and let that be that.....ALRIGHT....ENOUGH......atwood's cool.....my teacher ain't.
arg!!!!!
>>By mahonka (Tuesday, 5 Oct 2004 02:53)
I rather like Atwood and thought she was pretty good. I rather like a person who can create a different society and make it seem real. Since I have known some scary religious people in my life I sort of worry about some of the same things she does. i also liked all the Canadian in jokes in it and how Canada was a refuge from the crazy US. Sometimes I feel like that lately as I live on the "Left Coast".
But it sort of sells a writer short of get stuck on just one of his or her works. How many people here have read Margaret Atwood's other books and her poetry and what do they think of her based on that and not solely on The Handmaid's Tale.
Speaking of that, are there any other people here that are interested in Middle English? I riffed off of the Chaucher Reference Ateood uses to make things feel distant. Still I like Middle English and like the sites that actually have pronounciation guides and things like that. I really like the "Great Vowel Shift" site. Anyone ever explore that and what do they think of it, especially the dialogues used to indicate the changes in English Pronounciation. I wonder if anyone has done this for French in the Middle Ages.
Have Fun,
Sends Steve
>>By izel (Wednesday, 1 Dec 2004 13:43)
I've only read 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood so far as the first bit of my English Lit AS and so far I hate that woman! Fair enough she may be amazing in terms of literature, sci-fi, whatever, but the whole novel seems to be in essence completely biased towards Atwood's own opinions. I have written 8 in depth essays on it since September and I'm thoroughly sick of it and her. Believe me I have no intention of being a doormat but her man hating feminism is almost dangerous in its extreme. Fair enough I've never met the woman, she may be lovely (doubt it), but she could at least have had the decency to say her opinions outright rather than dress them up into a book that deliberately makes essays even more difficult to write because of the way its unsettled, difficult to get into, and constantly jumping from memory, to made up stories, to the 'present,' it makes no sense and it makes me frustrated!!! Maybe I'm just uncultured but give me Shakespeare over Atwood to write essays on anyday! And just to finish, I don't normally complain this much but in my opinion this has to be the worst book I've had to study in a long time and for some reason 'The Handmaid's Tale' has really wound me up.
>>By ali_j (Monday, 6 Dec 2004 12:29)
Oh, Ali_j... You're just young, and that's wonderful. It's nothing time won't cure, though, and more reading will eventually bring a wider perception of any writer's work. Atwood, in The Handmaid's Tale, does much more than stage her own opinions. You do realise it was written years before the Bush administration's challenge to scientific knowledge and its tendency to impose blind faith over reason? Any political system that want people to believe and obey instead of learning and participating should be defeated. Tha fact that men often oppress women to build or maintain such political systems just makes awareness expanding work such Atwood's essential.
Keep reading.
>>By Noudjali (Thursday, 14 Apr 2005 16:07)
Well... I put off reading'The Handmaid's Tale" for years because individual page-shots looked boring to me as a long-time sci-fi fan. However, having just read prev, I have to say that it was a great read! Even though there was a female narrator, I did not read it as a feminist tract. I felt it was more a cautionary tale of the perils of extremist thought, possibly a criticism of feminism of that time as well. There were no winners in her vision of the future, are you so sure you are not a victim of such ideological manipulation today?
>>By flamencoprof (Monday, 19 Jun 2006 21:15)
Noudjali comments v graciously on the crass outpourings of various - I guess- youthful members . Myself, I wonder what they fear so much from what they call 'feminism" , especially the elevated , literary sort of feminist theory in Atwood. Maybe if they had been around in the 60's and 70's they would have seen what a more revolutionary sort of feminism was about . I can look back and see that to many men, older men that is, the feminism of the day must have looked a bit of a worry. I mean, imagine it, you couldn't count on a woman giving up her job or career to look after you anymore, nor would she submit to your demands to be continually taken seriously on every possible occasion. Heavens, she might even laugh at you and your pretensions!!! And you might have to be good in bed and all sorts of stuff!
But now, in almost 2007 for the Lord's sake, why are school boys and girls raving in horror about the idea of gender equality? If Handmaid's Tale had been called Slaves Tale and had racial oppression at it's heart would there have been such an outcry ?
>>By BarbaraH (Wednesday, 20 Dec 2006 09:26)
hahaha, i love how people who dislike atwood's literary style and writings label her a "whore." bloody brilliant.
yes, i am kidding.
>>By raspberry_juice (Tuesday, 6 Feb 2007 03:57)
oh come on people,atwood's 'handmaid's tale' is one of the best books I've ever read
>>By izaaaj (Saturday, 17 Mar 2007 01:16)
After I read Margaret Atwood's "A Handmaid's Tale", I thought about how realistic the situations in the book were and how the role of women is somewhat underestimated. However, I loved how the detail made everything so real. Living in a Patriarchal Society, where the soul purpose of most women is to give birth and have children is a stereotype but the manner in which it is conveyed in the story makes it so compelling. All and all, I really enjoyed the book.
>>By ani202 (Tuesday, 3 Jun 2008 22:46)
I wonder what Florence King thinks of Margaret Atwood.
As someone who grew up in the Canadian school system, I am aware of her omnipresence and her (involuntary) tyranny. To her credit I believe this: the people who hate her hate her because she's been so incredibly hyped up and won every conceivable award. She's everywhere. I don't know what role she played in the reputation she's gotten: if you don't like her, if she doesn't resonate, you have no intellect.
As a writer, my feelings for her congealed into dislike when I read her description of how she "became" a writer: that she was walking through a field one day, when she was very young, and the "thumb of God" pressed down on her forehead and suddenly, she was a poet. Easy to say for a writer who cut her teeth in the barren Canadian presses of the 1960s.
That said, I DO like "Variation on the Word Sleep" and "Life Before Man".
>>By sarahevekelly (Thursday, 5 Jun 2008 11:26)
I have noticed people who hate Atwood seem to be the ones who have had to "study' her books and write essays on her, while others, who just read her books and made connections to things they had seen or read in a more organic manner, appreciated her craft.
Maybe that says more about the education system than Atwood really.
I love Atwood and have pretty much every one of her books on my shelf. And I love going back to them, re-reading passages before I end up reading the book again from front to back.
I wish she was a whore...then I could pay for her company :D
>>By SpaceMonkey (Monday, 7 Nov 2011 16:16)
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