Margaret Atwood: Conversations (Ontario Review Press Critical Series)

Princeton, New Jersey: Ontario Review Press, 1990. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 10x1x14. First edition. A fine copy in a near fine jacket. 1990 Hard Cover. xvii, 251 pp. A collection of 21 interviews with the author of The Handmaid's Tale. Includes: Introduction; Chronology; Dissecting the Way a Writer Works; Magical Forms in Poetry; Preserving Mythologies; Thinking about the Technique of Skiing When You're Halfway Down the Hill; A Question of Metamorphosis; Playing Around; My Mother Would Rather Skate Than Scrub Floors; Dancing on the Edge of the Precipice; Where Were You When I Really Needed You; Defying Distinctions; Articulating the Mute; Just Looking at Things That Are There; Evading the Pigeonholders; Using What You're Given; More Room for Play; Witness Is What You Must Bear; Managing Time for Writing; The Empress Has No Clothes; Tightrope_Walking Over Niagara Falls; Using Other People's Dreadful Childhoods; Waltzing Again; Contributor Notes; Index. This gathering of 21 interviews with Margaret Atwood covers a broad spectrum of topics. Beginning with Graeme Gibson's "Dissecting the Way a Writer Works" (1972), the conversations provide a forum for Atwood to talk about her own work, her career as a writer, feminism, and Canadian cultural nationalism, and to refute the autobiographical fallacy. These conversations offer what Earl Ingersoll calls "a kind of 'biography' of Margaret Atwood - the only kind of biography she is likely to sanction." Enlivened by Atwood's unfailing sense of humor, the interviews present an invaluable view of a distinguished contemporary writer at work.