Negotiating with the dead - bookrastinating.com

No cover — Margaret Atwood: Negotiating with the dead (2003, Virago Press)

198 pages

English language

Published Nov. 10, 2003 by Virago Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-84408-027-4

(1 review)

What is the role of the Writer? Prophet? High Priest of Art? Court Jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain--or excuse!--their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted," who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift? Atwood's wide reference to other writers, living and dead, is balanced by anecdotes from her own experiences, both in Canada and elsewhere. The lightness of her touch is offset by a seriousness about the purpose and the pleasures of writing, and by a deep familiarity with the myths and traditions of western literature.

9 editions

bkschoonover reviewed Negotiating with the dead by Margaret Atwood

Review of 'Negotiating with the dead' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is a dense and very literate look into what it means to be a writer. Some of it is very enlightening, but the inspiration, I think, comes late in the book, in the last chapter. This is the title chapter and deals with the idea that one of the central motivating forces behind writing and writers across time is the idea of somehow conveying permanence in a world where death is. Either by relaying information from beyond the grave, or by the very act of writing, stamping ourselves in a more permanent form that will outlast death.

Very interesting stuff. Takes a focused reader. Don't try while doing other things, some books you can get away with reading during commercials. Not this one.

Subjects

Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, -- 1939- -- Authorship.
Fiction -- Authorship.
Authorship.