BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA March 15, 2018

Introduction

Margaret Atwood has frequently been cited as one of the foremost writers of our time. Moral Disorder could be seen as a collection of eleven stories that is almost a novel ... or a novel broken up into eleven stories. It resembles a photograph album - a series of clearly observed moments that trace the course of a life, and the lives intertwined with it - those of parents, siblings, children, friends, enemies, teachers and even animals. And as in a photograph album, times change; every decade is here, from the 1930s through the 50s, 60s and 70s to the present day. The settings are equally varied: large cities, suburbs, farms, northern forests.

By turns funny, moving, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and inimitable Contents: style to their best advantage. As the The New York Times has said, 'Atwood has complete access to her Introduction 1 people's emotional histories, complete understanding of their hearts and imaginations.' Biography: 2 Margaret Atwood [https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/moral-disorder- 9780747581628/] Two reviews from 3-4 The Guardian

The Tent - by 5 Margaret Atwood

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Biography: Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian puritanical, theocratic dystopia in writer born on November 18, which a select group of fertile 1939 in Ottawa. The women — a condition which has internationally-known author has become a rarity — are made to written award-winning poetry, bear children for corporate male short-stories and novels, overlords. including The Circle Game (1966), The Handmaid’s Atwood is a prolific writer who Tale (1985), The Blind has penned additional novels that Assassin (2000), Oryx and include Cat’s Eye (1989) and The Crake (2003) and (2006). Blind Assassin, which won the Her works have been translated Booker Prize. Continuing her into an array of different languages output of speculative fiction with and seen several screen real-world parallels, the new adaptations, with both Handmaid's millennium saw Atwood releasing Tale and becoming the environment focused miniseries in 2017. MaddAddam trilogy, consisting of (2003), The Atwood’s first published work Year of the Flood (2009) was the pamphlet of and MaddAddam (2013). In poetry (1961), addition to (2005) published via Hawkshead Press. and The Tent (2006), she also More poetry followed during the released the book of essays In decade as seen with the Other Worlds: SF and the Human books Talismans for Imagination, looking at the Children (1965) and The Animals in nuances of sci-fi/fantasy genre That Country (1968). She then writing. published her first novel, , in 1969, a In 2016, Atwood published the metaphoric, witty work about the graphic novel Angel Catbird, an social status of a woman about to undertaking done with fellow wed. Canadian artist Johnnie Christmas which profiles the A tenacious spirit, Atwood would super-heroic adventures of a later describe taking Greyhound genetic engineer who becomes buses to read at gymnasiums and part feline, part owl. The work is sell books. Atwood continued to slated to be followed up by the publish poetry as well as the February 2017 release, Angel novels (1973), Lady Catbird: To Castle Catula. Oracle (1976) and (1980). Several more books Atwood lives in Toronto with followed, yet it was 1985’s The her partner Graeme Gibson. The Handmaid’s Tale that garnered two have a daughter. Atwood a massive wave of [https://www.biography.com/people/ acclaim and popularity. A margaret-atwood-9191928] prescient warning over what could be, the book chronicles a

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Two reviews from The Guardian

Eleven-piece suite are definite clues that Nell is the works so well I don't know; by Ursula K. Le Guin protagonist even when not perhaps because "The Bad named. Such clues are needed, News" is a stunning opener, Most collections of short stories for there isn't very much in the electric with wit, energy, by a single author are grab-bags, first-person stories of childhood Atwood's achingly keen sense of but some approach or achieve and adolescence to connect the fear and pain. She has never been real unity; this is a different unity girl to the woman Nell. The last sharper, dryer, funnier, sadder. from that of the novel, and two stories concern a woman's And there was wisdom in not deserves some attention. The experience with her father putting this story last, because gaps between stories preclude entering dementia, her mother the last two are about dying, the the supporting structures of in extreme old age. The end, and this one isn't, quite - conventional plot. If the stories daughter may well be Nell, the not yet. "Not yet is aspirated, tell a story, it must be read in parents may be the parents of like the h in honour. It's the glimpses, and through the gaps - the child in the earlier stories, silent not yet. We don't say it a risky gambit, but one that but I had no feeling of out loud." offers singular freedom of recognition, of rejoining the "These are the tenses that define movement and ironic same people at a later stage of us now: past tense, back then; opportunity. In such episodic life. The book did not quite future tense, not yet. We live in narratives, character, place or form a whole for me, an the small window between them, theme replace plot as unifying architecture, a life story the space we've only recently elements. Many collections that however episodic. The glimpses come to think of as still, and pretend to unity merely fake it, are brilliant, but the gaps are really it's no smaller than anyone but we need a name for a book wide. What the stories do have else's window." that is truly a story told in in common, though, is a clear stories. Could we call it a story eye, a fine wit, and a command suite? The uncomplaining, absolute of language so complete it's accuracy of this is most Moral Disorder is such a suite, invisible except when it's admirable. "The Bad News" consisting of 11 short stories. dazzling. really has some news for its readers. Place, perhaps the commonest One piece is dramatically and cement of the story suite, is not effectively out of place. Starting None of the other stories very important, but the stories with the second story, we have a single protagonist, a entirely escapes conventionality, follow Nell through the years not a word I'd expect to use central character- or I think they from her childhood with sister do. She is variable, elusive, even about Atwood. The subjects are and parents, through the familiar tropes of the current a bit slippery. This is, after all, a vicissitudes of semi-marriage, book by Margaret Atwood. short story: miseries and the trials of amateur farming and confusions of childhood, city Seven of the stories are told by late parenthood, and at last to people learning life on a an "I" who remains nameless, her middle age, the daughter of subsistence farm, dysfunctional four from the third-person point parents at the edge of death. family members, Alzheimer's. of view of "Nell". It's easy to But the first story in the book is They are not quite predictable, project Nell into all the stories, chronologically the last, a but near it, though there is a because they run in portrait of Nell and her partner patience, a kindness in the tone chronological order from Tig in their own old age, when which is not common. Apart childhood to age, the central they are the parents on the from in that first story, Atwood figure is always female, and there edge of death. Why this reversal

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doesn't pull any of the surprises, disorderly beginnings, endings than simply the owner of a the narrative flights and dodges and in betweens of a life. And hamster from whom the mother she's so good at. There the old not in any particular order. caught a thyroid disease.

Canadian couple morph quietly The stories present incidents One day, Nell notices how into an old Roman couple in a from the life of one person: she's beautiful the winter landscape is, small Gallic town called Glanum, the first-person narrator in some but recognises that she would which Nell and Tig once visited as and 'Nell' in others, and usually never photograph it for her tourists. Breakfast is good uncertain about what kind of girl Christmas cards. It was, she says, whether in Toronto or Glanum, or woman she wants to be. An 'beautiful in real life, but too but the world is not in good intellectual with pimples on her overdone for art'. Atwood, too, bum? Or 'practical and works hard to circumvent cheap shape. Terrorism, barbarians mundane', like her parents? And emotion or consolation. These threaten the empire. The news is how can she determine which stories are not simply all bad - the news is always the role is an impersonation and unsentimental, they're rigorously same and always bad, and what which the reality? 'A sister anti-sentimental and, at their are two old people supposed to pretending to be a monster or a darkest, they're also at their do about it? This gentle, plausible monster pretending to be a funniest. slide into a fantasy that deepens sister?' It's hard to tell. reality is Atwood at her slyest The book is full of wonderful Answers to these questions details: the way in which the and sweetest. There really is notably depend upon what she's narrator as a teenager smeared nobody like her. been reading, often it seems her face with frozen Noxzema [https://www.theguardian.com/ quite randomly. Different face cream before doing her books/2006/sep/23/ possibilities emerge from The Art homework (she had a theory fiction.margaretatwood] of Cooking and Serving; The Legend that it would 'stimulate the of Sleepy Hollow, 'My Last blood flow' to her brain); the * Duchess', Victorian novels 'about way in which her sister argues furniture and governesses and with the drivers of other cars, all Meet my sister the monster adultery' and the daily paper, of whom she calls Fred; her by Kasia Boddy which brings 'the bad news'. This recipe for 'nuts and bolts', a vile- is, among others things, a book sounding hors d'oeuvre. More than 20 years ago, Margaret about reading. Atwood wrote a short story There are 11 stories here. called 'Happy Endings' that Real time presents 'a small When, in the final piece, it presented a series of possible window' between the emerges that the mother's horse plots that could follow the frighteningly predictable plots of was called Nell, it feels as if we beginning 'John and Mary meet'. 'not yet' and the well-worked are being gently reminded that Finally, the narrator steps in to tales of 'back then'. Many of the this is not a memoir but announce that the only 'authentic stories in Moral Disorder are something made up. Asked in a ending' is death, but that about 'back then'; about growing recent interview if the book was beginnings are much more 'fun' up, Nell's relationship with her autobiographical, Atwood and the 'in between' is what sister and the consequences of replied: 'There has to be some 'connoisseurs' prefer. falling in love. Nell is aware of blood in the cookie to make the the inevitable gap between how Gingerbread Person come alive.' The blurb for this book anxiously she felt then and how she Happily, as well as blood in the declares that Moral Disorder is remembers feeling, and of the cookie, there's plenty of wit, 'almost a novel', but it is so much temptation to change details to compassion and grace. better than a novel. This is a make them sound more exciting. book that, structurally as well as It is hard to admit that her sister [https://www.theguardian.com/ thematically, invites readers to was not a changeling who sucked books/2006/sep/17/ fiction.margaretatwood] experience the orderly and up her mother's energy rather

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The Tent - By Margaret Atwood

You’re in a tent. It’s vast and cold is difficult to do because you your candle. They can see your outside; very vast, very cold. It’s a can’t see through the paper outline, and naturally they’re howling wilderness. There are walls, and so you can’t be exact curious because you might be rocks in it, and sand, and deep about the truth, and you don’t prey. You might be something boggy pits you can sink into want to go out there, out into they can kill, and then howl over without a trace. There are ruins the howling wilderness, to see in celebration, and then eat one as well, many ruins. In and around exactly for yourself. way or another. You’re too the ruins there are broken musical conspicuous. You’ve made instruments, old bathtubs, bones Some of the writing has to be yourself conspicuous. You’ve of extinct land mammals, shoes about your loved ones, and the given yourself away. They’re minus their feet, auto parts. There need you feel to protect them. coming closer, gathering are thorny shrubs, gnarled trees, And this is difficult as well together. They’re taking time off high winds, but you have a small because not all of them can hear from their howling to peer, to candle in your tent. You can keep the howling in the same way you sniff around. Why do you think warm. Many things are howling do. Some of them think it this writing of yours, this out there, in the howling sounds like a picnic out there in graphomania in a flimsy cave, this wilderness. Many people are the wilderness, like a big band, scribbling back and forth and up howling, some howling grief like a hot beach party. They and down over the walls of what because those they love have died resent being cooped up in such a is beginning to seem like a prison, or been killed. Others howl in cramped space with you and is capable of protecting anyone at triumph because they have caused your small candle and your all, yourself included? It’s an the loved ones of their enemies to fearfulness and your annoying illusion—the belief that your die or be killed. Some howl to obsession with calligraphy, an doodling is a kind of armor, a summon help, some howl for obsession that makes no sense kind of charm—because no one revenge, others howl for blood. to them. And they keep trying knows better than you do how The noise is deafening. It’s also to scramble out under the walls fragile your tent really is. Already frightening. Some of the howling is of the tent. This doesn’t stop there’s a clomping of leather- coming close to you, in your tent, you from your writing. You covered feet, there’s a scratching, where you crouch in silence write as if your life depended on there’s a scrabbling, there’s a hoping you won’t be seen. You’re it. Your life and theirs. You sound of rasping breath. Wind frightened for yourself, but inscribe in shorthand their comes in. Your candle tips over especially for those you love. You natures, their features, their and flares up and a loose tent flap want to protect them. You want habits, their histories. You catches fire, and through the to gather them inside your tent change the names of course widening black-edged gap, you for protection. because you don’t want to can see the eyes of the howlers, create evidence. You don’t want red and shining, and the light The trouble is your tent is made to attract the wrong sort of from your burning paper shelter. of paper. Paper won’t keep attention to these loved ones of But you keep writing anyway, anything out. You know you must yours, some of whom, you’re because what else can you do? write on the walls, on the paper now discovering, are not people walls on the inside of your tent. at all, but cities and landscapes, [https://pen.org/the-power-of-the-pen- towns and lakes, and clothing margaret-atwood/] You must write upside down and you used to wear, and backwards. You must cover every available space on the paper with neighborhood cafés and long- writing. Some of the writing has lost dogs. to describe the howling that’s going on outside, night and day You don’t want to attract the among the sand dunes and the ice howlers, but they’re attracted chunks and the ruins and bones anyway, as if by a scent. The and so forth. It has to tell the walls of the paper tent are so truth about the howling. But this thin, but they can see the light of

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