Margaret Atwood

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 40:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:23

My Costaway this week is a writer. Shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize, she finally won it three years ago with The Blind Assassin. She's produced eleven novels altogether, as well as poetry, short stories, and criticism. Above all, she's a storyteller, writing and rewriting her narrative until the final tale emerges, often unsettling, infused with pain, but always peopled by interesting characters. Her childhood was unusual. Her father, an entomologist, took his family for long periods into the forests of northern Canada, where left to her own devices, she developed her observational skills. Her first novel was published in 1969. Since then, she's sold millions, translated into at least twenty different languages. Her latest, Oryx and Crake, is published next month, and an opera of another, The Handmaid's Tale, opened this month at the ENO. It's an accident that I'm a successful writer, she says. I'm a serious writer, and I never expected to become a popular one. She is Margaret Atwood.

Presenter1:24

You didn't, I think, Margaret, expect to become a writer at all, did you? You wanted to do all sorts of other things.

Margaret Atwood1:29

Yeah.

Margaret Atwood1:30

I didn't really consider writing

Margaret Atwood1:33

Much until I was sixteen, and I've always admired my.

Margaret Atwood1:38

high school English teacher from the time when I was fifteen because when they came to do a documentary on me and said to her, What was she like in your class?

Margaret Atwood1:46

Most teachers would have said, Oh, she was fantastic. I could see right away she had all this talent. But this woman said, She showed no particular promise in my class.

Presenter1:57

I thought there was another teacher who said, I don't understand a word of it, so it must be good.

Margaret Atwood2:01

That was next year.

Presenter2:04

But what happened? Did you suddenly wake up?

Margaret Atwood2:06

Yeah.

Presenter2:06

And and think, yes, yes, writing is what I'm assuming.

Margaret Atwood2:09

Well, my piece of mythology about that is that I was crossing the football field. There was no game going on.

Margaret Atwood2:16

wearing a dress that I had made myself in the home economics class, which I can remember vividly. It was a nice uh princess line with a gold button.

Margaret Atwood2:25

And uh I started writing a poem.

Margaret Atwood2:30

in my head, and then I wrote it down, and that was what I wanted to do. Apparently I announced this to my girlfriends in the school cafeteria as we were all eating our paper bag lunches that we had brought from home.

Margaret Atwood2:44

This announcement that I was going to be a writer was greeted with stunned silence. One of my friends has told me since that she thought it was very gutsy.

Margaret Atwood2:54

Because you didn't just come out with something like that.

Margaret Atwood2:57

I didn't think much of it.

Margaret Atwood3:00

It was, um, just a thing that I wanted to do.

Presenter3:02

Yeah.

Presenter3:03

And Did you feel that you wanted to do it because you had a lot to say or you just liked the process of writing? What you know, what was it?

Margaret Atwood3:12

Oh, at that age, you know, sixteen, I think you have a very romantic view.

Margaret Atwood3:19

So, no, I wanted to be a writer and work with words, but I also had a version of the writer, probably not right at that age, but shortly after, in which I would go to Paris, starve, live in a garret, drink absinthe and smoke cigarettes and die early. Dedicated to my art. Okay. Tell me about your first record for this desert island. Now, this is the platter singing The Great Pretender, which takes us right back into the high school gymnasium where we all used to lurch around during

Margaret Atwood3:55

Dances in the nineteen fifties. And it's also a perfect song for writers because it's about.

Margaret Atwood4:02

Illusionism and writers, of course, dedicate their lives to making people believe things that aren't factually true.

Speaker 44:17

Oh, Julius, I'm the great

Speaker 44:20

Pretend them.

Speaker 44:24

Pretending that I'm doing well.

Speaker 44:29

My need is such I pretend too much I'm lonely, but no one can tell

Presenter4:41

Platters and the Great Pretender and we reckon that was round about sort of fifty-five and there you are dancing in the gym at your high school. Give me a picture of yourself. What what are you wearing as you sort of gyrate?

Margaret Atwood4:51

Well, first of all, I would be about fifteen at that time, and you had a choice of three different kinds of dances. The saw cop.

Margaret Atwood5:00

at which he wore socks, and that was a more informal kind of dance.

Margaret Atwood5:05

And the semi-formal, at which you would wear a nice dress but not a really formal dress. And then the annual all-out formal, at which if you were quite brave, you would wear a strapless, a lot of crinolines, um high-heeled shoes and you got a corsage from your boyfriend.

Presenter5:24

BAAP

Presenter5:25

So what we're hearing in all of this is that

Presenter5:28

Huge memory for detail, which you have, no doubt about it, and it comes through in all of your books. And that gymnasium, or that school as a whole, and the gymnasium in particular, features in quite a few of your books, doesn't it? Not least the opening scene of The Handmaid's Tale.

Margaret Atwood5:41

Opening scene of The Handmaid's Tale, the gymnasium has now become a retention center in a future dystopia.

Margaret Atwood5:49

And it's where people are put before they're allocated to other facilities, as it were.

Presenter5:56

But they're trained for those terrible sexual favours they're going to have to carry out. Well, hardly a favour.

Margaret Atwood6:02

Not exactly a favor. I mean, it's just

Presenter6:04

An exercise.

Margaret Atwood6:05

Yes, an exercise. If the point of the game is to have children, then that's what you do. It's an exercise.

Presenter6:11

Internet

Presenter6:12

Mm.

Presenter6:13

But that school as well is where Elaine Risley in the Cat's Eye goes back to, isn't it, when she's become a famous artist.

Margaret Atwood6:19

Become a famous artist.

Margaret Atwood6:23

It was a school that was fifties architecture. It was built right after the war. So we were supposed to be very, very proud of its shininess and newness. We had a principal who was a character in himself because he modeled the entire school.

Margaret Atwood6:39

on the MacLeod clan of Scotland, he being a MacLeod. This was a publicly funded high school, but he made it in his own image. And we used to have visits from Dame Flora MacLeod and her two bagpiping grandsons. Our motto was the Clan MacLeod motto. He wore the Clan MacLeod kilt. And when I finally went to the Isle of Skye and visited,

Margaret Atwood7:03

I believe it's the Castle of Dunedin and said, Aha, there's the fairy flag of Dunedin. They said, How did you know about that?

Margaret Atwood7:10

Yeah.

Presenter7:10

But also you knew it because you'd filed it away. Your memory is prodigious, isn't it?

Margaret Atwood7:15

I have to go back and check things. You know, it's like having an attic, an attic full of junk, I have to say. You think that something's up there and you think you know where it is and you think you know what it is, but you still have to go and check it out.

Presenter7:28

Because things get distorted in among the junk. But is there real junk? I mean, do you remember the jingles from radio ads?

Presenter7:39

Like what Pepsodent toothpaste were.

Margaret Atwood7:41

Oh, use Ajax, the foaming cleanser, Wash the dirt right down the drain Bubba Bubba Bubble Bum

Margaret Atwood7:48

Things like that. I mean, you kind of you think, here I'm going to be, I'm going to be 90 years old, and this is all I will be able to remember.

Margaret Atwood7:56

Record number Yeah.

Presenter7:57

Yeah.

Margaret Atwood7:58

Record number two. This melody is the first piece of music that I ever heard, and I heard it because my father used to whistle it while I was swinging on the swing that he had built in the Quebec North Woods.

Presenter9:10

Part of the Shepherd's Hymn from Beethoven's Sixth Symphony played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Klaus Tenstedt. And memories for you, Margaret Atwood, of your father pushing you on this swing and whistling away. This was in the Out Back, deep, deep in the Canadian voice.

Margaret Atwood9:23

This would be up in the Canadian forest what we call the Canadian Shield. And you always hear loons up there, wolves howling if you're lucky. There's bears. It's just as you might imagine. What with the skunks, the porcupines, and the animals all around.

Presenter9:42

Then the animal

Margaret Atwood9:44

How far away was your nearest neighbour?

Presenter9:45

Uh

Margaret Atwood9:45

We had a village that we could see, but not

Margaret Atwood9:50

drive to. We went by boat. Gas was rationed, it was the war, so the the boat was a little very small engine motor boat. And my father's lab, which was made out of logs, which he had built himself, he would come

Margaret Atwood10:06

home in the little motor boat, maybe about five o'clock, and we would go and watch him come in this little boat.

Presenter10:14

How many months a year did you spend, Hannah?

Margaret Atwood10:16

Oh, at the beginning, when he was working for what used to be called the Department of Lands and Forests, he was a forest entomologist. We would go before the ice was out, and then we would be there all the time the insects were active.

Margaret Atwood10:29

And when it started to snow again, which would be in October or November, we would go back at this point to Ottawa where he would write up his research.

Presenter10:40

So you have the best part of eight months of the year.

Margaret Atwood10:42

Yeah, at the beginning, then that got smaller.

Presenter10:45

What did you do all day? How did you?

Presenter10:47

And how

Margaret Atwood10:48

Well I had an older brother. He used to take charge of me and teach me everything he knew. Of course he didn't have other boys at his disposal, so I was it.

Margaret Atwood10:58

Had to make the best of me.

Presenter11:00

You said you lived e effectively in an all-male household. What does that say about your muffin?

Margaret Atwood11:04

Yes, well my father was a boy, my brother was a boy, and my mother was a boy too. Her sisters before she got married used to pick out her clothes for her because they claimed she had such dreadful taste and after she was married my father did it.

Presenter11:18

Uh

Margaret Atwood11:18

But what

Presenter11:19

Where did that leave you as a little girl? I mean, did you long for pretty frocks or didn't you care about all of that?

Margaret Atwood11:23

I didn't know about them.

Margaret Atwood11:26

When I found out.

Margaret Atwood11:28

Then I longed for them, but I didn't get them because my mother being a tomboy thought that all I I really needed was two dresses, one to be in the wash and the other one that I would wear. And she bought two identical ones. I mean, this was

Margaret Atwood11:44

It's why I then fixated on women's magazines. So this was my interest.

Presenter11:49

But what it must have meant was when you got back into civilization, as it were, and went to school, and you didn't go to school full time until you were twelve, did you? You must have been a very bizarre creature.

Margaret Atwood12:01

Well, that wasn't how I looked at it. I thought everybody else was.

Margaret Atwood12:07

No, I think um when I was little, of course, the things that frightened me were not uh bears and skunks. They were flush toilets and vacuum cleaners. Mm-hmm.

Presenter12:17

But it's interesting that you were two people. And again, this is one of those academic points, but as someone who's studied, I think in seventy-eight percent of British universities, you'll be used to these kinds of observations, which is that there's a lot of duality in your books. You are two people or were two people.

Margaret Atwood12:33

Well at

Presenter12:34

At least. At least.

Margaret Atwood12:35

At least two, but

Presenter12:36

More so than most

Margaret Atwood12:37

I think so. It was also a, I have to say, a Canadian way of being at that time, because my father, who was a very, very good woodsman.

Presenter12:39

I think so.

Margaret Atwood12:46

would then come back to the city and away would go the growth of beard and the sort of smoke and cinders and things that he had accumulated and next day he would be putting on his dinner jacket and going off to some

Margaret Atwood12:59

Function. You didn't feel stuck in one identity. You simply felt that you had different capabilities.

Margaret Atwood13:07

Record number three. Record number three.

Margaret Atwood13:11

Toronto didn't have an opera company.

Margaret Atwood13:14

When I was growing up in the fifties. But my father always used to listen to.

Margaret Atwood13:20

Oh, the Metropolitan Opera on the Air.

Margaret Atwood13:23

And we had one of those opera and concert guides in which all the plots were written down. So I used to read that with great interest. And one of the first things I ever wrote and performed in and directed was a Home Economics Opera.

Margaret Atwood13:37

It was about three fabrics called Orlon, Nylon, and Dacron.

Margaret Atwood13:42

So there were songs about the compositions of these fabrics and whether they shrank from washing and things like this.

Presenter13:50

Anyway.

Margaret Atwood13:50

This is Mozart.

Speaker 413:59

Medioris noner lon tano paritam bene mirako.

Speaker 414:38

Yeah.

Presenter14:48

Laci darem Lamano, from Mozart's Don Giovanni, with Beau Scohus as the Don, and Nucia Focile as Zelina, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in chorus conducted by Sir Charles Macaris. Um and you say, Margaret, if if you could have sung, you would never have written, is that right?

Margaret Atwood15:03

I don't think I would have bothered.

Presenter15:04

What sort of singer would you have been?

Margaret Atwood15:06

That kind.

Margaret Atwood15:07

If I could have been an opera singer or a country and Western singer, either one. But I suppose you did.

Presenter15:13

Uh

Margaret Atwood15:13

And then Oops.

Presenter15:13

It's the best thing in that you wrote poetry and you performed it out loud, did you not?

Margaret Atwood15:17

I did begin doing that in the coffee bar scene, which sprang up in Toronto in about nineteen sixty. Everything had changed by then. We were no longer doing crinolines and big frilly skirts. We were now doing black sweaters and leotards and

Margaret Atwood15:35

very heavy black lines around our eyes and we were listening to John Vaez and we were

Margaret Atwood15:41

doing poetry in coffee bars.

Presenter15:43

And you had candles in candy bottles in a very cool.

Margaret Atwood15:44

Candles in candy bottles. We had one of these outfits and the it had the checkered tablecloths and all the walls were painted black and it had the first espresso machine which was worshipped like a god.

Margaret Atwood15:59

And unfortunately the doors of the toilets opened right onto the main room where you were performing. So I had baptism by fire. I would be reciting my plangent verse and someone would flush the toilet, open the door.

Margaret Atwood16:13

And you just had to you just had to breathe through it.

Presenter16:18

What a horrible thought.

Presenter16:22

But eventually, if we spool on to your mid twenties, you then hit an astonishingly creative time, don't you, when you're churning out poetry like Matt, but you're also writing your first novel, or the first one that was going to be published, and beginning others. I mean, where did all that suddenly come from?

Margaret Atwood16:38

Well, I had written one that luckily never did get published while I was working in a market research company in Toronto and and getting engaged and then getting disengaged. And then I went to England.

Margaret Atwood16:49

and I ended up living in a flat in Kensington with a friend from Toronto who was studying modern dance. And that was when I started writing things that were shortly to become published and that I was finally satisfied with.

Presenter17:05

Hmm but where was the inspiration coming from? Can you possibly describe it?

Margaret Atwood17:08

I I don't know. I d I if you've been working for by that time, you know, eight years.

Margaret Atwood17:14

As I had been.

Margaret Atwood17:16

Think of that as piano practice. And then finally one day you can play.

Presenter17:21

And you've always played both, i.e. you've done the poetry and you've done the novel. Does one feed the other or is one dominant or?

Margaret Atwood17:29

I believe so. I believe it's different parts of the brain.

Margaret Atwood17:32

And then if you wired up a poet at the moment of composition and you wired up a novelist who is writing a novel.

Margaret Atwood17:39

different parts would light up and I think that the

Margaret Atwood17:42

Poetry part is closer to mathematics and music.

Margaret Atwood17:46

And that the novel part is closer to the part of your brain.

Margaret Atwood17:50

that does daily conversation and what we fondly think of as thought.

Presenter17:59

Record number four.

Margaret Atwood17:59

Oh, the next record is by an English folk singer called Cynthia Goodings. Folk singing was very important in the early sixties, and it was also very interesting to me because all of the plots of folk song seemed to be lurid.

Margaret Atwood18:14

And to involve drama, tragedy, and murder, and this song is called Mary Hamilton and it's from Scotland.

Speaker 418:21

As they came into Glasgow town, The city for to see

Speaker 418:29

The bailiff's wife and the provost's wife

Speaker 418:33

Siddaq and alas for thee

Speaker 418:40

You need not weep for me, she says, You need not weep for me.

Speaker 418:47

For had I not slain my own sweet babe,

Presenter18:48

Slain one.

Presenter18:51

Mary Hamilton, sung by Cynthia Goodings. A lot of darkness in there, as you said. Well we're coming to your darkness. But just tell me first of all about the actual practice of writing. Eleven novels you've written across what, forty five years of writing. That implies

Presenter19:07

Well, it's not many. It implies a lot of honing and polishing, is that right?

Margaret Atwood19:11

A lot of honing and polishing. People are getting to the point where they say, Oh, but you're so prolific, and I say, Well, stretch it out.

Presenter19:19

Yeah.

Presenter19:19

Well, you write other stuff as well, but I I those I get the impression those novels go through and through and through, don't they?

Margaret Atwood19:26

Well, I write very quickly when I begin and I usually well, I always begin with handwriting because I never learned to touch type.

Margaret Atwood19:35

I didn't go into typing because in typing were all the girls with very thin eyebrows and they wore their boyfriends black leather jackets and

Margaret Atwood19:43

Ankle bracelets. I was terrified of them. They smoked in the washroom.

Margaret Atwood19:48

And remember, I was a midget when I went into high school. I was only twelve.

Margaret Atwood19:52

How did I get into this? I have to start in handwriting.

Presenter19:56

But it's more than that, isn't it? Because when you go through, when you're honing

Presenter19:59

Presumably, you lose whole characters. One feels that the book comes through.

Margaret Atwood20:04

I lose characters, I lose plot sections, I change the names of characters.

Margaret Atwood20:10

And sometimes I don't finish. I have a couple of novels that I got quite far into that just weren't didn't work out, so I had to abandon them.

Presenter20:19

And why don't they work out?

Margaret Atwood20:21

First one didn't work out because there were too many people in it.

Margaret Atwood20:25

And the second one didn't work out because there were too many timelines in it.

Presenter20:29

So you press the delete button on them.

Margaret Atwood20:31

Well, I did, yes.

Presenter20:32

But what about the time lines? You say you had you've dumped one because it had too many time lines. Your view of time, which is rather like um I think you've said rather like liquid shapes, liquid bricks, I think of them as, and you can look down through this liquid into deep, deep, into the murky

Speaker 420:51

Uh

Presenter20:51

past, and things can rise to the surface through it.

Margaret Atwood20:54

They can do. But they're always changing because you yourself

Margaret Atwood20:59

You you the person who has lived in the time.

Margaret Atwood21:02

You have been changed by the time.

Margaret Atwood21:05

So that when you're looking at an event that happened when you were, say, 10, when you're looking at that event and you're 18, you will remember it one way.

Margaret Atwood21:15

when you're looking at it and you're forty eight, you will remember it quite a different way. So it's very fluid. It's always changing. It's not it's not set the way you often think of it as being set in history books.

Presenter21:29

Record number five. Tell me about that.

Margaret Atwood21:31

Record number five. Ah, this is...

Margaret Atwood21:35

A Gouldberg variation played by Glenn Gould. This piece was a piece that my roommate in Kensington, who was studying modern dance, used to practice to. She was doing a

Margaret Atwood21:47

a modern dance to it, and she finally went and performed it in Wells Cathedral.

Margaret Atwood21:52

an event at which I was present.

Presenter22:55

The Aria from Bach's Goldberg Variations, played by Glen Gould. The Handmaid's Tale, which has now become an opera, is set about now, but in in Massachusetts which resembles a kind of Tehran, the President has been assassinated, a religious dictatorship taken over, fertile women have become breeding machines, doled out, as you said, to the kind of male elite like a company car. But you can tell me, can you not, that there is no rule.

Presenter23:24

obtaining in that awful place that has not existed somewhere in the world.

Margaret Atwood23:29

That's correct. Every single detail, including everybody pulling on the rope when they were hanging somebody, so that no one person got the stigma of being the executioner. All of those things have happened. The bag on the head? That's from Canada, nineteenth century, the white bag on the head. You would think it would be black.

Margaret Atwood23:46

But it was in fact the women having to have a husband's permission for abortion.

Presenter23:52

Yeah.

Margaret Atwood23:52

Oh, they weren't they've el eliminated abortion.

Margaret Atwood23:56

That doesn't happen anymore.

Presenter23:58

but men controlling entirely.

Margaret Atwood23:58

But man

Margaret Atwood24:00

All you have to do is go back about a hundred years.

Presenter24:00

All you have to do

Margaret Atwood24:04

And you will find that all of those rules were there then.

Presenter24:08

But this is all about more and worse.

Margaret Atwood24:09

Yeah.

Presenter24:09

This is rape being punishable by death at the hands of the mob.

Margaret Atwood24:10

The seat

Margaret Atwood24:14

That's existing, too.

Margaret Atwood24:16

I mean, all of these things have happened, including the color coding of the clothing.

Margaret Atwood24:22

All you have to do is go to the sumptuary laws in in Italy and who could wear what, you know, who could wear fur, who could wear red. In Rome only the aristocrats wore the Roman purple. Your handmaid wears red. She wears red. The ghastly aunts who control the surroundings.

Presenter24:37

They were blue.

Margaret Atwood24:38

Oh no, they were green. The aunts are the head mistresses from hell.

Presenter24:38

Oh no.

Margaret Atwood24:42

Oh, and they were.

Margaret Atwood24:45

The wives wear blue to denote their purity.

Presenter24:50

And the birth rate is down because of AIDS, because of ecological disaster. We know that all these things have happened, are happening. So these news stories kept cropping up, did they?

Presenter25:01

Clipped them out, kept the cuttings and thought I've got to write this book.

Margaret Atwood25:03

Some of the things happened after I had published the book. For instance, the well known Baby M case, which was the first surrogate mother case. But surrogate motherhood goes back to the Bible.

Presenter25:16

happened after you wrote this book because you wrote it I think in eighty Yeah.

Margaret Atwood25:20

6805

Presenter25:20

Yeah.

Margaret Atwood25:20

I'm a 84 of Symbolic ears.

Presenter25:22

The Vala gears.

Margaret Atwood25:25

Yes, it did. Islamists would say they deeply misinterpreted the real

Margaret Atwood25:30

Message of the Koran. But they had people shut up. You had to cover up your windows so that nobody might catch a glimpse of you from outside. They couldn't have jobs. They couldn't be on the street by themselves without a male relative.

Margaret Atwood25:44

So widows were essentially just out of luck. They couldn't go out and buy food. They couldn't it was really, really dreadful.

Presenter25:53

I know you're not supposed to ask writers w what their message is on the basis that if we haven't understood it from what you've written, then you know we don't have any right to know. But I have to say, you know, a lot of people will be asking after seeing this opera.

Margaret Atwood26:05

What

Presenter26:06

What are you

Margaret Atwood26:06

Peace.

Presenter26:06

Two.

Margaret Atwood26:06

Well, let's go back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the social contract.

Margaret Atwood26:11

Not very good for women again, but what he did say was don't ever combine religion and the State.

Margaret Atwood26:17

Because if you do, you will have the most amazing dictatorship.

Presenter26:21

So you said

Margaret Atwood26:21

Uh

Presenter26:21

Saying watch out, be vigilant.

Margaret Atwood26:23

Be vigilant. He said that too. He said democracy is the hardest form of government to sustain.

Presenter26:24

He said that

Margaret Atwood26:30

Record number six.

Margaret Atwood26:32

Record number six is um Loti Lenya, the very famous and wonderful Lottie Lenya, singing Alabama song from this strange

Margaret Atwood26:43

A piece by Berthold Brecht which I would love to see performed, but but never have seen it.

Speaker 426:51

By the way.

Speaker 426:55

We know

Speaker 426:57

Let's play Good.

Speaker 427:04

Uh

Speaker 427:07

And Catal Wiki Automobile.

Speaker 427:26

Oh no, that's not.

Speaker 427:31

I'm glad I've always seen you.

Presenter27:37

Lotta Lenya singing Alabama song from Bertolt Brecht's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany, words by Courtweil, of course, and that was recorded in nineteen twenty-nine. Um Margaret Atwood, if you were prescient uh in the Handmaid's Tale about the Taliban, we have to hope you're not prescient in your your latest novel, um Oryx and Craig.

Presenter27:57

Um which is about a kind of scientists' paradise project that goes horribly wrong. Are you going to tell me there's a a factual basis for this scenario as well?

Margaret Atwood28:06

Everything in the book is backed up by our large research file which is kept in my cellar and it is called the brown box. What's in the box? It's all in the brown box. We already have the luminous green rabbit and we already have the

Presenter28:15

It's all in the brown luminous.

Margaret Atwood28:25

A spoat guider which is a

Margaret Atwood28:27

Goat, which has spider silk incorporated into its milk, very useful for making bulletproof vests. And we have a number of the other things well on the way.

Presenter28:39

Genetic engineering is a very good thing.

Margaret Atwood28:40

A lot of engineering of various kinds, but let me say right here that science is not the enemy, science is a tool. What is done, however, with science is driven by human fear and human desire.

Margaret Atwood28:54

So we wouldn't invent things if we didn't have a desire for them or a fear.

Margaret Atwood29:00

of the things that they are invented to combat.

Presenter29:03

Mm.

Margaret Atwood29:04

Yeah.

Presenter29:04

People used to say that you all sorts of phrases like the High Priestess of Pain and so on. Certainly there was a lot of of pain and agony and grief in your books and missing children and friends who turned out to be awful enemies and so on. But now there's darkness. There's an awful lot of darkness. And one has to say, where does that come?

Presenter29:23

From someone who would seem to be actually pretty balanced and reasonable and had quite a happy life, dare I say.

Margaret Atwood29:30

Dare I say? Yes, I'm a balanced, reasonable person who has had a happy life.

Margaret Atwood29:35

And there's quite a few jokes in my books. Sure. Sure, she says dubiously.

Presenter29:39

Sure, she says you

Presenter29:41

Well, yes, except that you are left with this As at the End of the Handmaid's Tale. It's awful. It's just chilling. And you don't know. They are very open ended, your books. You don't know.

Margaret Atwood29:53

I write them to the point at which I don't know.

Margaret Atwood29:56

And people then say to me, Well, what happens next? And I say, If I had known that, I would have written it.

Margaret Atwood30:04

So with Oryx and Craik, I I write it to the moment at which I do not know the decision that I myself would make.

Margaret Atwood30:13

And that comes simply out of, you know, I suppose being born in nineteen thirty nine and

Margaret Atwood30:18

coming to a reading age around the time of Churchill's memoirs and in 1984 and Darkness at Noon. You know, that was the world that we

Margaret Atwood30:28

grew up in then and it hasn't gotten any brighter.

Margaret Atwood30:32

And here is a song that to me sums up that feeling of something coming towards us, something dark coming towards us.

Margaret Atwood30:42

And it's by Van Morrison and it's one of my favorites of his and it's called Here Comes the Night.

Speaker 130:48

Why can't I accept the fact she's chosen him and simply let them be?

Speaker 130:55

Whoa, well here it come!

Speaker 430:57

Hell yeah, ain't it?

Speaker 131:01

Get boss for now.

Speaker 131:06

It's fine.

Presenter31:17

Them featuring Van Morrison with Here Comes the Night. Do you imagine, uh, Margaret, that a desert island will be the the the coming of your night, the dark?

Margaret Atwood31:26

I'm probably better equipped than some to live on one because I'm used to being alone. I grew up in a place where there there was quite a lot of space and emptiness. And um I'm good with the pocket knife.

Presenter31:41

There is that that other you. I mean, I was mentioning earlier on that you you know, there's a lot of duality in your books. And I mean, you too are two people, are you not? You're Margaret Atwood and your Peggy Atwood.

Margaret Atwood31:52

Yes, well, that was the fault of my romantic father, who insisted on me being named after my mother.

Margaret Atwood31:59

And then of course they had to call me something else so that we could be told apart.

Margaret Atwood32:03

So I was always Peggy when I was growing up, but here was this other name.

Margaret Atwood32:08

Ready and waiting for me, which turned out to be my real name.

Margaret Atwood32:12

And I could use it to do the writing on the map.

Presenter32:14

use it being the operative phrase really, because it seems to me when you

Presenter32:19

Come out here as you are now, you are Margaret Atwood, doing your professional bit. But when you go back home you're Peggy Attwood. Is she a more frivolous person?

Margaret Atwood32:27

Um, she does a lot more gardening.

Margaret Atwood32:31

Margaret doesn't get to go into the garden much. I think it was Peggy who did the uh summer camping.

Margaret Atwood32:38

oh, instructing and was a good canoeist.

Presenter32:42

So it's Peggy who's going to be better on this desert area.

Margaret Atwood32:44

A peggy would be much better. Yeah, no not much is for Margaret on the island, you know, no computers.

Presenter32:49

Right. But the trouble is we're sending Margaret to the island.

Margaret Atwood32:52

Wait.

Presenter32:53

Yeah.

Margaret Atwood32:53

Sending Margaret.

Presenter32:53

Uh

Margaret Atwood32:53

Yeah.

Presenter32:53

No.

Presenter32:57

Last record, tell me what about it.

Margaret Atwood32:59

Oh yes, these are Kate and Anna McGarrigal, who two are wonderful Canadian singers, and the song that we're going to play is actually not about Canada at all, it's about the United States, just like The Handmaid's Tale.

Margaret Atwood33:13

So here they are singing Talk to Me of Mendocino.

Speaker 433:18

Never had the blues from whence I came, But in lord stayed at card

Speaker 433:30

Talk to me of Mendocino Closing my eyes, I hear the sea.

Speaker 133:37

I am

Speaker 433:42

Must I wait?

Speaker 433:46

Mm-hmm.

Presenter33:46

Kate and Anna McGarrigal singing Talk to Me of Mendocino. Now if you could only take one of those eight records, Margaret, which one would you take?

Margaret Atwood33:54

I think I would take the Beethoven if I could have the whole symphony.

Presenter33:58

It's the pastoral.

Presenter34:00

Father pushing you on a swing.

Margaret Atwood34:01

That's right.

Presenter34:02

What about your book?

Margaret Atwood34:04

Uh I would take a book I haven't read all the way through yet, which is A Thousand and One Nights. And your luxury.

Margaret Atwood34:12

My luxury would be a big, huge vat.

Margaret Atwood34:16

Of culpeppers, rose geranium bath salts.

Margaret Atwood34:21

And I'm presupposing some fresh water so I could have it.

Margaret Atwood34:25

Um I could have some of it every, say, week, whenever I got really foul.

Presenter34:32

Margaret Atwood, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island iscs.

Margaret Atwood34:36

And thank you. A pleasure.

Speaker 434:44

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.