Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

by Margaret Atwood

Overview

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments: "A clear-eyed glance into the shadows where writers work and live.” —The Washington Post Book World

In this wise and irresistibly quotable book, one of the most intelligent writers now working in English addresses the riddle of her art: why people pursue it, how they view their calling, and what bargains they make with their audiences, both real and imagined. To these fascinating issues Margaret Atwood brings a candid appraisal of her own experience as well as a breadth of reading that encompasses everything from Dante to Elmore Leonard. An ambitious artistic inquiry conducted with unpretentious charm, Negotiating with the Dead is an invaluable insider’s view of the writer’s universe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400032600
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/09/2003
Series:	Empson Lectures
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	496,186
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.96(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade.
 
Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Hometown:

Toronto, Ontario

Date of Birth:

November 18, 1939

Place of Birth:

Ottawa, Ontario

Education:

B.A., University of Toronto, 1961; M.A. Radcliffe, 1962; Ph.D., Harvard University, 1967

Website:

http://www.owtoad.com

Read an Excerpt

Acclaimed author Margaret Atwood’s definitive look at the role of the writer.
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 the development of her writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors that writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain -- or excuse -- their activities, looking at what roles they have chosen to play.
Margaret Atwood’s wide and eclectic reference to other writers, living and dead, is balanced by personal anecdotes from her own experiences as a writer. 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.

Author Biography: Throughout her thirty-five years of writing, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Her novel, The Blind Assassin, won the 2000 Booker Prize for Fiction. Her work has been published in more than thirty-five languages.

Table of Contents

	Introduction: Into the labyrinth	xiii
	Prologue	xxv
1	Orientation: Who do you think you are? What is "a writer," and how did I become one?	1
2	Duplicity: The jekyll hand, the hyde hand, and the slippery double: Why there are always two	29
3	Dedication: The Great God Pen: Apollo vs. Mammon: at whose altar should the writer worship?	59
4	Temptation: Prospero, the Wizard of Oz, Mephisto & Co.: Who waves the wand, pulls the strings, or signs the Devil's book?	91
5	Communion: Nobody to Nobody: The eternal triangle: the writer, the reader, and the book as go-between	123
6	Descent: Negotiating with the dead: Who makes the trip to the Underworld, and why?	153
	Notes	181
	Bibliography	198
	Acknowledgments	208
	Index	212

Editorial Reviews

A delight. . . . Frank and spirited. . . . A clear-eyed glance into the shadows where writers work and live.” —The Washington Post Book World

“An engaging book—erudite yet informal, playfully witty yet down to earth.” —Los Angeles Times

“Smart, deeply humane, courageous. . . . I have never come across a single book that more elegantly goes to the heart of the craft and its demands. . . . Hooray for Atwood!” —Michael Pakenham, The Baltimore Sun

“This amazing woman’s voice, this fine writer’s constant example, is extraordinary.” —The Boston Globe

“Smart, deeply humane, courageous. . . . I have never come across a single book that more elegantly goes to the heart of the craft and its demands. . . . Hooray for Atwood!” –Michael Pakenham, The Baltimore Sun

From the Publisher

In the spring of 2000, novelist and poet Margaret Atwood delivered the Empson Lectures at Cambridge University. Now, Cambridge University Press has gathered Atwood’s six memorable lectures into a delectable book. In Negotiating with the Dead, the Canadian-born author moves brightly between personal stories, literary judgments, and a sage inquiry into the role of the writer. Long a master and advocate of mischief, Atwood explains how the crafty disruption of prose transforms us all. Her insights make every reader a co-conspirator.

bn.com

This book grew out of the series of Empsom lectures that prize-winning novelist Atwood gave at the University of Cambridge in 2000. In it, she addresses a number of fundamental questions: not how to write but the basic position of the writer, why a writer writes, "and for whom? And what is this writing anyway?" Wearing her learning lightly, Atwood allows her wit to shine on almost every page. She probes her life and work along with those of many other writers and brings in myths, fairy tales, movies whatever feeds her themes. Following an initial autobiographical chapter, Atwood addresses major issues: the duplicity evidently inherent in writing; the problems of art vs. money; the problems of art vs. social relevance; the nature of the triangular relationship of writer, reader, and book; and, in the final title chapter, the provocative idea that "all writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and a fascination with mortality by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld, and to bring something or someone back from the dead." Atwood is not looking to provide answers or solutions but to explore the parameters of some interesting questions. The result is engaging food for thought for all who care about writers and writing. Recommended for academic and large public libraries. Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., CO Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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