essays

Margaret Atwood Burns the Pages

Posted on by Tom Bentley

I will be the one person to praise Margaret Atwood’s work. Well, make that the millionth and one person—she’s that good. I have read five of her novels, but, rudely, she has published 40 or more, so it’s likely I’ll never catch up. And then there are the poetry books. Books of essays. Reams of awards. 

She’s even a prolific tweeter. Damn.

So, in talking about her latest collection of essays, Burning Questions, the words of which span the years 2004–2021, I likely won’t be shocking Atwood fans to say to say she is sharp, ironic, funny, lamenting, biting and delightful. But as the subtitle, “Essays and Occasional Pieces” implies, many of the works aren’t full-blown essays: many were from presentations or lectures, many are ecological observations with a political bent, many are breezy and self-effacing musings on her past publications.

Some of the breezy ones are a mere page and a half, but if you’ve swallowed much Atwood, her breezy can contain some whipping winds. Though it’s an easy target, in later pieces she’s unsparing of the Trump administration’s mocking of democracy, and incisive on the way our global institutions are bleeding the planet dry. 

To (and From) the Woods They Shall Go

I was fascinated to learn that her father was a forest entomologist, and that the family spent many months yearly in the woods, retreating to cities (notably Toronto) for the snowy winters. Thus her sense of the natural world (and the collision with the unnatural world) was seeded. But for writing that can sometimes have a doomsayer tone, she is yet credible in presenting that the world can still be saved, but it needs a stern hand, which is yet wavering.

There are also many warm and informative testimonials to other writers, such as Alice Munro, Ursula LeGuin and Barry Lopez. Some pieces seem slight, but it’s a collection, after all. Try to read any few of these without a smile and a nod to her wryness and her good sense. 

Jealous of Margaret Atwood’s continent-wide talents? Not me. (You can’t see my face, can you?)

[Note: I actually won an ARC of this book through Goodreads, after applying for many others. Funny to go through a book that’s just on the verge of publication, and find a fair amount of typos and a bunch of blank pages where the acknowledgments and index will be. Didn’t dilute the book’s strengths though.]

Memoir Maneuvers

I am moving along in publication prep of my memoir of my years of lunatic shoplifting during my high school days. I’ll soon see the refined cover (designed by Studiolo Secondari).  There will be a lot more info about that (including some free book downloads) and more in my monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Links to Thinks

Below, a few articles on psychic good cheer, something to cheer about these days.

A new method to boost your creativity gets rave reviews
“… stories are essential to humans making sense of the world. Interpreting the stories of everyday life leads thinkers to solve problems. Imagining new stories prompts novel inventions to weave those stories into reality. Creativity arises by envisioning ourselves as thoughtful agents in our own stories as well as others’.

5 Ways to Make Your Mornings Better, According to Science
“I suggest keeping movements and stretches so light in the morning that you can barely feel them initially,” Szado explains. “Continually focus on relaxing the muscle and letting the stretch relax to a point where you can’t feel it.”

HOW ONE MUNDANE CHANGE TO YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE CAN BRING POWERFUL HEALTH BENEFITS
“Routines have the power to help us manage our health and our work, home, and community lives. Two years after the pandemic changed everyone’s lives, people now have an opportunity to consider the routines they want to keep and the meaningful things they need in their daily lives to stay productive, happy, and healthy.”

12 Hard Things You Can Do Today
“There you have it, twelve activities that will make your day just a little bit worse, but in a good way. A skipped lunch here and a casual ruck plate there, and you’ll be on the path to freeing yourself from the tyranny of comfort. Your next step is a misogi, and soon you’ll be crying tears of pain on the regular. (That means it’s working.)”

Archives or Compost Heap: Weeding Through Your Old Writing

Posted on by Tom Bentley

I think Milton and I collaborated on this one, before he did Paradise Lost

This past week I’ve been sifting through old, very old and even cobwebbed articles of mine, prompted by a contest requesting an essay-collection submission. The winner will have their collection published, and will probably be knighted in a ceremony involving champagne baths and French horns. (There’s still time to enter if you have hoary archives of your own: check out the Monadnock Essay Collection Prize.)

It’s funny to go through old pieces of writing, because it’s like looking at old pictures of yourself: there’s one with a funny haircut, why in God’s name would you wear that, and were you really so fascinated by that dull place? And in the reading, you see that the adamantine habits in your writing that you’ve tried so hard to eliminate—say, using limp qualifiers like “just” or “very” willy nilly—began long ago, and like old scars, are still visible now.

But what really occurred to me in going through this dusty pile of hides in the cellar is that I’ve been doing this for a long time. The contest required between 50,000–60,000 words in the collection, and I had to throw away many candidates—with all the scribbling I’ve done over time, I could have put three collections of published material together. So, I’m lucky that way, because there was a lot of dreck in there, from which to winnow.

Cream Over Pig’s Legs

Looking at some of the material I wrote makes me thankful that a lot of the journals and outlets that published it have properly faded away—the old bones no longer smell. But it’s nice to have a history to sift through, because you can tuck a lot of the pieces that have pig’s legs to the bottom, which means that something—one hopes cream—rises.

It’s also fun—playing the publisher—to arrange the pieces, in some kind of loose thematic scheme: I found an introductory piece that opens up from a colorful memory of a trip to Vegas and it moves into a “what is the American character” flavor, which feels like a good way to gun the engine at the start. The concluding piece supplies a sense of “it’s a shaky cosmos, but we’re all in it together.” As an editor, that was a fun exercise in scaffolding and structure.

Scrivener Makes Them Toe the Line

Speaking of editing, I used Scrivener to pull all the essays together in bulk, and then its wonderful drag-and-drop sorting to instantly move them around. And around and around, since I was working with the first cull of between 50–100 essays, and tossed them all about in the compilation many times, eliminating many, changing some words in a few, fiddling with titles. Then I dumped it all back into Word for final formatting.

So, all of those muscle spasms I’ve had over the years at the keyboard were worth something. I doubt I’ll win the contest, but it was interesting to filter through the perspectives (and use of language) seen in my past pieces, and to see what were constants and what were flirtations. Who knows, I might use the collection as a freebie to induce the innocent to sign up for my email list, so I can torment more readers.

If you’ve been writing for a while, do you ever go back to your old stuff? Do you cringe or do you crow? I saw a fair amount of piffle, but there were some gems too. Enough to keep on writing and see if I can do better.