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Booker winner tries to remain true to characters

On stage with Margaret Atwood

graphic

In this story:

'Never one thing at play'

Ambitious work


RELATED SITES Downward pointing arrow


LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- When Margaret Atwood was an aspiring writer in her 20s, she gave regular poetry readings at coffeehouses. There, she could address an audience with her writing, reading her well-chosen words aloud. The atmosphere, with a small, receptive group in cozy surroundings, would seem to be ideal for a nascent poet.

She hated it.

"Was I any good? No. Was I petrified? Yes. Was it an ordeal? Yes," the Canadian author recalled in September as she relaxed in a car on her way to a different kind of reading, a "conversation" with public radio host Michael Silverblatt. "Was it helpful to me in later life? Yes, because no condition could ever be so dire."

  ALSO
  • Booker prize brings glory -- but what about sales?
  • Canada's Atwood wins Booker, Britain's top literary prize
  •  
      EXCERPT
    Excerpt: 'The Blind Assassin'
     

    Over the years, however, Atwood has gotten used to the audiences and the attention she attracts when she takes to the road to promote her works. The book tour for her latest work, "The Blind Assassin," took her across her native Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Her public appearances now, she said, have nothing to do with writing.

    But Atwood, who will turn 61 on November 18, may have to get used to more and bigger audiences. On Tuesday she received the Booker Prize for Fiction for "The Blind Assassin." The Booker is the top literary prize awarded to British (and British Commonwealth) authors, and winning books often double their sales. Atwood, whose list of works includes "Alias Grace," "The Handmaid's Tale," and "The Robber Bride" -- all bestsellers -- may be entering a new level of success.

    'Never one thing at play'

    "The Blind Assassin" begins with a sentence that drives the rest of the novel: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." The story is told through Iris, Laura's sister, and is mixed with other narratives and even a novel-within-the-novel.

    Margaret Atwood signs books for fans at
    Margaret Atwood signs books for fans at a Los Angeles event  

    Atwood is known for writing novels with strong, multidimensional female characters, and is viewed by many as a "feminist writer." She rejects the label, saying that it's her job to adhere to truthful portrayals of her characters, not be a tool for social change.

    "If you are saying that women are always good, you are removing from the area of moral choice," she said. "Women are human beings." It's constricting, she continued, to have to depict a certain kind of person.

    The women's movement in general did have an impact on her work, though not at first.

    "By the time the women's movement came along I was pretty much wondering where they had been all that time," she said. "(But) I was happy to see them. ... They were an audience who began understanding what I was writing about." The women's movement validated her writing, she said.

    Yet the women in "The Blind Assassin" aren't valued for their outspokenness; they're valued for their silence. The women in "The Handmaid's Tale, a story set in a right-wing future America where women are second-class citizens, are valued only for their fertility. Atwood likes playing with such ideas of character.

    "There's never just one thing at play with any human being," she said. "Age. Class. Gender. Race. All can be at play. Just dividing people into women and men doesn't ultimately work."

    Ambitious work

    graphic

    "The Blind Assassin" may be Atwood's most ambitious work, certainly one that required years of working at her craft to achieve.

    "I never would have tackled a novel like this when I was 23," she said. "I wouldn't have had that perspective or the capability in my life."

    The Ottawa, Ontario-born Atwood began her writing career as part of a small group of Canadian writers. At the time -- the late 1950s and early 1960s -- there were few Canadian publishers or literary magazines, and she recalls the group being a close-knit bunch, and one willing to take a few chances.

    "It led us into getting involved in small publishers and things like that," she said. The group was ignorant of contracts; nobody had an agent. "We were pretty supportive of one another."

    After graduating from the University of Toronto, she continued her academic work at Radcliffe and Harvard and worked a series of jobs as an English instructor. Her first novel, "The Edible Woman," was published in 1969. She has since written more than 25 other novels, children's books, poetry books and nonfiction works.

    Even after all this time, writing doesn't always come easily. Atwood started "The Blind Assassin" three times, each with a different narrator, before she heard the voice of Iris. At that point, she said, the story began to work.

    Still, maybe her fears of reading her work aloud have eased. At the event with Silverblatt, he suggested she read a passage from "The Blind Assassin." She picked a humorous scene, in which Iris decides to do her own laundry despite failing health and promised help from a friend. Iris carries her dirty laundry downstairs to her basement, only to become frozen in fear halfway down the dark steps.

    The audience laughed. And Atwood looked up, perhaps surprised, and chuckled with the crowd.



    RELATED SITES:
    Margaret Atwood: "The Blind Assassin"
    Margaret Atwood
    Booker Prize 2000

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