Author Margaret Atwood’s Burning Questions
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Higher Ground
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2022
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
Today we are joined by legendary writer Margaret Atwood! We begin with her new collection of essays, Burning Questions (4:18), which wrestle with catastrophe (4:59), growing up in the wilderness (7:05) under egalitarian parents (10:00), and how she circumvented the traditional roles for women of the 1950s (12:20). She also shares some personal stories: her first book signing event (15:40), the day she met her late husband Graeme Gibson (17:20), and the innumerable ways in which he'd shape her life (20:11).
On the back-half we discuss the historical antecedents behind The Handmaid’s Tale (24:11), its renewed relevance amid threats to Roe v. Wade (25:43), the debate around ‘the writer as political agent’ (29:53), patriarchal gatekeeping inside the publishing industry (32:42), the limits of art-making (34:20), and why she continues to write at age 82 (39:17).
To close, Margaret reads from both her elegiac poem Dearly (40:05) and her essay “Polonia” (45:27).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm joined by writer Margaret Atwood. |
| 0:47.0 | Atwood is the author of over 50 books of poetry, critical essays, graphic novels, and fiction. |
| 0:54.7 | Most notably, as you've probably read, |
| 0:57.0 | Cat's Eye, The Blind Assassin, The Testaments, |
| 1:00.6 | and of course, The Handmaid's Tale, which was published back in 1985. |
| 1:06.0 | Her latest offering is called Burning Questions, |
| 1:09.2 | a collection of essay, speeches, forwards, and other non-fiction pieces she produced from 2004 to 2021. |
| 1:17.6 | The new book, which you absolutely should read, charts the changes in both her state of mind and the world around her. |
| 1:25.0 | As the Handmaid's tale, a futuristic dystopian novel set in a totalitarian state, |
| 1:31.0 | became increasingly relevant. |
| 1:33.2 | Over the past two decades, Atwood has turned into |
| 1:37.2 | our sort of preeminent doomsayer. A recent profile in the New Yorker |
| 1:41.7 | called her the Prophet of Distopia. |
| 1:44.6 | Her fiction has imagined societies riddled with misogyny, oppression, and environmental |
| 1:50.0 | havoc, they write. |
| 1:51.8 | These visions now feel all too real. But while these descriptions |
| 1:56.4 | are unnervingly accurate, I think they don't sufficiently capture Atwood's |
| 2:01.7 | humanity. |
| 2:02.9 | At age 82, she's as curious and vibrant as ever, passionate on the subjects of power, truth, the |
| 2:10.7 | environment, and writing itself. |
| 2:13.4 | She remained so, even in the face of recently losing her partner of 46 years, |
| 2:19.5 | the writer Graham Gibson. |
... |
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