The Sheila Variations

Sublime article!

RTG - oh, that's right - you're a huge Joyce Carol Oates fan, if I'm remembering right.

I think her analysis of Atwood is really interesting. Especially her observation about the 'coda' at the end of Handmaid's Tale. I agree with that assessment.

Thanks for the link to the NYROB piece by Oates on Atwood.

Oates on Atwood: sounds like a cereal so good for you that you'd rather in fact eat the soggy cardboard it tastes like.

(and did you know that Oates hasn't tasted refined sugar in something like 40 years? and supposedly dances around her glass house near Princeton listening to disco on her Walkman? not sure what's more stunning here: her use of an actual Walkman or her dancing or the disco . . .)

Anyway, I'm also looking forward to reading Moral Disorder one of these days. Sounds like "strong, healthy, fiction." And apparently no Hairballs among the bunch. Boo hoo.

Joyce Carol Oates? Walkman? What??

A Hairball comes along only once in a lifetime.

So true, so true. Both about the Brigadoon-like behavior of a story like "Hairball" and Ms. Oates's dancing ways. Or at least this is what a friend of mine who's a friend of hers once told me. I guess what really surprises me isn't so much what or how she's listening to but that it would take her away from writing--which apparently she . . . just . . . can't . . . STOP! . . . doing.

Old joke, I know, her graphomania, but really: when does that woman find time to even blink?

It's true - she is scarily prolific.

It's like Christopher Hitchens. I read every word he writes - but even that could keep me busy 24 hours a day. Vanity Fair, Atlantic, Slate - his books ... his op-ed pieces ... and to my (admittedly biased) eyes - it's ALL well-written, well thought out, intellectually stimulating, grandiose, fun ...

It's intimidating!

It's fucking crazy is what it is.

I think.

It is totally fucking crazy.

It's like these people have somehow grasped within their DNA that we only have one life to live. Like - they're in a rush to GET IT ALL OUT.

Maybe they should visit Le Palais de Charmin in Times Sq. if theyre in such a rush to get it all out. At least there, you get almost instantaneous applause for your efforts.

Oh dear. I'm descending . . .

Le Palais de Charmin

HAHAHAHAHA you are SUCH AN ASSHOLE!!!

Oh God. It's all sounding like a double entendre now.

I loved Oates' comments in particular about the epilogue/coda to Handmaid's Tale.

Yes - the coda tells us that Gilead ended and the Christian fundamentalist empire is a thing of the past - yet all of the speakers are men - and there is something almost snickeringly obtuse and sexist about their comments and analysis. It's fucking depressing.

I often have wished that Handmaid's Tale would have ended with Offred's last words ("into the light") - and not gone into that coda - which, from Atwood's words - is meant to be optimistic ... but it just ended up bringing me down, in actuality.

it's interesting, though ... the sort of snarky unemotional all-male academics talking about what was agony for females ... it does kind of bring it all home in this rather horrible way.

Though I don't totally agree with Oates's assessment about the coda slightly trivializing "the Handmaid's tale in 'The Handmaid's Tale,'" I also don't think Atwood's suggesting that the more things change the more they stay the same (i.e., a male academic in 2195 will behave more or less the way his counterparts do in 1986.) Certainly, it's the latter who's essentially her primary target (and probably certain female academics, too); but it's clear she's also poking a bit of fun at the notion that there'll definitely be anything left alive in 2195--let alone a lit. crit. symposium in which "transcripts" would be the form in which archival material was presented. In light of her other main critique in "The Handmaid's Tale"-- namely, environmental poisoning & collapse--it's probably more likely that when/if such a symposium were convened (at the hilariously named "Universtiy of Denay, in Nunavit!), its participants would probably only have to take a pill (or some such virtual object) to receive all the information relevant to the discussion--and then converse with one another via telekinetic mindspeak. In other words, a truly paperless society--because there really wouldn't be any trees left to make paper!

Jon -

Yes, it does beg the question: how did the world go on after the post-apocalyptic struggles and radiation nightmare of Gilead?

All I remember about that coda is that the moderator of the symposium was a woman - and that the males kind of treated her like an idiot, and there were little stupid punning jokes throughout - double entendre jokes which might be funny in any other context - but not in the gender genocide type scenario they were discussing.

Hmmm. I've only read Handmaid's Tale once - might be time for a re-reading.

You do remember correctly: I adore JCO. She's never had a mis-step as far as I can tell.

I've only read one of Atwood's books: Handmaid's Tale. I barely remember it but I do remember being FREAKED OUT by it. It was one of those books where I thought, yeah, I'm glad I did that but I don't wanna do it again.