Excerpt from Margaret Atwood’s book Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
He’s had to pretend to be magical and fearsome, so that the evil witches — who really do have supernatural powers — would not destroy them all. Thus he has created either a utopia or a benevolent despotism, however you choose to look at it. Also he has fooled Dorothy into doing battle with the remaining evil witch by holding out false promises: he doesn’t really know how to get her back to Kansas.
Dorothy is not impressed. “I think you are a very bad man,” she says.
“Oh no, my dear,” says the Wizard. “I’m really a very good man; but I’m a very bad Wizard …”
If you’re an artist, being a good man — or a good woman — is pretty much beside the point when it comes to your actual accomplishments. Moral perfection won’t compensate for your badness as an artist; not being able to hit high C is not redeemed by being kind to dogs. However, whether you are a good man or a bad man is not beside the point if you happen to be a good wizard — good at doing your magic, making your “marvellous clear jelly,” creating illusions that can convince people of their truth — because if you are good at being a wizard in this sense, then power of various sorts may well come your way — power in relation to society — and then your goodness or badness as a human being will have a part in determining what you do with this power.
The Wizard of Oz — soi-disant magician, wielder of power, manipulator, illusionist, and fraud — has a long geneology. His remote ancestor was probably a shaman or high priest or conjuror, or one who combined these functions. Other ancestors can be found in folklore. More recently, and in literature, he can be traced from Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus through Prospero of The Tempest.
It’s an interesting insight.
She’s right about being a good person not making it okay to not be able to hit high C (and we could get into a whole ‘nother discussion about the conflation of good and nice and how nice is seriously overrated in the hierarchy of virtues). However, we also have a surfeit of people who think being able to hit high C grants them license to be the north end of a southbound Brontosaurus, and Atwood covers this ground with her “what you do with this power” remark.
Deft work in just a couple of paragraphs; I like that. Forgive me for taking off in the direction of one of my hobby-horses, but does Atwood touch at all on the Populist allegory/satire aspects of the story? That always fascinated me.
Ken – this is really the only time she brings up Wizard of Oz, so sadly the answer is No.
I like that Atwood admits that this power melding with art thing is real, and something to be negotiated, something that all artists have to deal with. All good artists anyway. You can’t ignore it, or pretend it doesn’t exist. It does. I cannot stand the ‘You’re an artist – do your art and shut up about everything else’ crowd. James Joyce had a lot to say about the world we live in, and how we negotiate country/language/religion. He didn’t write in a cloister. He had criticisms, he was OF THIS WORLD. And he used that power. He wrote something like: “It’s about time Ireland got a good look at herself in the mirror.” It just so happens he’s also a good artist, and a good writer … not merely didactic, but he didn’t just sit in an ivory tower, twiddling his fripperies, not engaged with the mess of the world.
So nothing chaps my ass more than that “Just do you art and shut up” attitude. Well, I can think of a couple things that do chap my ass more, but dammit, that one is right up there. I take it personally, obviously.
Atwood herself has had to negotiate this terrain her whole career, because of the nature of her books (which can be seen in some lights as very political), and WHEN they were published. She has a lot to say about male-female relationships, and about feminism, and sexism. But she’s not a prude, or anti-male, or anything like that – but she sure as hell calls a spade a spade in her books, and so she has been turned into a kind of poster-child. Which she knows can’t be helped, but it also is alienating for her. It’s like: Wait, wait … don’t put me up on that pedestal … let me hide again behind my books …
But it’s too late. Her works are out there. In the public. She writes them, and then – lets them go, and so they are no longer HERS, really – and she cannot control the response. She knows how tough it is, to have a best-seller, and to suddenly have a hell of a lot of power. It happened to her.