{"id":2777,"date":"2005-04-05T18:28:58","date_gmt":"2005-04-05T22:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2777"},"modified":"2015-05-17T08:24:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T12:24:47","slug":"writer-as-illusionist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2777","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Atwood: Writer as Illusionist"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m reading Margaret Atwood’s book Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. This book began when she was requested to give the Empson Lectures at the University of Cambridge (I think it was a series of six lectures). She describes, amusingly, how excited she was – but how that excitement slowly drained out of her when she actually sat down to write, and to think about what to write for the lectures.<\/p>\n

I love it. It’s a messy book, she flies about in her references – which I really enjoy: from Chaucer to Elmore Leonard. Stephen King to Shakespeare. She’s not a snob in her reading, and she can find inspiration anywhere. I very much appreciate that. I am kind of the same way. This is a book about writing – it’s not a how-to book (although I am finding it quite exciting to read). It’s more a rumination on different aspects of writing. Also: what IS a writer, and is it possible to define our terms? is it possible to reconcile art and commerce? She did one lecture on Jekyll and Hyde (which I love – she talks a lot about “the double” – in art and also in life. Writers live double lives – they have to eat, live, pay rent. But then they have to be the mad solitary genius. This is the Jekyll and Hyde syndrome. Fascinating lecture.)<\/p>\n

The fourth lecture, she entitled: “Temptation: Prospero, the Wizard of Oz, Mephisto & Co. Who waves the wand, pulls the strings, or signs the Devil’s book?” In this lecture, she looks at the Faustian conflicts inherent in trying to be an artist of any kind.<\/p>\n

She uses, as her primary examples, three characters from fiction:<\/p>\n

–The Wizard of Oz, from Frank Baum’s book of the same name.
\n–Prospero, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest
\n–and the German actor “Mephisto” in Klaus Mann’s novel (has anyone seen that movie,<\/a> by the way? Un REAL. So good.)<\/p>\n

What do these three have in common?<\/p>\n

Atwood writes:<\/p>\n

All exist at the intersection of art with power, and therefore with moral and social responsibility. And all three are illusionists, of one kind or another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anyway, I’m gonna post some excerpts from her discussions of these three characters, and what message they may have for all of us. It’s really cool.<\/p>\n

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