43 Replies to ““The Fall is not properly grasped unless it is understood to be a fall into Americanism””

  4. Why the f*ck are we talking about Atwood here? What, Kate went away for a couple weeks and all of a sudden all the masochists came out of the woodwork? Who the f*ck cares about Atwood? She’s a distopianist who writes autobiographies. She’s a dry hole. Your job is to stay clear of people like that, not to wallow in them. You’ll get a rash. She is not relevent to anything important in life.

  6. C’mon guys…Atwood?…twice in one day?!
    Kate…we miss ya!!
    Oh now I get it…
    this allusion to Iggy,
    delusions of grandeur,
    illusion of self importance
    profusion of empty words,
    infusion of Americanism…

  10. hip and significant discussion about the apocalypse: ms atwood in a cafe; tawdry and cheap discussion about the apocalypse: christian conservative in a truck stop

  11. I for one am shocked, shocked, that Vitruvius even knows about words like that…
    (Atwood’s voice is sheer torture, too…)

  12. The world may take Atwood seriously, but they also take louise Arbour seriously. That shows how little the world knows about mental disorders in Canadians.

  13. Saw the same “Margaret Atwood” and said to myself, “Self, for your own sanity stay away from that link”.
    Margaret Atwood is not relevant in my world.

  14. Ok but wait, Mark, does the world take Atwood seriously, or are we just wasting our time paying attention to a relatively irrelevant subset of the world that pays any attention to such pessimistic drivel at all in the first place? I mean, look, we can spend all our time focusing on the idiots in society, yet we remain saddled with the question of the degree to which that is productive. Am I the only person left who sees anything good in life? Have you all become distopianists, wrestling with Atwood in the ordure of negativity?

  15. I am Australian-Canadian and I read MATWOOD when I came here because I thought it was compulsory.
    I thought at the time “what a load of turgid garbage”, but I didn’t say anything at the time, because I’m a very polite person and I didn’t wan’t to upset Canadians who seemed to be so proud of their very important novel writing person.
    Over the years, I came to realize that I was subsidizing this old chook with my taxes.
    No more Mr Nice Guy: Maggie, your books are crap, I will never read another one and I encourage all english-speaking people to do likewise

  17. Actually it is somewhat refreshing to get Margaret Atwood discussed on SDA.
    In fact Atwood reminds me when I was in public school in Winnipeg and corporal punishment (yeah the strap) was admninistered to wayward boys.
    In my fourth grade class I recall three or for little Margaret Atwoods.
    All very brainy, great imaginations,superior attitudes to boys, suck ups to teachers, and all “tattle tales” as they were called by us boys.
    Smack them with a snowball and sure as little tattle tale girls grow up to be big socialist/ feminist Margaret Atwoods in real life, they would seek shelter by tattling and exhibiting superior smugness in victory.
    Down to the principal’s office, bring out the strap and so justice was served.
    No, it didn’t scar me for life for some reason the strap had its positive effect.
    But gave me a lifelong respect for stand up conservative women who would come right back with their own snowball and perhaps take you down and give you a snowface wash in retaliation rather than run to the teacher and tattle.
    Give Margaret Atwood her dues as a successful author, but I cleave to the Margaret Thatchers of this world or the Kate McMillans or Laura Ingrahams by worldly comparison.

  18. Arrrgh!!! Make the bad lady go away!!!!!!!!
    I refuse to line my cat litterbox with her garbage. The cat is lazy enough!

  19. I’ve never been able to justify reading very far into any of Atwood’s books, but I have heard her speak a few times. Not only is the voice annoying (which, of course, she cannot help) but she has the maddening habit of giggling and snorting at all of what she considers her clever and amusing observations.

  20. Margaret Atwood is justifiably one of the greatest authors Canada has ever produced, and she really does deserve the respect she has earned …
    With that said, the annoying part about Atwood (and countless other celebrities) is that people think that because she is successful and talented in one area that means that her political opinions should have greater weight; or that she is somehow a better representative of being Canadian than anyone else.

  21. I will admit that I have never read anything by Atwood and never would. Vitruvius says she’s too dystopian. That said I never read More’s Utopia either, and likely never will, but I’m pretty sure that he never reverted to the kind of low language we all use here from time to time. For this we must be reminded by Kate of not being classy, as we sometimes accuse Kate. It’s called self-discipline, and it is good. I brought up the name of Roman Polanski, and might have been chastised for it, but it is in the news, and reflects the culture we are living through.

  22. I’m a 53-year-old American and usually I think I’m reasonably literate. I am not familiar with Atwood, but her writing is side-splittingly funny if you don’t let it annoy you. It must be very painful and weird to live inside her skin and spit out spittle-flecked hateful crazy shit. But I find if I lighten up a little I get the benefit of the humor in all of this. Does the “free” (i.e., prepaid) healthcare in Canada cover psychiatric outpatient treatment? If so she doesn’t seem to be availing herself of its benefits.

  24. OK, I never heard of the broad, but I think I get it.
    She’s mimicking H P Lovecraft, right? And America is Cthulhu and Americans are the minions of Cthulhu. Have I got it right?
    (It’d make a great Saturday Night Live skit.)

  25. Well, countering the incomparable Vitruvius, I’m kinda congenitally prone to declinism. On the other hand, from my many years on the fringes of the financial markets, I’m also a bit of a contrarian, if not a downright crank [recall my famous early call on wizened wizard Greenspan when he was being feted here upon his retirement, with embarrassing phrases like “and a fond farewell, good sir ….”.]
    I am NOT an optimist, never have been (and it’s kept me alive riding countless kms on a motorcycle).
    BUT YET, fellow sda scribes, there is MUCH to be optimistic about with Maggie’s believing we’ve bought the farm: a good contrarian would have to interpret Maggie’s forecast of a impending dystopia as a forecast of a new awakening, a new renaissance. Behold the Light!

  26. This revanchist, post-modern analysis fails to devolve the ultimate metaphysical dilemma of the Canadian/American paradigm. Indeed, its heuristic anti-value domain is itself a mirror and a foil (or anti-foil) for the dystopian constructs it expresses. How to avoid the dilemma? Or provoke the dilemma (for the provocation of the dilemma may itself promote the resolution through an expression of the ultra-conscious)? The answer lies not in the sphere of expression, but rather in the internalizing of the feminist/post-capitalist world — an anti-utopian irrelevance which provokes its own pre-feminist unreality.
    Alternatively, maybe she’s just full of s#@t.

  27. [quote]It came with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, which put an end to the liberalisation of the Prague Spring and was the beginning of ‘the long decline of Zhivago’s children and the death throes of their dreams’. For Zubok, socialist idealism was the group’s sine qua non: without it, ‘in the absence of that dream, the very idea of an intelligentsia in Russia began to seem like the figment of a naive imagination.’..[/quote]
    I would guess that the GREEN Carbon mantra was invented to replace the “fragile” dreams of the communist intelligentsia…Come chase the dancing fairies… but the dam Canadians have become dumb Americans.
    She is one morbid empty shell…8 year old

  29. Not too many in this bunch of posters I suspect. Her reputation preceded my wasting my time and money.

  32. When I was in college the one pleasure I allowed myself was English Lit. As it happens The Edible Woman was on the reading list. I actually enjoyed the book.
    Ahhhh young and impressionable. However I was also reading Ayn Rand. I was never able to read another Atwood book. However I did read everything Rand wrote and was able to go back to them years later.
    Atwood is really a talented writer with a sad pathetic, wretched, and twisted, psyche

  33. I actually read two of her books. The first was so boring and banal I figured I should at least try another. Like giving a bad restaurant experience one more chance.
    When I started the Handmaid’s Tale, I kept getting a deja vu experience. Then I remembered. I had read this book in the 50’s as a teenager. It was written by an English author, can’t remember the name.
    So not only is she a stultifyingly boring quack, she is also a plagarist. Very nice.

  34. Majority of commenters have ‘tried’ but were unable to finish an Atwood book.
    ‘nuf said.
    I’m a member of the ‘tried’ group(Something about dinasaurs and the ROM)…it was about the same time I was trying TM,read ‘Mother Earth news’ and I voted NDP.Perhaps if I did the drugs I would have stuck with all those experiments.
    Now I have my feet firmly on the ground and quite enjoy reality.

  35. Atwood can certainly write well, no argument there.
    It’s just that I’m not really sure she has anything to say.
    The CanLit dilemma in a nutshell.

  36. Atwood: pompous, pretentious, full of herself and dismissive of anyone who hasn’t achieved her lofty “insight”. Turgid, dystopian prose. This is the celebrated queen of canlit!
    Mordecai Richler: now there was a Canadian writer you could read, laugh with, and enjoy.
    Even marxism-tinged Hugh MacLennan (“Barometer Rising”; “Watch that ends the Night”) at least wrote books that people wanted to and could read.

  37. JJM – That’s not writing, it’s typing. Her plots are heavy handed and moronic. She’s unreadable, in my opinion.

  38. ASs it happens, I walked past Margaret Atwood last night in downtown Calgary. She was standing on the corner just across the street from where I live. I’m cool with that, but she better not be there again tonight or I’m calling the cops.
    I was once given a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale and gritted my teeth and read it. I actually enjoyed it, it’s a good read. Of course I assumed she meant it as satire; it’s a devastating summary of everything that’s dishonest and stupid about feminism – which would be just about all of it. I was a bit dismayed when I realized she actually meant it, but it didn’t spoil the book and I still get laughs out of it, albeit at her expense. I too realised I’d read this book before – it’s a rewrite of “Revolt in 2100” by Robert A. Heinlein (also published as “Sixth Column”), although, as you can imagine, in style and point of view they’re as different as chalk and cheese.

  39. Take an unwanted look at a picture of Atwood and time takes you back to the tacky 70’s, hippy hairstyles and namby pamby Trudeaupia.
    Yuck. With a capital Y.
    And what the H was Atwood doing in Calgary? It must have been as difficult for her to be there as it was for the locals to set eyes on that hag.

  40. I read a couple of Atwood’s books. After the first, thought she must be going through a stage. The second straightened me out. And, folks, she’s not that great a writer. In terms of flow, she’s a train wreck. There’s no rhythm to draw one’s mind forward. It’s all just dreck.

  41. They were required reading in our high schools when I was there in 77-79. God awful to read, halfway though I wanted to poke my eyes out. At the time I was reading 5 books a week and would read almost anything. I didn’t think there was anything I couldn’t read till I read her stuff.

  42. Atwood = Boring, nationalistic pandering, along with gratuitous mental torture directed at high school students.
    Atwood was most probably the brain child of Nazi Germany’s future “physic war” on the public, smuggled out at the end of the war by the American’s and then sold to Liberal Canada during the 60’s under the deceiving rule of Pearson when he helped conceive the idea of the UN.
    An evil agent of socialism, Atwood remains a traitor to freedom and humanity.

  43. I see. We’ve done Ms Atwood twice. I’ve read most of her books and found some more palatable than others. I enjoyed “Cat’s Eye”, “Alias Grace”, “Handmaid’s Tale” and a few others. “Surfacing” was an eye opener on the Canadian psyche. I loathed “The Edible Woman”. I don’t care for her politics or her voice, but I wouldn’t dismiss her talent or the respect she’s earned in the ranks of world literature.

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