Margaret Atwood - The Tent

Books by Margaret Atwood

FICTION

The Edible Woman

Surfacing

Lady Oracle

Dancing Girls

Life Before Man

Bodily Harm

Murder in the Dark

Bluebeards Egg

The Handmaids Tale

Cats Eye

Wilderness Tips

Good Bones

The Robber Bride

Alias Grace

The Blind Assassin

Good Bones and Simple Murders

Oryx and Crake

The Penelopiad

The Tent

FOR CHILDREN

Up in the Tree

Annas Pet (with Joyce Barkhouse)

For the Birds

Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut

Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes

Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda

NONFICTION

Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature

Days of the Rebels 18151840

Second Words

Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature

Negotiating with the Dead:
A Writer on Writing

Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 19832005

POETRY

Double Persephone

The Circle Game

The Animals in That Country

The Journals of Susanna Moodie

Procedures for Underground

Power Politics

You Are Happy

Selected Poems

Two-Headed Poems

True Stories

Interlunar

Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New 19761986

Morning in the Burned House

Life Stories

Why the hunger for these? If it is a hunger. Maybe its more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge, of the life, no matter who lived it.

It helps if there are photos. No more choices for the people in them pick this one, dump that one. The livers of the lives in question had their chances, most of which they blew. They should have spotted the photographer in the bushes, they shouldnt have chewed with their mouths open, they shouldnt have worn the strapless top, they shouldnt have yawned, they shouldnt have laughed: so unattractive, the candid denture. So thats what she looked like, we say, connecting the snapshot to the year of the torrid affair. Face like a half-eaten pizza, and is that him, gaping down her front? What did he see in her, besides cheap lunch? He was already going bald. What was all the fuss about?

Im working on my own life story. I dont mean Im putting it together; no, Im taking it apart. Its mostly a question of editing. If youd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.

I was born, I would have begun, once. But snip, snip, away go mother and father, white ribbons of paper blown by the wind, with grandparents tossed out for good measure. I spent my childhood. Enough of that as well. Goodbye dirty little dresses, goodbye scuffed shoes that caused me such anguish, goodbye well-thumbed tears and scabby knees, and sadness worn at the edges.

Adolescence can be discarded too, with its salty tanned skin, its fecklessness and bad romance and leakages of seasonal blood. What was it like to breathe so heavily, as if drugged, while rubbing up against strange leather coats in alleyways? I cant remember.

Once you get started its fun. So much free space opens up. Rip, crumple, up in flames, out the window. I was born, I grew up, I studied, I loved, I married, I procreated, I said, I wrote, all gone now. I went, I saw, I did. Farewell crumbling turrets of historic interest, farewell icebergs and war monuments, all those young stone men with eyes upturned, and risky voyages teeming with germs, and dubious hotels, and doorways opening both in and out. Farewell friends and lovers, youve slipped from view, erased, defaced: I know you once had hairdos and told jokes, but I cant recall them. Into the ground with you, my tender fur-brained cats and dogs, and horses and mice as well: I adored you, dozens of you, but what were your names?

Im getting somewhere now, Im feeling lighter. Im coming unstuck from scrapbooks, from albums, from diaries and journals, from space, from time. Only a paragraph left, only a sentence or two, only a whisper.

I was born.

I was.

I.

Clothing Dreams

Oh no. Not this again. Its the clothing dream. Ive been having it for fifty years. Aisle after aisle, closetful after closetful, metal rack after metal rack of clothing, stretching into the distance under the glare of the fluorescent tubing as gaudy and ornate and confusing, and finally as glum and oppressive, as the dreams of a long-time opium smoker. Why am I compelled to riffle through these outfits, tangling up the hangers, tripping on the ribbons, snagging myself on a hook or button while feathers and sequins and fake pearls drop to the floor like ants from a burning tree? What is the occasion? Who do I need to impress?

Theres a smell of stale underarms. Everythings been worn before. Nothing fits. Too small, too big, too magenta. These flounces, hoops, ruffles, wired collars, cut-velvet capes none of these disguises is mine. How old am I in this dream? Do I have tits? Whose life am I living? Whose life am I failing to live?

Bottle

I only want to be like everyone else, I said.

Youre not, though, was what he told me. Youre not like them.

Why not? I said. I was inclined to listen to him. He had a persuasive manner.

Because I love you.

Is that all?

Im not just anyone, he said.

Nobody is, I said.

You see, he said, thats what I mean, youre not like everyone else. You notice the details, you take the distinguishing characteristics into account, you pick out the tendencies. These are the qualities Im looking for.

Is this a seduction? I said.

No. The seduction took place a while ago; you didnt even notice it. Were past that. Were at the hiring stage. Weve come to the bargaining.

What do I have to do? I said.

Sleep with me, that goes without saying. Ill make it worth your while.

What else?

I value loyalty. Remember, youre not a lawyer: dont fuck the clients.

I wouldnt anyway. They always have bad karma. What else?