TOP OF THE TOPS: "A" like ATWOOD

TOP OF THE TOPS was suggested to me by a former student - now a friend - of mine, who said she would find it more useful if I recommended books which may not be recent publications but which make up my private literary canon. TOP OF THE TOPS will be devoted then to the works which over years have become my classics and which I would naturally recommend to anyone wishing a genuine reading adventure, hopefully as life-transforming as those that I've been privileged to experience. The idea of the alphabet for my TOP OF THE TOPS is catchy, but I might not "fill in" all the letters evenly, I might not follow the alphabetical order, either, though I will do my best.

Margaret Atwood comes first in the series for a number of reasons: first, her surname's initial nicely matches the first letter in the alphabet; second, for quite a few years now Atwood has been my number one candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and just recently the Nobel Committee disappointed me again. This disappointment in the Nobel Committee's verdict(s) is bitter not only because they haven't chosen Atwood but because they seem reluctant to grant the Prize to women writers. Let me think: the last decade saw only two luminous exceptions: that of Elfriede Jelinek (I still remember what scandal broke out then) and Doris Lessing; the other eight prizes went to male writers. Looking at the last two decades, I can add two exceptional (in both senses) laureates, that is Wislawa Szymborska and Toni Morrison. The numbers are merciless and telling: since 1988 only 4 women and as many as 16 men have received the Nobel Prize for Literature, that is women make up 20% of the total number of Nobel Prize laureates. I'm starting to wonder whether this Nobel Prize is at all representative.

In my unflinching support for Atwood, gender is not the ultimate criterion by any means, as her literary output is impressive: Atwood has been writing poetry since 1961 and novels since 1969 (by now she has written about twenty of them). She is a most prolific poet, novelist, essayist (or literary critic if you like) and children's literature writer. Atwood is frequently considered a post-colonial writer because of her ramifications on Canadian identity (subdued by American (U.S.) cultural hegemony, sometimes called neo-colonialism) which are combined with feminist issues that she raises. Feminist and post-colonial aspects of her writing are easily combined - in her works both women and Canada are culturally dominated.

I have read a vast majority (well, probably all) of Atwood's novels, and my favorite are: 1. Surfacing (1972) 2. Lady Oracle (1976) 3. The Robber Bride (1993), next come Bodily Harm (1981) and the radical feminist anti-utopia The Handmaid's Tale (1985), which was turned into a movie by Volker Schlondorff.

My first encounter with Margaret Atwood took place quite a few years ago, when I was still a student. The book that I came across then was a Polish edition of Surfacing (the Polish title "Wynurzenie" can be understood in three ways at least, all wonderfully encapsulating the novel's sense). The novel perfectly fits the description of post-colonial literature, though I prefer to read it as a feminist story of the protagonist's journey (both physical and psychological) to finding her own place in the world after a traumatic experience. Unoriginal as I sound at this point, I'm not going to reveal anything more about Surfacing, hoping that my Readers will discover it for themselves. Few books have influenced me so, though originally I'd never expected the reading to be that rewarding, since at first I thought the story was a drag. As it turned out, I read the book at one sitting and then I couldn't sleep a wink all night: I also experienced what Aristotle probably meant when he used the word "catharsis". My advice: in order not to miss the roller-coaster experience of reading Surfacing, if you do not feel very confident about your English, read it in Polish - you certainly won't regret it. Have fun and let me know how you found the book.
P.S. Here is a short interview with the wonderful writer, in which she talks about her recent book Moral Disorder, but not only.