I don’t know what possessed me to buy a $25 ticket to see Margaret Atwood read from her new book Year of the Flood at 7pm on a Sunday night. On Sunday nights, I like to be a homebody: enjoy a semi-elaborate meal with Mr. P, watch football or a movie, tie up any loose household ends, and prepare myself for the work week ahead, much like a yogi prepares for asana by sitting still and meditating.
But there I was, in Harvard Square at 6:15 , standing in a line for an optimal seat to see the literary legend Margaret Atwood. “What’s going on?” one college dude asked his friend as they walked past the line outside of the First Parish Unitarian Universalist church. “Probably a battle of the bands,” the other dude said, which made me snicker, because half of the line had their noses buried in books and the other half awkwardly fiddled, with their tickets, their phones, themselves. A group of meek-looking co-eds in front of me were talking about mysterious laundry stains. “Maybe it’s my deodorant,” the stained girl said, the urban symphony hushing slightly right before her words shrilly rang out. The conversation stalled and one of the girls took out her phone and announced “I’m going to Tweet.”
So yeah, Margaret Atwood. I went through an intense Atwood phase circa high school, fueled by The Handmaid’s Tale (my bff Amy and I were sooo into dystopian fiction) and Cat’s Eye, which I read at least 20 times because I related deeply to the narrator, an artist who reflects on her childhood and the “mean girls” who tormented her. None of her subsequent works have sparked similar devotion, although The Blind Assassin was certainly masterful, and I find her forays into science fiction to be not that horrible.
I was surprised that the First Parish church was far from full, perhaps because of the hefty $25 ticket price (copies of the book were not included; proceeds go to the environment). Atwood came out to affectionate applause from the roughly 66% female crowd. Some items of interest from Atwood’s talk and the Q&A:
- Atwood lived in Cambridge for 4 years while doing her doctorate at Harvard (which she never finished). She claims that many of the buildings in her dystopias are inspired by Cambridge architecture, a comment that bewildered but pleased the crowd.
- In Year of the Flood, one of the characters is holed up in a spa during an environmental catastrophe. Said Atwood, “I think a spa would be a good place to survive a pandemic, because there’s lots of towels, and the facial products are edible.”
- I believe that Year of the Flood is the first book I’ve ever heard of with a soundtrack. The book contains hymns sung by a religious sect, and a friend of Atwood’s recorded a CD of these hymns. Atwood played us 3 of the hymns, which were folksy C&W gospel (“not all of them are this peppy”), and she even danced around.
- Atwood read a few excepts in a soothing, warbly voice. Later, she sang us another hymn. She can barely carry a tune (“I know, I should stick to my day job.”)
- On why she often writes from the point of view of the underdog: “I always preferred Batman to Superman, because Superman was cheating. He was from another planet. Spiderman had psychological problems, and he had a girlfriend. I didn’t like that.”
- Atwood is a Trekkie. Who would’ve thought? She also took her mother to see Star Wars “because I knew there would be no S-E-X in it.”
As much as I enjoyed the reading, I declined to buy a copy of Year of the Flood, simply because I’m trying to curtail my purchases of hardback books. I’ll get it from the library. So at the end of the talk, when everyone lined up to get their Margaret Atwood collections signed (one man had a stack of 10 books), I only had my trusty moleskin notebook. But I paid $25 like everyone else, so I wanted my Atwood signature! Gathering my nerve, I handed her my notebook, opened to the inside cover page. To my horror, Atwood began flipping through my notebook, and I hastily motioned for her to sign the inside cover under the “In case of loss” text. She chuckled — yes, I made Margaret Atwood chuckle — and obliged.
Margaret Atwood, First Parish UU, Cambridge, MA
