Tig and Nell are the protagonists of almost half of the stories that make up Lost in the forestthe latest book by Margaret Atwood, which Salamandra editions have just published, translated by Victoria Alonso Blanco. These characters are not new in the bibliography of the Canadian writer, who had already used them for the plot of Moral disorder (2007), but he now places them at different moments of his life and even his death. The others are stories unrelated in theme, but inevitably atwoodianas: a mother who pretends to be a witch, unstoppable viruses, snails that become humans or conversations with people who are no longer on earth. The material that your fandom want to find in its pages.
This is the first book he has published since 2019, when his sequel to The Handmaid’s TaleWillswon the Booker Prize and in which his partner of 50 years, also the writer Graeme Gibson, died. In fact, in Lost in the forest He dedicates one of his thanks: “And, as always, to Graeme Gibson, who was by my side for many of the years during which these stories were written, and who is still very much there, but not in the way usual. » Some aspects of Tig and Nell’s stories are based on their own experiences – widowhood, in fact – while the rest come from different inspirations or requests.
“There are some that come from material that you think of putting in a novel, but you think that there is not enough material to complete it and in the end there are stories of around 30 pages that can be a portrait of a moment or a story that lasted for years but in a much more concentrated story,” explains Margaret Atwood during an online press conference with media from Spain and Latin America. Stories are there in response to a specific request from people.
For example, The impatient Griselda appeared in the Decameron project promoted by the New York Times Magazine during the pandemic, based on the work of Giovanni Boccaccio and The post-mortem interview of a series of conversations between living authors and others already deceased. “I chose George Orwell because I was always very interested in him and I had a series of questions I wanted to ask him. So we did it through a medium. In the story you will see that “He managed to quit smoking even though he was in the afterlife, even though he knows it’s not good for his health,” she says with amusement.
The influence of the British writer on Atwood’s universe is no secret. When he started reading Farm animal For the first time – when she was still little – she thought it was a funny children’s story, not a political allegory, and it terrified her. But in the face of 1984 She had already entered adolescence and her relationship with Orwell changed. “Interest in totalitarian forms of government started with him,” he says. “Another thing that also influenced me is that in these stories about the future and horrible governments, there always needs to be an explanation of how this happened. » She nevertheless considers that this novel is not negative or dark as was proposed at the time of its publication, but rather that it ends with a common language, “a standard English in the past tense which indicates that the era of 1984 is over. », she explains.
Memory and lessons
Currently, Atwood is writing her memoir, a task that was difficult for her to undertake and which she spoke about at the elDiario.es Ideas Festival last June. He makes it clear that it is neither a biography nor an autobiography: “Memories are things that can be remembered. And what we usually remember are stupidities and disasters. There are people who constantly take photos of what they eat and post them on the Internet. Well, a memoir is not about that, because otherwise it would be very boring. To be clear, there won’t be much from my summer vacation in this book,” he says. Yes, he will stop at important moments like near-death experiences – much more suggestive than his breakfasts, no doubt – and in the phases of life that seem the juiciest to him.
“I think it’s more interesting to know about the first stage than the last stage. It took me a long time to become a writer, and I find that part more appealing to readers and to me. If I talk about the middle of my life, I will say that I wrote this book, then the other, then the other. This no longer has any interest. And the last part is either sadder or more boring,” he muses.
After so much time writing and with more than 60 published books, he considers that what he has learned from his work is that “writing teaches you about writing and books teach you a lot of things about ‘human being’. And mention the book Write and failwhere its author Stephen Marche states that one of the things you learn from writing is precisely how to fail. “You have to throw a lot of things in the trash and you can even end up thinking that there are books that have been published and that they are a failure. That is to say, if you rewrote them, you would write them differently,” he comments. “But I don’t think writing has made me a more spiritual person.”
The endless dystopia
The presentation of Atwood’s book in Spain could not come at a better time as it seems that current events are trending towards dystopia. She is an optimistic pessimist because she believes that “it could always be worse.” According to their interpretation of history, the 19th century was a period given to utopias because they lived in progress: they invented sewage, there were medical advances, bicycles, typewriters and vehicles appeared. , they dreamed of flying. But the future ceased to be promising with the First World War or even before, when the first science fiction novel appeared. War of the WorldsThat of HG Wells which “presents a fatal future with Martians arriving from Mars and devouring people. And even if humans survive or some of them survive, they have an absolutely horrible experience of the future,” he comments.
It is inevitable to ask Atwood – in fact, this is the topic everyone present at this virtual meeting wanted to discuss – what she thinks about the results of the recent US elections, in which Donald Trump was the winner. The Canadian writer says she believes the campaign was very short and that Kamala Harris did not have much time to develop her approaches. And, of course, that voters were afraid of having a female, racialized president “because they feared she would do to them what they had done to people like her.” In other words, many people were afraid of losing their status and identity power with a presidency led by Kamala Harris,” he says.
Likewise, he points out that there has been a shift in the conversation because in recent years the debate has revolved around identity and now it will return to a precedent: that of class. “There is no longer the class understood as in 1930, but there is a class of poor, a middle class, a rich class, a wealthy class and a very rich class. And membership in the United States has changed: before, Democrats represented the working class and Republicans represented the rich, but today the perception is that Republicans represent the working class and the middle class. Democrats represent the elites, which doesn’t mean the rich, but the snobs, the know-it-alls,” he says.
As for Donald Trump and the future, he doesn’t really know what to think. He believes it was wise – or his party – to separate the abortion referendum, organized by the states, from the presidential elections. “He said he represented the United States and there had been a referendum in ten states and seven had voted for what they voted for. And that means that as a woman, you can vote in the referendum to protect abortion and at the same time vote for Trump,” she says.
He doubts that this affair will lead to a “Hitlerian” dictatorship, but believes that we must wait, because since the new president “lies so much”, we do not know what we can expect from him. Likewise, he considers that the question of his age could be decisive, because it risks disqualifying him. “The United States has been the most powerful country in the world until now, despite some failures. But we don’t know if we are seeing an empire in decline, there is a lot of speculation on this subject. And I think it will create a lot of anxiety, especially among people who live near Ukraine,” he concludes.
