Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004-2021
By Margaret Atwood
Random House, UK
ISBN: 978-1784744519
496pp.

Canadian author Margaret Atwood possesses one of the most important, as well as distinct, literary voices in the world today. She speaks with both grace and a characteristically dark sense of humour — one that often cuts deep. Always measured, always aesthetically charged regardless of its political import, her writing is never wasteful.

Considering her passionate championing of environmental causes, it makes sense that she is not one to waste her resources. And, seeing as how reluctant global capital is to take the impending climate catastrophe seriously, Atwood’s gallows humour feels more than justified.

The multiple award-winning author is known for her critically acclaimed dystopian and historical fiction that takes on feminist and environmental themes, often with near prophetic clarity. Her latest book is a collection of non-fiction essays — her third such work — titled Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004-2021.

The collection is divided into five sections based on the chronological contiguity of the essays as well as broad thematic cohesion. What adds to the general sense of unity is Atwood’s self-referential approach: her presence is palpable in every essay and it ties everything together.

The essays range from literary and social criticism to political advocacy. There are several book reviews and introductions, as well as homages to prominent artists and thinkers, such as Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, Ursula Le Guin, Rachel Carson, Simone de Beauvoir, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Charles Dickens and Franz Kafka among others.

If great art delights even as it instructs, then this collection of Margaret Atwood’s essays qualifies

Of particular interest to fans of Atwood’s fiction and poetry will be the occasional pieces of commentary on her own works, or her lectures delivered variously on the purpose and value of art as well as the role of the artist.

“Many are those who feel impelled to sit on panels and discuss the ‘role of the writer’,” she notes, “as if writing itself is a frivolous pursuit, of no value apart from whatever external roles and duties can be cooked up for it: extolling the Fatherland, fostering world peace, improving the position of women, and so forth.”

She goes on to say: “That writing may involve itself in such issues is self-evident, but to say that it must is sinister. Must break the bond between the writer, such as me, and you yourself…”

Unlike her fiction, Atwood’s essays provide the reader a more direct and, at times, candid view, as it were, of the author.

“First, me. Born in November 1939, just after the beginning of the Second World War. That means I am of the generation that remembers Hitler and Stalin, and not just from the history books. In 1949 I was 10, and thus read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when it came out in paperback. I was 15 in 1955, when Elvis made his TV debut. I was 20 in 1960, 30 in 1970, and 40 in 1980. I always make a chart like this for characters in my books: I want to know how old they were in relation to major world events because our personal histories interact with what’s going on in the world outside us.”

Do you as a writer expand the meanings of words, or are you merely their tool? Is your own language programming you like a computer, or are you wielding it like Prospero’s magic charms, and is there, in fact, a difference? Small children, when asked by Jean Piaget what part of their body they thought with, said, “My mouth.” Is thought possible without words? Do words determine what we can think, and if so, can we think some thoughts in one language that are impossible to articulate in another? — Excerpt from the book, essay titled ‘Translationland’

For those not as familiar with the author’s work, many of these essays will be an excellent introduction to not only an undeniably brilliant and conscientious mind, but also to the perspective of someone who has really lived quite a lot longer than most of us — statistically speaking — will get to. In short, Atwood speaks with the authority of her invaluable lived experience.

The period of 17 years from 2004-21 covered in the book has been a time of global turmoil. Post-9/11, the world has pretty much been at war on multiple fronts. The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States, the 2008 financial crisis, the extremely divisive 2016 US elections, Donald Trump’s presidency, soon followed by the rise of #MeToo and its subsequent hijacking by the liberal bourgeoisie, the coronavirus pandemic and its impact, all unfolding before the backdrop of a worsening climate crisis.

Sharp lines have been drawn. Class, race, gender and all manner of binaries have spawned extreme positions. Atwood analyses all of this from the perspective of someone who experienced the end of the Second World War, the beginning of the second wave feminism and its unravelling by way of consumer culture, decolonisation, Stalinist and Maoist atrocities and the fall of the USSR.

An interesting example of the cultural shift in recent years would be how, for a moment there, Atwood went from being celebrated as one of the most prominent feminist icons of the West, to suddenly being labelled a bad example. In a world growing ever more polarised, she found herself attacked.

Consider her essay ‘Am I a Bad Feminist?’ written as a response to criticism from young feminists who claimed that she was betraying the cause by not toeing the line drawn by the #MeToo movement, whereby one ought not to speak in favour of a male, however just, if the opponent happens to be female.

She writes: “The #MeToo moment is a symptom of a broken legal system. All too frequently, women and other sexual-abuse complainants couldn’t get a fair hearing through institutions — including corporate structures — so they used a new tool: the internet. Stars fell from the skies. This has been very effective, and has been seen as a massive wake-up call. But what next?”

She then says, “If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place? Who will be the new power brokers? It won’t be the Bad Feminists [such as] me. We are acceptable neither to Right nor to Left. In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn’t puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic, or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity.”

Atwood’s positions are not an attempt at performative point-scoring to advance her personal lot. Her positions are rooted in a deep sense of justice for all. And, as such, can easily run counter to the objectives of the more ideologically puritanical. Her larger point here is that a movement that brooks no criticism or diversity of opinion is indistinguishable from fascism.

Again, in a lecture delivered to a debating society, she says: “Just because a thing ought to be true — just because you mean well — just because it fits your ideology — just because it would be very convenient in the general scheme of things if it were true — doesn’t mean it is true. You need to be prepared to back up your facts because if you say something that is not popular, you will surely be attacked. Or to quote George Orwell: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’. And to quote him again: ‘three words: Tell. The. Truth’.”

If great art delights even as it instructs, then this collection qualifies. Atwood is incapable of letting a subject remain uninteresting. Her images are always sharp, well-defined, a poet’s gift. A generous writer, her authorial voice is welcoming and though it is abundantly clear that the voice belongs to an incredibly intelligent person, it never comes off as condescending. One can’t help but read on and imagine her as someone who loves their chosen profession.

In this there is something of who she is as a person. With an almost childlike fascination for all things human, animal and mineral, she is, first and foremost, a true artist.

Joy and passion are usually contagious. And hers infect the reader quickly.

The reviewer is a bibliophile

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 18th, 2023