this arts festival<\/a>.)<\/p>\nThe bandwagon of people who believe that those of diminutive physical stature tend to compensate with outsized personalities and ambitions is one crowded bandwagon; it’s safe to say Atwood belongs in the stockpile of evidence. Atwood is a pixie, a sharp<\/em> pixie: polite, well-spoken (well, duh<\/em>), and good-humored but assertive. Questioners who hoped to throw her a curveball were likely to find themselves<\/em> swinging and missing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I had the usual problems with hearing it all, as well as some new ones.<\/p>\n
(For example, the microphone was set up on a stand in such a way that from our seats — excellent in every other way — the stand, the boom, and the mike itself covered the mouth of whoever was at the lectern. Misery for someone who makes desperate<\/span> enthusiastic use of whatever tools are available for hearing, especially lip-reading.)<\/p>\nBut I did pick up a good part of the Q&A, somehow. It never fails to amaze us that elementary questions are asked of pretty much all<\/em> authors — “When did you first know you were a writer?” and such. The upside: pretty much all authors are used to the questions and have excellent, well-rehearsed answers for them, and each author answers such questions in his or her own way: even the dullest questions get gracious, imaginative treatment.<\/p>\nOne questioner last night wondered about one aspect of Atwood’s view of her novels: did she think it was more important to tell a story, or to communicate a message? (Atwood’s fiction is often “political.”)<\/p>\n
Atwood’s answer was excellent, not just as a way of understanding Atwood herself but as a rule of thumb for understanding — and writing — fiction in general. I’m going on memory here, but her reply went pretty much as follows:<\/p>\n
I think telling a story and having something to say are exactly the same thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night, The Missus and I attended a combined reading-talk-Q&A session with Margaret Atwood. (For the curious, if you’re ever in this neck of the woods in (mostly) February, do check out this arts festival.) The bandwagon of people who believe that those of diminutive physical stature tend to compensate with outsized personalities and ambitions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,410,426,5,372],"tags":[1645,1646],"class_list":{"0":"post-6875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-themissus","7":"category-hearing","8":"category-celebrities","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-style-and-craft","11":"tag-margaret-atwood","12":"tag-seven-days-of-opening-nights","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1MT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6875"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6883,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6875\/revisions\/6883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/atwood_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C282&ssl=1\" "\\"Margaret")
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