0:00:03 > 0:00:05When you're in the middle of a story,
0:00:05 > 0:00:09it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion.
0:00:09 > 0:00:13A dark roaring, a blindness,
0:00:13 > 0:00:17a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood.
0:00:18 > 0:00:20Like a house in a whirlwind,
0:00:20 > 0:00:24or else a boat crushed by the icebergs, or swept over the rapids,
0:00:24 > 0:00:27and all aboard powerless to stop it.
0:00:29 > 0:00:34It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all,
0:00:34 > 0:00:38when you're telling it, to yourself, or to someone else.
0:00:38 > 0:00:42The celebrated and eminent Canadian novelist, poet and critic,
0:00:42 > 0:00:44Margaret Atwood.
0:00:44 > 0:00:46I have been reading a lot of stuff about you,
0:00:46 > 0:00:49trying to find out about Margaret Atwood.
0:00:49 > 0:00:50I've read a lot of stuff,
0:00:50 > 0:00:52but I still don't know anything about Margaret Atwood.
0:00:52 > 0:00:53You have a marvellous sense
0:00:53 > 0:00:55of not communicating anything about yourself.
0:00:55 > 0:00:57You haven't asked me anything about myself.
0:00:57 > 0:00:59Do you think you frighten people?
0:00:59 > 0:01:02- Do you ever get that sense? - Oh, yeah, sure I frighten people.
0:01:02 > 0:01:03GENTLE LAUGHTER
0:01:03 > 0:01:05Don't ask me why, it's not my problem.
0:01:05 > 0:01:07LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
0:01:10 > 0:01:13During a writing life spanning more than seven decades,
0:01:13 > 0:01:16Margaret Atwood has made a deep impact
0:01:16 > 0:01:18across continents and generations.
0:01:21 > 0:01:23I think about what Atwood broke through.
0:01:23 > 0:01:26I think about the prejudices, I think about the preconceptions.
0:01:26 > 0:01:29She just blew away all the borders,
0:01:29 > 0:01:31all the shut doors, she just blew them all open.
0:01:34 > 0:01:37Her best-known work, The Handmaid's Tale,
0:01:37 > 0:01:41remains a terrifying warning against the misuse of power...
0:01:41 > 0:01:43WHISTLE
0:01:43 > 0:01:45INDISTINCT SHOUTING
0:01:47 > 0:01:50..and following recent political events,
0:01:50 > 0:01:53the novel has taken on an alarming new resonance.
0:01:55 > 0:01:57You know what? It's time in our country
0:01:57 > 0:02:02that we had somebody with a strong temperament, I hate to say.
0:02:04 > 0:02:06She does sort of warn us, I feel.
0:02:07 > 0:02:10This is what will happen if you pursue this route.
0:02:11 > 0:02:15She's a visionary. She's as much a visionary...
0:02:15 > 0:02:17as HG Wells was.
0:02:18 > 0:02:22As a writer and a woman coming of age in post-war Canada,
0:02:22 > 0:02:26Margaret Atwood forged into uncharted territory.
0:02:28 > 0:02:31She was and is a literary pioneer,
0:02:31 > 0:02:34who blazed a trail that others would follow.
0:02:36 > 0:02:40Margaret had, like, 40 years of being a creative force.
0:02:40 > 0:02:43It's been inspiring for me to work with her and learn from a master.
0:03:01 > 0:03:07Our country is large in extent but small in population,
0:03:07 > 0:03:09which accounts for our fear of empty spaces...
0:03:11 > 0:03:13And also our need for them.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19Much of it is covered in water,
0:03:19 > 0:03:21which accounts for our interest in reflections...
0:03:22 > 0:03:24..sudden vanishings,
0:03:24 > 0:03:27the dissolution of one thing into another.
0:03:30 > 0:03:33Much of it, however, is rock,
0:03:33 > 0:03:36which accounts for our belief in fate.
0:03:40 > 0:03:44Margaret Atwood was born in Canada in 1939.
0:03:50 > 0:03:53At the time, the country was not known for its literature.
0:04:00 > 0:04:05What could there be to say about such a vast expanse of nothingness?
0:04:13 > 0:04:16But Margaret Atwood would change all that.
0:04:17 > 0:04:18And when you were a child,
0:04:18 > 0:04:20there were hardly any of these buildings here?
0:04:20 > 0:04:23- They weren't here at all, no. - None of them?- Nothing.
0:04:23 > 0:04:25The highest building was the Royal York Hotel,
0:04:25 > 0:04:29which looks so short now, was considered immense.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32At what age did you become aware of not just Canada,
0:04:32 > 0:04:34but what its place was in the world?
0:04:34 > 0:04:37- What year are we talking about? - Let's talk about your teenage...
0:04:37 > 0:04:40My American boyfriend, when I was 18,
0:04:40 > 0:04:43used to tell me about Chicago and how big it was and how much more
0:04:43 > 0:04:46- wonderful it was.- I mean, what did you tell him about Canada,
0:04:46 > 0:04:49- if he told you about Chicago? - Nothing! What was I going to say?
0:04:56 > 0:05:01The Canada that I grew up in thought of itself as a cultural backwater.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05First-rate artistic items - books, films, music -
0:05:05 > 0:05:07were known to come from elsewhere.
0:05:08 > 0:05:12If you wanted to be serious about writing,
0:05:12 > 0:05:15it was taken for granted that you had to leave the country.
0:05:17 > 0:05:20You yourself, as you were growing up,
0:05:20 > 0:05:24could see that somehow literature and culture in Canada was either,
0:05:24 > 0:05:26you know, borrowed or acquired?
0:05:26 > 0:05:29You know, basically, I didn't think much about it
0:05:29 > 0:05:31until I was writing about it.
0:05:31 > 0:05:35So I passed my teen years in a state of blissful oblivion.
0:05:39 > 0:05:41It was an unusual childhood.
0:05:44 > 0:05:46Margaret's father was an entomologist,
0:05:46 > 0:05:50and her family spent most of the year in the backwoods of Canada
0:05:50 > 0:05:52while he studied insects.
0:05:59 > 0:06:03Every spring, my parents would take off for the north.
0:06:03 > 0:06:07Every autumn, when the snow set in, they would return to the city...
0:06:08 > 0:06:11..usually to a different apartment each time.
0:06:12 > 0:06:16At the age of six months, I was carried into the woods
0:06:16 > 0:06:20in a packsack, and this landscape became my home town.
0:06:22 > 0:06:27You must not think electricity, you must not think running water.
0:06:27 > 0:06:29You must not think lavatories?
0:06:29 > 0:06:32No, you must not think those, no.
0:06:34 > 0:06:37Margaret's father came from rural Nova Scotia.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42Her mother was the daughter of a country doctor.
0:06:42 > 0:06:45They met while they were still at high school.
0:06:45 > 0:06:51My dad saw her sliding down the banister of the central staircase
0:06:51 > 0:06:55and said to himself, "That is the woman I will marry".
0:06:55 > 0:06:59It took him two tries, but he finally accomplished it.
0:06:59 > 0:07:03She had never tented outside or done any of those woodsy things,
0:07:03 > 0:07:06so what he introduced her to was a way of life
0:07:06 > 0:07:09that did not involve getting dressed up
0:07:09 > 0:07:10and putting on a hat and gloves,
0:07:10 > 0:07:14which she basically hated, or very much housework,
0:07:14 > 0:07:18because in the woods you don't have to do a lot of housework.
0:07:18 > 0:07:19There are no vacuum cleaners.
0:07:21 > 0:07:25So she said, "I would just sweep up the dirt and throw it out the door".
0:07:31 > 0:07:34For Margaret and her older brother Harold,
0:07:34 > 0:07:36it was a close-knit, carefree childhood
0:07:36 > 0:07:39that seemed alien to visitors from the city.
0:07:42 > 0:07:44We met as teenagers at a summer camp.
0:07:44 > 0:07:47She was called Peggy Nature then,
0:07:47 > 0:07:51and I used to visit her up in Kipawa, in northern Quebec.
0:07:51 > 0:07:56I was this city kid who found myself extremely uncomfortable
0:07:56 > 0:07:59in a situation where there was no running water
0:07:59 > 0:08:02and there was no electricity or anything -
0:08:02 > 0:08:04but they were totally in sync with it,
0:08:04 > 0:08:06it was fine, they never had a problem.
0:08:06 > 0:08:09I remember, there was a mouse running up and down the rafters
0:08:09 > 0:08:11of the exposed brick roof,
0:08:11 > 0:08:12and I was kind of freaking out
0:08:12 > 0:08:15because I thought it was going to end up in my sleeping bag,
0:08:15 > 0:08:18and Margaret had a humane trap
0:08:18 > 0:08:20that caught the mouse and then we got in a canoe
0:08:20 > 0:08:23and we took the mouse to a neighbouring island.
0:08:23 > 0:08:25That's the way she was.
0:08:29 > 0:08:31From an early age, we got instructions
0:08:31 > 0:08:34about avoiding lethal stupidity.
0:08:35 > 0:08:39Don't set forest fires, don't fall out of boats,
0:08:39 > 0:08:43don't go swimming in thunderstorms, that sort of thing.
0:08:46 > 0:08:48Squeamishness and whining were not encouraged.
0:08:50 > 0:08:53Girls were not expected to do more of it than boys.
0:08:53 > 0:08:56Crying was not viewed with indulgence.
0:08:57 > 0:09:00Rational debate was smiled upon,
0:09:00 > 0:09:03as was curiosity about almost everything.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11Did you see yourself as a bit of a tomboy, yourself, or not really?
0:09:11 > 0:09:16No, I did not consider any of this in any way unusual.
0:09:16 > 0:09:20You don't wear frilly skirts in the woods.
0:09:20 > 0:09:21- Right.- For several reasons -
0:09:21 > 0:09:24but one of them is that the black flies and mosquitoes
0:09:24 > 0:09:27would get up under them. You don't want that.
0:09:30 > 0:09:33As well as being well-drilled in woodland survival,
0:09:33 > 0:09:35the Atwood children were schooled at home.
0:09:37 > 0:09:39The University of Toronto Library
0:09:39 > 0:09:43holds hundreds of their early creative works.
0:09:45 > 0:09:49This is Annie The Ant, which was my first novel, and it...
0:09:49 > 0:09:51Could you read me a bit of Annie The Ant?
0:09:51 > 0:09:53Well, it's very boring at the beginning.
0:09:53 > 0:09:55Well, why don't you go straight to the middle?
0:09:55 > 0:09:56You have to go from the beginning
0:09:56 > 0:09:58to realise that I've learned something about narrative,
0:09:58 > 0:10:00which is that you shouldn't be so boring
0:10:00 > 0:10:02at the beginning!
0:10:02 > 0:10:06It starts in a quite boring way, because Annie is an egg.
0:10:06 > 0:10:09Then Annie is a larva.
0:10:09 > 0:10:12"The larva that would produce Queen Ant had to be fed royal jelly,
0:10:12 > 0:10:13"but she was just a worker,
0:10:13 > 0:10:17"so she could eat all the crumbs and things that the grown-up worker ants
0:10:17 > 0:10:20"brought in and in a while she'd be able to turn into a pupa
0:10:20 > 0:10:22"and then into an ant". You hooked yet?
0:10:22 > 0:10:25Yeah, yeah, actually I'm enjoying this, go on.
0:10:25 > 0:10:26So inside the pupa...
0:10:26 > 0:10:29"She was slowly turning into an ant.
0:10:29 > 0:10:31"When it was time, Annie came out.
0:10:31 > 0:10:33"She looked around at this strange new world,
0:10:33 > 0:10:36"then she went out and worked with the other ants".
0:10:36 > 0:10:38Kind of like Brave New World, isn't it?!
0:10:38 > 0:10:40- Yes.- Very much.- And how did it end, the Annie book?
0:10:40 > 0:10:43How did it end? "The end".
0:10:43 > 0:10:45So, not nearly as exciting, I would say...
0:10:45 > 0:10:47As The Handmaid's Tale?
0:10:47 > 0:10:48For instance!
0:10:54 > 0:10:58In 1945, the family moved to Toronto
0:10:58 > 0:11:01and Margaret began to have more to do with cities,
0:11:01 > 0:11:03and with other children.
0:11:09 > 0:11:12After moving between several different schools,
0:11:12 > 0:11:15she arrived here, at Leaside High.
0:11:21 > 0:11:24For a young girl used to home-schooling,
0:11:24 > 0:11:27the rigours of the school routine came as something of a shock.
0:11:29 > 0:11:32It was the military phase of schools.
0:11:32 > 0:11:34The girls marched in the girls' door,
0:11:34 > 0:11:36the boys marched in the boys' door,
0:11:36 > 0:11:40and then you had to sit in rows and put up your hand
0:11:40 > 0:11:43and all of these kinds of things -
0:11:43 > 0:11:47and also the pace at which things moved was glacial.
0:11:49 > 0:11:53So I think I did develop an ability to look very attentive
0:11:53 > 0:11:55while thinking about something else.
0:11:59 > 0:12:02Elements of that experience of school
0:12:02 > 0:12:05would one day feed into her novel Cat's Eye.
0:12:07 > 0:12:12"So I am left to the girls, real girls at last, in the flesh,
0:12:12 > 0:12:16"but I'm not used to girls or familiar with their customs.
0:12:16 > 0:12:18"I feel awkward around them.
0:12:18 > 0:12:19"I don't know what to say.
0:12:22 > 0:12:23"I know the unspoken rules of boys...
0:12:25 > 0:12:28"..but with girls, I sense that I'm always on the verge
0:12:28 > 0:12:30"of some unforeseen calamitous blunder."
0:12:34 > 0:12:38Cat's Eye is about a girl who comes to a new environment,
0:12:38 > 0:12:41she's come from the country,
0:12:41 > 0:12:43rather like Margaret Atwood did herself,
0:12:43 > 0:12:48and goes to school and can read no codes.
0:12:49 > 0:12:53And, as we all know, the codes of girlhood are just...
0:12:55 > 0:12:59They're labyrinthine, they're mean, they're set for exclusion,
0:12:59 > 0:13:02they're set for cliques, all sorts of things.
0:13:02 > 0:13:03- FILM:- Why don't you come over to my house
0:13:03 > 0:13:05and we'll work it out together?
0:13:05 > 0:13:08And I remember when we published that book, that people said,
0:13:08 > 0:13:11"Oh, it's like Lord Of The Flies, for girls".
0:13:11 > 0:13:13People hadn't really put it on the page before,
0:13:13 > 0:13:15what little girls do to each other, actually,
0:13:15 > 0:13:19and how wicked that is, and how they can destroy people.
0:13:19 > 0:13:23I mean, that's a brutal book in lots of ways, isn't it?
0:13:27 > 0:13:31"Perhaps she's forgotten the bad things, what she said to me,
0:13:31 > 0:13:36"or what she did - or she does remember them, but in a minor way.
0:13:36 > 0:13:40"As if remembering a game, or a single prank,
0:13:40 > 0:13:44"a single trivial secret of the kind girls tell and then forget.
0:13:44 > 0:13:48"She will have her own version - I am not the centre of her story,
0:13:48 > 0:13:50"because she herself is that...
0:13:50 > 0:13:52"but I could give her something
0:13:52 > 0:13:55"you can never have except from another person -
0:13:55 > 0:13:59"what you look like from the outside, a reflection.
0:13:59 > 0:14:02"This is part of herself I could give back to her.
0:14:02 > 0:14:04"We're like the twins in old fables,
0:14:04 > 0:14:07"each of whom has been given half a key."
0:14:11 > 0:14:15Although Cat's Eye contains elements of Atwood's own childhood years,
0:14:15 > 0:14:18the plot itself is purely fictitious,
0:14:18 > 0:14:21a fact that many critics were determined to ignore.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28People make the very naive connection between what they read
0:14:28 > 0:14:30in your books and who they think you are,
0:14:30 > 0:14:34often feel cheated when you tell them that you have invented
0:14:34 > 0:14:37things in your books, but truly that's what a writer is.
0:14:37 > 0:14:40- Yes.- A writer is a person who writes, you know, fiction or poems,
0:14:40 > 0:14:42and that's different from...
0:14:44 > 0:14:47..factual books, books of biography.
0:14:47 > 0:14:48Yes, if your novel was merely,
0:14:48 > 0:14:50or your poem was merely an autobiography...
0:14:50 > 0:14:52- You could only write one book.- Yes.
0:14:55 > 0:14:58By now it was the late 1940s.
0:14:58 > 0:15:02Women, no longer required for wartime production,
0:15:02 > 0:15:04had been herded back into the home.
0:15:09 > 0:15:11The baby boom was on.
0:15:13 > 0:15:15Marriage and four kids were the ideal,
0:15:15 > 0:15:18and remained so for the next 15 years.
0:15:19 > 0:15:25In the '50s you were given a guidance textbook, which was grey.
0:15:25 > 0:15:29This was supposed to help you choose your future career...
0:15:30 > 0:15:31..and in this guidance textbook,
0:15:31 > 0:15:37there were a lot of future careers for persons of the male gender.
0:15:37 > 0:15:39There were five for girls.
0:15:41 > 0:15:42Let's see if you can guess them...
0:15:43 > 0:15:45Nurse.
0:15:47 > 0:15:48Public school teacher.
0:15:50 > 0:15:55Airline stewardess - that was a new one - new, very glamorous
0:15:55 > 0:15:57at that time - you got the pillbox hat.
0:15:59 > 0:16:01Secretary...
0:16:01 > 0:16:02and home economist.
0:16:05 > 0:16:09I was 15 when Elvis Presley made his debut.
0:16:09 > 0:16:15This was the era of sock hops, of going steady, of drive-in movies,
0:16:15 > 0:16:18of well-meant articles by grown-ups
0:16:18 > 0:16:20about the dangers of necking and petting.
0:16:20 > 0:16:22Take me home!
0:16:23 > 0:16:26The pill was far in the future.
0:16:26 > 0:16:30Girls who got pregnant disappeared from sight.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33Gee, I haven't seen her since she left school.
0:16:33 > 0:16:37Either they'd undergone abortions, which had killed or mangled them,
0:16:37 > 0:16:40or they'd had shotgun weddings and were washing diapers...
0:16:41 > 0:16:45..or else they were hidden away, in homes for unwed mothers.
0:16:46 > 0:16:50This was a fate that needed, at all costs, to be avoided.
0:16:55 > 0:16:58Given such conditions, how is it that I became a writer?
0:17:00 > 0:17:03It wasn't a likely thing to have done,
0:17:03 > 0:17:04nor was it something I chose,
0:17:04 > 0:17:08as you might choose to become a lawyer or a dentist.
0:17:10 > 0:17:14I was walking past the football field and I wrote a poem,
0:17:14 > 0:17:17and then I thought, "This is what I want to do."
0:17:17 > 0:17:19- Just like that?- Just like that.
0:17:19 > 0:17:21It was completely ignorant, you know,
0:17:21 > 0:17:24I had no idea what that might involve -
0:17:24 > 0:17:29but the main thing is that my parents being Depression-era
0:17:29 > 0:17:31- Nova Scotians...- "Make some money."
0:17:31 > 0:17:33"You're going to have to support yourself,
0:17:33 > 0:17:34"how are you going to do that?"
0:17:34 > 0:17:38So I figured out, "I will be a journalist," said I.
0:17:38 > 0:17:40My parents...
0:17:42 > 0:17:45..dredged up a real journalist, who was a third cousin or other -
0:17:45 > 0:17:46we had a lot of those -
0:17:46 > 0:17:49and invited him to dinner to tell me about journalism,
0:17:49 > 0:17:54and obviously dissuade me from doing any such thing.
0:17:54 > 0:17:56And what he said was...
0:17:57 > 0:18:00..that if I worked for a newspaper, as he did,
0:18:00 > 0:18:04as a female person I would end up writing the obituaries
0:18:04 > 0:18:08and the ladies' pages, and that's it.
0:18:08 > 0:18:10So I thought, "OK, I'm not going to be a journalist.
0:18:10 > 0:18:13"I guess I'll just have to go to university."
0:18:17 > 0:18:21I was 17 when I enrolled at the University of Toronto.
0:18:21 > 0:18:23The year was 1957.
0:18:25 > 0:18:29Our professors let it be known that we were a dull lot.
0:18:29 > 0:18:31By and large, they were right.
0:18:32 > 0:18:35The boys were headed for the professions.
0:18:35 > 0:18:38The girls - for futures as their wives...
0:18:41 > 0:18:43..but there were also the others.
0:18:44 > 0:18:47The others wore black turtlenecks.
0:18:47 > 0:18:49They were few in number,
0:18:49 > 0:18:52often brilliant, considered pretentious,
0:18:52 > 0:18:55and were referred to as the "artsy-fartsys".
0:18:57 > 0:19:00At first they terrified me...
0:19:00 > 0:19:04then I, in turn, terrified others.
0:19:04 > 0:19:06"It is dangerous to read newspapers.
0:19:08 > 0:19:11"While I was building neat castles in the sandbox,
0:19:11 > 0:19:16"the hasty pits were filling with bulldozed corpses,
0:19:16 > 0:19:19"and as I walked to the school, washed and combed,
0:19:19 > 0:19:24"my feet stepping on the cracks in the cement, detonated red bones."
0:19:28 > 0:19:34All of this time I'd been writing, compulsively, badly, hopefully.
0:19:35 > 0:19:38I used my initials instead of my name.
0:19:38 > 0:19:41I didn't want anyone important to know that I was a girl.
0:19:43 > 0:19:47I want to ask you now about your first acceptance letter.
0:19:47 > 0:19:50- It must have been quite a moment when somebody said, "Yes".- Yes.
0:19:50 > 0:19:56Yes. That was a now-defunct little magazine called the Canadian Forum.
0:19:56 > 0:20:00That was a thrill. So I ran out to the kitchen and said to my mother,
0:20:00 > 0:20:03"I just got an acceptance letter from the Canadian Forum",
0:20:03 > 0:20:05and she said, "What's that?"
0:20:05 > 0:20:08It was kind of crushing!
0:20:08 > 0:20:11Not everybody was in my world, Alan.
0:20:15 > 0:20:17By the late 1960s,
0:20:17 > 0:20:20Margaret was confident enough to write under her own name
0:20:20 > 0:20:24and published her first novel, The Edible Woman.
0:20:26 > 0:20:28Set in Toronto,
0:20:28 > 0:20:30it was the tale of a bright young woman
0:20:30 > 0:20:35who found herself pressured into an ill-advised engagement.
0:20:35 > 0:20:38As a result, she gradually became unable to eat.
0:20:40 > 0:20:44The thing that I found most winning about The Edible Woman
0:20:44 > 0:20:46was the way in which it tackled very serious issues,
0:20:46 > 0:20:48but with a kind of light, comic touch.
0:20:48 > 0:20:50That was the thing that won me over and made me think,
0:20:50 > 0:20:53"I'd like to read more work by this author."
0:20:56 > 0:20:59People come up about The Edible Woman and they say,
0:20:59 > 0:21:02"Did you ever stop eating?" And I say, "No."
0:21:02 > 0:21:05And they get all upset about this,
0:21:05 > 0:21:07- because usually they have. - Mm-hm. Yes.
0:21:07 > 0:21:10Usually they have had the experience that I have written about
0:21:10 > 0:21:13and they can't figure out, how come I have written about it
0:21:13 > 0:21:17without having had it? But it's very simple, you say,
0:21:17 > 0:21:20"Well, did Agatha Christie really commit all those murders?"
0:21:20 > 0:21:21Mm-hm. Yes.
0:21:22 > 0:21:25It wasn't just the subject matter -
0:21:25 > 0:21:27the Canadian setting was also unusual.
0:21:29 > 0:21:32The setting of Toronto really just jumped out at me.
0:21:32 > 0:21:35I, later, as an academic and a scholar,
0:21:35 > 0:21:38discovered that one of the early drafts of the novel
0:21:38 > 0:21:43placed the events of the novel in a city called Goronto,
0:21:43 > 0:21:46which I couldn't help but think was a kind of playful acknowledgement
0:21:46 > 0:21:48that Toronto had yet to make its way into literary fiction.
0:21:55 > 0:21:59Atwood's rise as a writer coincided with Expo 67...
0:22:02 > 0:22:05..a world exhibition in Montreal
0:22:05 > 0:22:07billed as the greatest show on earth.
0:22:11 > 0:22:15For the first time, Canada felt forward-thinking and modern.
0:22:16 > 0:22:18A player on the world stage.
0:22:20 > 0:22:24If you think that the Canadian flag as you know it today...
0:22:24 > 0:22:26We only got that in 1965,
0:22:26 > 0:22:29so there was a lot of feeling of something starting.
0:22:32 > 0:22:34Lots of conversation, I do remember this.
0:22:34 > 0:22:36"What is the Canadian self-identity?
0:22:36 > 0:22:39"What is the Canadian self-identity?"
0:22:39 > 0:22:40And literature was definitely asking that.
0:22:43 > 0:22:48Expo 67 coincided with the birth of the Anansi Press,
0:22:48 > 0:22:51a progressive publishing house that championed Canadian authors
0:22:51 > 0:22:54in their native country.
0:22:54 > 0:23:00At Anansi, populist how-to guides funded new work by upcoming talent.
0:23:02 > 0:23:05Margaret Atwood was involved from the start.
0:23:06 > 0:23:08We had this line of books.
0:23:08 > 0:23:10Do you know the Idiot's Guides?
0:23:10 > 0:23:12- Yeah.- OK, so this was early Idiot's Guides.
0:23:12 > 0:23:14One of them was called Law, Law, Law,
0:23:14 > 0:23:17and it was how to write your own divorce and your own will
0:23:17 > 0:23:19without having to pay a lawyer -
0:23:19 > 0:23:22and one of them was called VD.
0:23:22 > 0:23:24It was the first VD book.
0:23:24 > 0:23:27So we were sitting around having an editorial meeting...
0:23:29 > 0:23:32..a financial editorial board meeting,
0:23:32 > 0:23:35and what was going to be our next thing?
0:23:35 > 0:23:38Should it be a cookbook?
0:23:38 > 0:23:39Those kinds of ideas -
0:23:39 > 0:23:44and I said there isn't really a relatable and understandable
0:23:44 > 0:23:48direct book on Canadian literature,
0:23:48 > 0:23:51something that answers the question that people are always asking me,
0:23:51 > 0:23:54which is, "Isn't it just second-rate British or American?
0:23:54 > 0:23:58"Why should we bother? Surely it's just a blank on the map."
0:23:58 > 0:24:03So we decided that we were going to write the VD of Canadian literature.
0:24:08 > 0:24:11She called the book Survival.
0:24:13 > 0:24:16In it, Atwood boldly made the case
0:24:16 > 0:24:19for a unique and distinctive Canadian literature,
0:24:19 > 0:24:21centred around victims
0:24:21 > 0:24:24and their ability to survive the elements.
0:24:27 > 0:24:31It's not surprising to me that she wrote a book about Canadian writing
0:24:31 > 0:24:34because she embodies that sort of relationship, I think,
0:24:34 > 0:24:38between a person and the landscape.
0:24:38 > 0:24:40For me, that's a very Canadian concern...
0:24:42 > 0:24:45..and I think that connection is really crucial to her writing
0:24:45 > 0:24:47and really crucial to her thinking
0:24:47 > 0:24:49and crucial to Canadian thinking, I would say, too.
0:24:53 > 0:24:54"Every country or culture
0:24:54 > 0:25:00"has a single unifying and informing symbol at its core.
0:25:00 > 0:25:04"The central symbol for Canada is undoubtedly survival.
0:25:09 > 0:25:12"Our stories are likely to be tales from awful experience.
0:25:14 > 0:25:18"The north, the snowstorm, the sinking ship
0:25:18 > 0:25:20"that killed everyone else.
0:25:22 > 0:25:25"The survivor has not triumph or victory
0:25:25 > 0:25:27"but the fact of his survival.
0:25:29 > 0:25:33"He has little after his ordeal that he did not have before,
0:25:33 > 0:25:36"except gratitude for having escaped with his life."
0:25:40 > 0:25:44We thought we might sell 5,000 copies, which was big in our world -
0:25:44 > 0:25:47and for some reason it just hit that moment.
0:25:51 > 0:25:56When Survival was published in 1972, it sold 30,000 copies.
0:25:57 > 0:26:00Huge, for that time.
0:26:00 > 0:26:03Suddenly Margaret Atwood was a household name.
0:26:04 > 0:26:06Well, it was a double-barrelled shotgun.
0:26:06 > 0:26:09That was the moment which Farley Mowat,
0:26:09 > 0:26:11a well-known writer of the time,
0:26:11 > 0:26:15said to me, "Now you are a target and people will shoot at you."
0:26:17 > 0:26:19- And was he right?- Absolutely.
0:26:19 > 0:26:22I think that a certain kind of thing happens to people
0:26:22 > 0:26:25when they achieve a certain degree of work -
0:26:25 > 0:26:29we might call it success or we could call it notoriety -
0:26:29 > 0:26:32but people think of them...
0:26:32 > 0:26:36I mean, they stop thinking of them as a writer
0:26:36 > 0:26:37and start thinking of them
0:26:37 > 0:26:40as a kind of substitute preacher.
0:26:40 > 0:26:42It turns you into a sort of cardboard cut-out.
0:26:47 > 0:26:52That same year, Margaret published Surfacing, her second novel,
0:26:52 > 0:26:53which was later made into a film.
0:26:55 > 0:26:57It's a story of self-discovery
0:26:57 > 0:27:00set against the landscape she knew so well.
0:27:02 > 0:27:06'Surfacing, to me, so much epitomises a woman
0:27:06 > 0:27:08'in a landscape in Canada,
0:27:08 > 0:27:12'particularly in Ontario, a province full of lakes and woods.'
0:27:13 > 0:27:15It's sort of a '60s book in some ways, too,
0:27:15 > 0:27:19cos it's about finding yourself. It's pre-feminism in many ways -
0:27:19 > 0:27:21but it's so much about the landscape,
0:27:21 > 0:27:22it's so much about the water.
0:27:24 > 0:27:27So much about diving into yourself...
0:27:32 > 0:27:35..and I think there was that sense of mapping this country.
0:27:35 > 0:27:39She also had this wonderful phrase, "A country needs its own voice",
0:27:39 > 0:27:41and I think she was part of that generation
0:27:41 > 0:27:44that were just rising all up to answer those questions.
0:27:59 > 0:28:02For a Canadian woman coming of age in the 1960s,
0:28:02 > 0:28:07the expectation was courtship, love and marriage -
0:28:07 > 0:28:08and the sooner, the better...
0:28:10 > 0:28:12..but Margaret was in no hurry to conform.
0:28:14 > 0:28:18There were two broken engagements, and one short-lived marriage
0:28:18 > 0:28:21before she met the writer, Graeme Gibson,
0:28:21 > 0:28:23who would become her lifelong partner.
0:28:28 > 0:28:30How did you meet, and was it instant attraction?
0:28:32 > 0:28:33No.
0:28:34 > 0:28:37It was a noisy...this noisy party at Grossman's in Toronto,
0:28:37 > 0:28:40and she told me she thought that my book should have won
0:28:40 > 0:28:43the Governor General's Award when hers was one of the three.
0:28:43 > 0:28:44And conversely, you said...
0:28:44 > 0:28:46No, he didn't.
0:28:46 > 0:28:48I said, "My goodness..." I've forgotten...
0:28:48 > 0:28:51I was overcome, Peggy, as I so frequently am.
0:28:53 > 0:28:58Graeme is a gentleman, he's kind and loving, attentive,
0:28:58 > 0:29:00totally in awe of her.
0:29:00 > 0:29:02She's so lucky to have him
0:29:02 > 0:29:05because not a lot of men in such a relationship
0:29:05 > 0:29:11would be able to deal with her intensity, her drive, her ambition,
0:29:11 > 0:29:14and yet he's there for her at every turn.
0:29:17 > 0:29:18In 1973,
0:29:18 > 0:29:25Margaret and Graeme moved to a farm in the rural community of Alliston.
0:29:25 > 0:29:27Three years later,
0:29:27 > 0:29:29their daughter Jess was born.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35I remember what a lovely mother she was.
0:29:35 > 0:29:40She wasn't a doting mum, and she treated Jess as a little adult.
0:29:40 > 0:29:41"With a choked cry,
0:29:41 > 0:29:46"Israel Hands loosed his grasp upon the shrouds and plunged headfirst
0:29:46 > 0:29:48- "into the water."- How come?
0:29:48 > 0:29:49He shot him by mistake.
0:29:49 > 0:29:54- Who did?- Jim Hawkins shot Israel Hands by mistake.
0:29:54 > 0:29:55Hmm...
0:29:57 > 0:29:59OK, that's the end of that chapter.
0:30:02 > 0:30:05When I was an aspiring female poet,
0:30:05 > 0:30:10the notion of required sacrifice was simply accepted.
0:30:10 > 0:30:13The same was true for any sort of career for a woman...
0:30:13 > 0:30:16but art was worse,
0:30:16 > 0:30:18because the sacrifice was more complete.
0:30:20 > 0:30:24You couldn't be a wife and a mother and also an artist,
0:30:24 > 0:30:28because each one of these things required total dedication.
0:30:29 > 0:30:31SHE WHISTLES
0:30:35 > 0:30:36"Spelling.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39"My daughter plays on the floor with plastic letters.
0:30:39 > 0:30:42"Red, blue and hard yellow.
0:30:42 > 0:30:47"Learning how to spell, spelling, how to make spells.
0:30:47 > 0:30:50"I wonder how many women denied themselves daughters,
0:30:50 > 0:30:52"closed themselves in rooms,
0:30:52 > 0:30:55"drew the curtains so they could mainline words.
0:30:56 > 0:31:00"A child is not a poem, a poem is not a child.
0:31:00 > 0:31:01"There is no either or."
0:31:05 > 0:31:07Is parenting done equally?
0:31:07 > 0:31:10Parenting isn't a job, it's a condition of the universe.
0:31:14 > 0:31:18Margaret Atwood is often described as a feminist writer,
0:31:18 > 0:31:20but she maintains that her popularity
0:31:20 > 0:31:23amongst the feminist community was unsought.
0:31:26 > 0:31:30I began as a profoundly apolitical writer,
0:31:30 > 0:31:34but then I began to do what all novelists and some poets do -
0:31:34 > 0:31:36I began to describe the world around me.
0:31:38 > 0:31:41Women suffer in my novels because most women I talk to
0:31:41 > 0:31:43seem to have suffered.
0:31:47 > 0:31:48In 1984,
0:31:48 > 0:31:51Margaret spent several months in Berlin
0:31:51 > 0:31:53on a cultural fellowship programme.
0:31:55 > 0:31:58At the time, it was a city divided.
0:32:00 > 0:32:04It was in Berlin that she began the novel that would make her
0:32:04 > 0:32:06an international name.
0:32:10 > 0:32:12The Handmaid's Tale is a work of speculative fiction,
0:32:12 > 0:32:15or dystopian fiction, in which women have been reduced
0:32:15 > 0:32:18solely to their reproductive function.
0:32:18 > 0:32:22The Republic of Gilead is a terrifying world in which women
0:32:22 > 0:32:25are denied access to any kind of autonomy,
0:32:25 > 0:32:29any kind of right to control the course of their own lives.
0:32:34 > 0:32:39"The lawns are tidy, the facades are gracious, in good repair.
0:32:39 > 0:32:42"They're like the beautiful pictures they used to print in the magazines
0:32:42 > 0:32:46"about homes and gardens and interior decoration.
0:32:47 > 0:32:50"There is the same absence of people,
0:32:50 > 0:32:53"the same air of being asleep.
0:32:55 > 0:32:58"The street is almost like a museum,
0:32:58 > 0:33:00"or a street in a model town
0:33:00 > 0:33:05"constructed to show the way people used to live.
0:33:05 > 0:33:10"As in those pictures, those museums, those model towns,
0:33:10 > 0:33:12"there are no children.
0:33:13 > 0:33:17"This is the heart of Gilead, where the war cannot intrude,
0:33:17 > 0:33:20"except on television.
0:33:20 > 0:33:23"Where the edges are, we aren't sure.
0:33:23 > 0:33:27"They vary according to the attacks and counterattacks,
0:33:27 > 0:33:31"but this is the centre, where nothing moves.
0:33:31 > 0:33:37" 'The Republic of Gilead,' said Aunt Lydia, 'knows no bounds.
0:33:37 > 0:33:40" 'Gilead is within you.' "
0:33:46 > 0:33:48The Handmaid's Tale is, of all your books,
0:33:48 > 0:33:50it's one that everyone talks about.
0:33:50 > 0:33:52I know - and increasingly, now.
0:33:52 > 0:33:57The Handmaid's Tale I wrote partly in answer to the question,
0:33:57 > 0:34:00if you were going to put in a totalitarian regime
0:34:00 > 0:34:05in the United States, what kind of totalitarian regime would it be?
0:34:05 > 0:34:09As we know from the history of the 20th century,
0:34:09 > 0:34:12both the USSR and Nazi Germany
0:34:12 > 0:34:16came in as utopian plans.
0:34:16 > 0:34:19On the other hand, if you have no plans for making things better...
0:34:20 > 0:34:22..they get worse.
0:34:22 > 0:34:27So we're always caught between these two things.
0:34:27 > 0:34:29What do we mean by better?
0:34:29 > 0:34:33How do we get from here to that better?
0:34:33 > 0:34:36And does that better involve a big hole
0:34:36 > 0:34:39with a lot of dead people in it?
0:34:39 > 0:34:41As has frequently been the case.
0:34:41 > 0:34:44It was also partly in answer to the question,
0:34:44 > 0:34:47if you were going to put women back into the home,
0:34:47 > 0:34:53as the right was already saying they should be put in the 1980s,
0:34:53 > 0:34:56how do you make them go back in?
0:34:56 > 0:34:57Now that the...
0:34:57 > 0:35:01box has been opened and the butterflies are out
0:35:01 > 0:35:04and flitting about, how do you cram them all back in?
0:35:04 > 0:35:05By what method?
0:35:10 > 0:35:11Kneel.
0:35:14 > 0:35:17'In The Handmaid's Tale, their method
0:35:17 > 0:35:19'is to force women to reproduce
0:35:19 > 0:35:20'for the good of the state.'
0:35:25 > 0:35:28You girls will serve the leaders,
0:35:28 > 0:35:30and their barren wives.
0:35:30 > 0:35:32You will bear children for them.
0:35:34 > 0:35:37Oh, you are so lucky!
0:35:39 > 0:35:42'The red cover-ups that the handmaids are required to wear,
0:35:42 > 0:35:44'where did that come from?'
0:35:44 > 0:35:46It came from several different sources.
0:35:46 > 0:35:49Number one, I was frightened as a child
0:35:49 > 0:35:51by the Old Dutch Cleanser packet.
0:35:51 > 0:35:54- Tell me about...- Old Dutch Cleanser
0:35:54 > 0:35:57was something you cleaned sinks with.
0:35:57 > 0:36:01On it was a picture of a Dutch woman in a big blue outfit
0:36:01 > 0:36:04with a bonnet that hid her face.
0:36:04 > 0:36:07So, I was quite frightened by it as a child, this was...
0:36:07 > 0:36:12You were looking into the abyss when you looked at that package.
0:36:12 > 0:36:16Another one was, in Canada, during the War,
0:36:16 > 0:36:21in prisoner of war camps, the outfits were red,
0:36:21 > 0:36:25and the reason the outfits were red is that you could see anybody trying
0:36:25 > 0:36:28to run away across the snow.
0:36:28 > 0:36:32The other idea of course is from Christian colour iconography.
0:36:33 > 0:36:35So, European painting,
0:36:35 > 0:36:39you will always see in these pictures the Virgin Mary wears blue,
0:36:39 > 0:36:42Mary Magdalene wears red.
0:36:42 > 0:36:45So, red went on a woman in a picture of that kind,
0:36:45 > 0:36:48it is a very sexualised colour.
0:36:53 > 0:36:57The Handmaid's Tale resonates with troubling attempts
0:36:57 > 0:36:59to control women's lives throughout history.
0:37:01 > 0:37:05From the Salem witch trials, to Nazi Germany,
0:37:05 > 0:37:08where they tried to breed an Aryan race.
0:37:11 > 0:37:13To Romania under Ceausescu,
0:37:13 > 0:37:16where birth control and abortions were banned.
0:37:19 > 0:37:22One of my rules for the book was I would put nothing into it
0:37:22 > 0:37:25that had not already been done somewhere.
0:37:25 > 0:37:28So there was a precedent for every single thing in it.
0:37:28 > 0:37:32The shocking thing was that I took all of these precedents
0:37:32 > 0:37:35and put them into Cambridge, Massachusetts,
0:37:35 > 0:37:39supposedly the home of liberal democracy.
0:37:39 > 0:37:42Why is that? Because, having been born in 1939,
0:37:42 > 0:37:45I never believe it can't happen here.
0:37:49 > 0:37:53Illegal immigration is so rampant and so dangerous and so bad
0:37:53 > 0:37:56for the United States, OK? Period, that's it.
0:37:56 > 0:37:58When are we going to get smart, folks?
0:37:58 > 0:38:00When are we going to get smart?
0:38:02 > 0:38:05Three decades after it was first published,
0:38:05 > 0:38:09The Handmaid's Tale has once again struck a nerve.
0:38:11 > 0:38:12It was quite telling
0:38:12 > 0:38:15that a lot of the women's marches around the world,
0:38:15 > 0:38:19days after the inauguration of Donald Trump,
0:38:19 > 0:38:23they sported signs and carrying quotations,
0:38:23 > 0:38:26slogans and mantras from The Handmaid's Tale...
0:38:27 > 0:38:29..and there's a good reason for that.
0:38:29 > 0:38:31It's a novel that is a work of speculative fiction
0:38:31 > 0:38:34or dystopian fiction, if you prefer,
0:38:34 > 0:38:36but it's a novel that, as Atwood insisted as the time,
0:38:36 > 0:38:39was really also recording things that had already happened
0:38:39 > 0:38:42and were happening in the world in the present moment,
0:38:42 > 0:38:44and I think that the fact that in 2017
0:38:44 > 0:38:46we are going back to The Handmaid's Tale
0:38:46 > 0:38:48really speaks to the power of the novel
0:38:48 > 0:38:50as a kind of prophecy
0:38:50 > 0:38:54and as a novel that could almost enter into any chapter of history
0:38:54 > 0:38:55and find resonance.
0:39:00 > 0:39:01I think the urgency is in everything,
0:39:01 > 0:39:04I think it's been in everything she's ever written.
0:39:04 > 0:39:07She's always understood the ways in which the power can go wrong
0:39:07 > 0:39:11in our lives, the ways in which we have to embrace authority,
0:39:11 > 0:39:14and at the same time understand that authority
0:39:14 > 0:39:17is at all points undermineable -
0:39:17 > 0:39:19and should be, to check its structures -
0:39:19 > 0:39:22and she checks the power structure with everything she writes.
0:39:30 > 0:39:33Margaret's fascination with science fiction,
0:39:33 > 0:39:37both as a writer and reader, goes right back to her childhood.
0:39:42 > 0:39:45Like a great many children before and since,
0:39:45 > 0:39:47I was an inventor of other worlds.
0:39:49 > 0:39:50Mine were rudimentary,
0:39:50 > 0:39:53as such worlds are when you are six or seven...
0:39:54 > 0:39:57..but they were emphatically not at this here-and-now Earth.
0:39:58 > 0:40:01I wasn't much interested in Dick and Jane.
0:40:01 > 0:40:05The creepily ultra-normal characters did not convince me.
0:40:05 > 0:40:07Saturn was more my speed,
0:40:07 > 0:40:10and other realms even more outlandish.
0:40:12 > 0:40:16Our earliest loves, like revenants,
0:40:16 > 0:40:19have a way of coming back in other forms -
0:40:19 > 0:40:21or, to paraphrase Wordsworth,
0:40:21 > 0:40:23the child is mother to the woman.
0:40:25 > 0:40:29So, when you started your first storytelling ventures,
0:40:29 > 0:40:31they involved your brother Harold, didn't they?
0:40:31 > 0:40:33Well, we drew comics.
0:40:33 > 0:40:35He was much more prolific than I was,
0:40:35 > 0:40:37cos he was practically three years older,
0:40:37 > 0:40:39and he had great sagas going on,
0:40:39 > 0:40:43and they, of course, were very warlike,
0:40:43 > 0:40:46because it was the War and immediately post-war
0:40:46 > 0:40:50and we were all very attuned to that as kids.
0:40:51 > 0:40:53Oh, this is good. I love this.
0:40:53 > 0:40:55What's On Neptune?
0:40:55 > 0:40:57"Introduction. This story is not true.
0:40:57 > 0:41:00"Of course, there is a planet called Neptune,
0:41:00 > 0:41:02"but its inhabitation is unknown.
0:41:02 > 0:41:04"I have made up a number of things
0:41:04 > 0:41:06"that will be used in the next two volumes.
0:41:06 > 0:41:11"Harold L Atwood, author of Alfred's Youth, etc, etc.
0:41:11 > 0:41:13- "Read on."- Go on, then, read on.
0:41:13 > 0:41:17I think every author should put that at the beginning of their book.
0:41:17 > 0:41:20Number one - a number of things are not true.
0:41:20 > 0:41:22We know, it's called fiction.
0:41:22 > 0:41:24Here's what else you've written, and then read on.
0:41:26 > 0:41:29In contrast to her brother's epic sagas,
0:41:29 > 0:41:32Margaret's stories took a softer approach.
0:41:32 > 0:41:33Painting the Easter egg.
0:41:33 > 0:41:35Yes.
0:41:35 > 0:41:39Slight mystery about the gender of the Easter Bunny.
0:41:39 > 0:41:44Always spoken of as "he", but where were those eggs coming from?
0:41:48 > 0:41:51To date, Margaret Atwood has written five novels
0:41:51 > 0:41:54that could be described as science fiction...
0:41:55 > 0:41:59..but, rather than the far-flung galaxies of her childhood,
0:41:59 > 0:42:02her adult novels are firmly rooted on planet Earth.
0:42:05 > 0:42:10The MaddAddam trilogy takes place in, let's say, nearish future.
0:42:10 > 0:42:13Human beings have done horrible things with technology -
0:42:13 > 0:42:15as we are trying to do.
0:42:15 > 0:42:18There are various rather disgusting biological things
0:42:18 > 0:42:21that are being done, the internet has grown,
0:42:21 > 0:42:24there are more different kinds of drugs available -
0:42:24 > 0:42:28and there's an apocalyptic event.
0:42:28 > 0:42:35There is an event that essentially destroys most of the human race,
0:42:35 > 0:42:37and then we see what becomes of the remnant.
0:42:41 > 0:42:43"Men can imagine their own deaths.
0:42:44 > 0:42:46"They can see them coming,
0:42:46 > 0:42:50"and the mere thought of impending death acts like an aphrodisiac.
0:42:51 > 0:42:54"A dog, a rabbit, doesn't behave like that.
0:42:56 > 0:42:58"Take birds. In a lean season,
0:42:58 > 0:43:01"they cut down on the eggs, or they won't mate at all.
0:43:03 > 0:43:06"They put their energy into staying alive themselves
0:43:06 > 0:43:09"until times get better...
0:43:09 > 0:43:14"but human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else,
0:43:14 > 0:43:17"some new version of themselves, and live on forever.
0:43:18 > 0:43:22"As a species, are we doomed by hope, then?
0:43:23 > 0:43:26"You could call it hope - that...
0:43:26 > 0:43:28"or desperation."
0:43:33 > 0:43:37For Margaret, science fiction is a bit like
0:43:37 > 0:43:39a fire and brimstone sermon,
0:43:39 > 0:43:43where you might say, "This is where you're going,
0:43:43 > 0:43:47"this is what could happen to you if you don't mend your ways today."
0:43:51 > 0:43:52She does sort of warn us, I feel.
0:43:55 > 0:43:56If you don't take care of the landscape,
0:43:56 > 0:43:58you don't take care of the wildlife.
0:43:58 > 0:44:02If you don't prize what's important between human beings,
0:44:02 > 0:44:03this is what will happen.
0:44:06 > 0:44:10We grew up in Canada knowing that it's dangerous.
0:44:10 > 0:44:13The landscape can be dangerous. The weather's dangerous.
0:44:13 > 0:44:15You can be in places that can overwhelm you.
0:44:18 > 0:44:20What I like about the sort of length of time
0:44:20 > 0:44:24that Margaret Atwood's been writing and talking about the natural world
0:44:24 > 0:44:26is that, in a way, it started off
0:44:26 > 0:44:29thinking the natural world could kill us,
0:44:29 > 0:44:32and now she is very much saying, "Actually, wait a minute,
0:44:32 > 0:44:34"we're killing the natural world ourselves."
0:44:42 > 0:44:47"I am the horizon you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso.
0:44:48 > 0:44:53"I am also what surrounds you, my brain scattered with your tin cans,
0:44:53 > 0:44:57"bones, empty shells, the litter of your invasions.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01"I am the space you desecrate as you pass through."
0:45:09 > 0:45:11Both Margaret and her husband Graeme
0:45:11 > 0:45:14are passionate environmental campaigners
0:45:14 > 0:45:18and honorary presidents of Canada's Rare Bird Club.
0:45:20 > 0:45:21See it?
0:45:21 > 0:45:25- The one inside - oh, it just stuck its head out.- Oh, OK.
0:45:25 > 0:45:28Every year they return to Pelee Island,
0:45:28 > 0:45:31a bird-watcher's paradise in Lake Erie.
0:45:32 > 0:45:36Did your love of birds and the preservation of birds -
0:45:36 > 0:45:38did it come from your childhood?
0:45:38 > 0:45:41Oh, I grew up with it.
0:45:41 > 0:45:44I'm like a person who grows up with a religion
0:45:44 > 0:45:48and therefore takes it for granted, whereas Graeme is like a convert,
0:45:48 > 0:45:52and you know they are always more enthusiastic!
0:45:52 > 0:45:57So, he is really the main mover behind our bird activity.
0:45:58 > 0:46:01There is a problem, there's no question.
0:46:01 > 0:46:04I've been doing this now for 15 years, now,
0:46:04 > 0:46:06with the birds here on this island,
0:46:06 > 0:46:09and there's far fewer now than when we started.
0:46:16 > 0:46:18So, in bird conservation,
0:46:18 > 0:46:21cats are thought to be responsible in North America
0:46:21 > 0:46:27for the largest numbers of migratory bird deaths,
0:46:27 > 0:46:33and conservation organisations have traditionally tiptoed around that,
0:46:33 > 0:46:37because cat owners are quite passionate about their cats.
0:46:37 > 0:46:39Therefore, how do you tackle the problem
0:46:39 > 0:46:42without losing your major donors and attracting a lot of hate mail?
0:46:51 > 0:46:54Margaret's latest venture is a comic book take
0:46:54 > 0:46:57on Canada's cat-bird problem,
0:46:57 > 0:47:01starring a superhero who is part cat, part bird.
0:47:04 > 0:47:05Angel Catbird.
0:47:09 > 0:47:12To bring the character to life, she enlisted the help
0:47:12 > 0:47:15of Vancouver-based artist Johnnie Christmas.
0:47:18 > 0:47:22Angel Catbird is a story about a scientist
0:47:22 > 0:47:24who is working on a gene-splicing formula.
0:47:24 > 0:47:29He has a mysterious accident one night where he gets hit by a car.
0:47:30 > 0:47:32This cat and this owl comes along,
0:47:32 > 0:47:34and then the gene fluid splashes on him
0:47:34 > 0:47:37and he gets merged with these creatures.
0:47:41 > 0:47:44The character of Angel Catbird is based on an idea
0:47:44 > 0:47:47that Margaret's been sketching since childhood.
0:47:50 > 0:47:51- Oh, here we are.- What's this?- OK.
0:47:51 > 0:47:54This is the original flying cat.
0:47:54 > 0:47:56- Oh!- There it is.
0:47:56 > 0:47:58Where did the flying cat come from?
0:47:58 > 0:48:02Well, I wasn't allowed to have a cat because we were up in the woods,
0:48:02 > 0:48:04so, I very much wanted to have one,
0:48:04 > 0:48:08and, of course, here is somebody with their cat on a leash,
0:48:08 > 0:48:13various wish-fulfilment pictures of having cats.
0:48:13 > 0:48:18So you only came back to the flying cat, to the Angel Catbird...
0:48:18 > 0:48:20- In later life. - In later life.- That's true.
0:48:20 > 0:48:22- Really later life. - Yes, but think of...
0:48:23 > 0:48:27..all the repression that must have gone on to produce such an outburst.
0:48:27 > 0:48:29Yes!
0:48:33 > 0:48:36One thing I really enjoy about working with Margaret on this
0:48:36 > 0:48:39is that, if the idea's good, that's what we go with.
0:48:41 > 0:48:42There's not a lot of ego in the...
0:48:44 > 0:48:49"Well, this is my idea and this idea has to stand because it's mine,
0:48:49 > 0:48:51"it's the best idea."
0:48:52 > 0:48:55Margaret gave me bullet points on the important things.
0:48:55 > 0:49:00She wanted, like, feathery feet, owl features, cat features
0:49:00 > 0:49:02sort of thing, but she left it very open.
0:49:05 > 0:49:07I thought he was just going to be kind of fur,
0:49:07 > 0:49:09he was just going to be this fur man, you know?
0:49:09 > 0:49:12There's no need to put on pants because you wouldn't see
0:49:12 > 0:49:15any genitalia, because he's just covered in fur -
0:49:15 > 0:49:19but Margaret immediately was like, "Is he going to be wearing pants?"
0:49:19 > 0:49:21Like, none of that is going to be going on -
0:49:21 > 0:49:22and then there were like...
0:49:24 > 0:49:27..I don't know how many versions of superhero pants we went through.
0:49:27 > 0:49:30Then we conferred on pants, and you can find them.
0:49:30 > 0:49:33Sketches of the pants. I sent him a book on feathers.
0:49:33 > 0:49:35I said that they should be feathered pants.
0:49:35 > 0:49:38So, this is the design that we chose.
0:49:38 > 0:49:39Simple and elegant -
0:49:39 > 0:49:43and that translated into this, but then he said,
0:49:43 > 0:49:48"We need an origin story for the pants, cos they can't just appear."
0:49:48 > 0:49:53So you will read in the comic that we added an origin story
0:49:53 > 0:49:54for the pants.
0:49:54 > 0:49:58We all remember Superman and how puzzled we were as children.
0:49:58 > 0:50:02I mean that question about where Superman's clothes were
0:50:02 > 0:50:03when he was Clark Kent -
0:50:03 > 0:50:06that was never really satisfactorily answered.
0:50:06 > 0:50:08He just would go into the phone booth,
0:50:08 > 0:50:11take off his clothes and come out as Superman.
0:50:11 > 0:50:14You know, where did his civilian clothes go when he did that?
0:50:14 > 0:50:17So where does Angel Catbird put his?
0:50:17 > 0:50:19I'm not going to tell you, it's in the text.
0:50:19 > 0:50:21- Oh, it's in there, is it? - Yeah, it's right in here.
0:50:21 > 0:50:23- It's in the story.- I'll find it. - Yes, you will!
0:50:25 > 0:50:29The double life led by all comic book superheroes
0:50:29 > 0:50:33is something that's always been second nature to Margaret.
0:50:33 > 0:50:35Or should that be Peggy?
0:50:38 > 0:50:40You might say I was fated to be a writer,
0:50:40 > 0:50:43because I was endowed at birth with a double identity.
0:50:45 > 0:50:51Due to the Romanticism of my father, I was named after my mother -
0:50:51 > 0:50:53but then there were two of us,
0:50:53 > 0:50:55so I had to be called something else.
0:50:56 > 0:50:59Thus I grew up with a nickname, Peggy.
0:51:00 > 0:51:03Waste not, want not - I was bound to do something
0:51:03 > 0:51:06with this extra name of mine sooner or later...
0:51:07 > 0:51:10..so, the author's the name on the books.
0:51:10 > 0:51:12I am the other one.
0:51:19 > 0:51:21She's Margaret Atwood to everyone,
0:51:21 > 0:51:25and then sometimes when you get in, slightly in on the inner circle
0:51:25 > 0:51:26you get to call her Peggy...
0:51:29 > 0:51:32..but I think she's quite clever with that,
0:51:32 > 0:51:35because when you're as big a public figure as she is,
0:51:35 > 0:51:37you need to protect yourself.
0:51:39 > 0:51:41Margaret, your stories make me very sad.
0:51:41 > 0:51:42Oh, that's too bad.
0:51:44 > 0:51:46I thought the characters were all so very lonely.
0:51:46 > 0:51:47Well, a lot of people are.
0:51:50 > 0:51:52It's nice she has Peggy to kind of retreat to.
0:51:52 > 0:51:55You know, kind of Margaret Atwood can be the person
0:51:55 > 0:51:58who can take the flak or the praise, but Peggy can go home.
0:52:04 > 0:52:05Do you care, as a matter of interest,
0:52:05 > 0:52:08how the critics respond to your books?
0:52:08 > 0:52:11You mean when I'm writing the book do I worry what critics will say?
0:52:11 > 0:52:12Well, or even afterwards?
0:52:12 > 0:52:16You can't predict it, but when you write a book,
0:52:16 > 0:52:20you already know yourself what's wrong with it.
0:52:20 > 0:52:23- You don't need to be told. - You know where the weak points are.
0:52:23 > 0:52:25You hope you've papered them over enough
0:52:25 > 0:52:27so that people won't see them!
0:52:27 > 0:52:28Sometimes it's just...
0:52:30 > 0:52:31The book is what it is,
0:52:31 > 0:52:35and some people are going to have ideological troubles with it,
0:52:35 > 0:52:39no matter how good it is or bad it is as a book.
0:52:41 > 0:52:44Margaret's received numerous literary accolades,
0:52:44 > 0:52:47but for years the Booker Prize eluded her.
0:52:48 > 0:52:50When The Blind Assassin was shortlisted,
0:52:50 > 0:52:54it was the fourth time she'd been nominated for this coveted award.
0:52:57 > 0:52:58She said to me,
0:52:58 > 0:53:00"Shall I come over for the dinner?"
0:53:00 > 0:53:05Because she'd been twice before and hadn't won,
0:53:05 > 0:53:11and there was murmurs about, oh, you know,
0:53:11 > 0:53:15"God, it's going to be three times the bridesmaid, never the bride."
0:53:15 > 0:53:18She said, "Do I need this?
0:53:18 > 0:53:20"Shall I come? What do you think?"
0:53:20 > 0:53:23And I said, "I think you should.
0:53:23 > 0:53:27"I think it would be a great shame if you didn't come,
0:53:27 > 0:53:28"whatever happens."
0:53:28 > 0:53:32And the winner, the first Booker Prize of the 21st century,
0:53:32 > 0:53:33Margaret Atwood.
0:53:33 > 0:53:35APPLAUSE
0:53:37 > 0:53:39It was such a big relief!
0:53:39 > 0:53:41I mean she's won so many prizes,
0:53:41 > 0:53:44but somehow this was getting to be a bit of a burden,
0:53:44 > 0:53:46I thought, you know.
0:53:46 > 0:53:50It would just be wonderful to just tick that one off.
0:53:50 > 0:53:52First of all, Margaret Atwood,
0:53:52 > 0:53:54congratulations on winning the Booker.
0:53:54 > 0:53:57Do awards still matter to you?
0:53:57 > 0:54:00Oh, I think they always matter in some shape or form.
0:54:01 > 0:54:04Particularly that one, because it was the fourth go.
0:54:08 > 0:54:13"Why is it we want so badly to memorialise ourselves?
0:54:13 > 0:54:16"Even while we are still alive.
0:54:16 > 0:54:21"We wish to assert our existence like dogs peeing on fire hydrants.
0:54:21 > 0:54:26"We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas,
0:54:26 > 0:54:29"our silver-plated cups. We monogram our linen.
0:54:29 > 0:54:31"We carve our name on trees.
0:54:31 > 0:54:34"We scrawl them on washroom walls.
0:54:34 > 0:54:35"It's all the same impulse.
0:54:37 > 0:54:39"What do we hope from it?
0:54:39 > 0:54:41"Applause? Envy? Respect?
0:54:41 > 0:54:45"Or simply attention of any kind we can get?
0:54:46 > 0:54:49"At the very least, we want a witness.
0:54:49 > 0:54:52"We can't stand the idea of our own voices
0:54:52 > 0:54:57"falling silent, finally, like a radio running down."
0:55:17 > 0:55:19Throughout their friendship,
0:55:19 > 0:55:22Margaret has been a muse to Charles Pachter,
0:55:22 > 0:55:25who has painted her many times over the years.
0:55:28 > 0:55:31Well, honey, that's 60 years ago.
0:55:31 > 0:55:33Isn't that frightful?
0:55:33 > 0:55:35When you think about it.
0:55:35 > 0:55:36Can you believe it?
0:55:37 > 0:55:40Keith, bring my scarf in, the yellow one.
0:55:40 > 0:55:41- Please.- Please.
0:55:43 > 0:55:45You want me to wear it...?!
0:55:46 > 0:55:48But the eyes are the mirror of the soul,
0:55:48 > 0:55:49and when you get the eyes right,
0:55:49 > 0:55:51everything else follows suit.
0:55:51 > 0:55:53She's got these gorgeous blue eyes,
0:55:53 > 0:55:57and sometimes you can see the blue and sometimes you can't.
0:55:57 > 0:55:59Anyway, I'm having a good time.
0:55:59 > 0:56:00What are you going to do here?
0:56:00 > 0:56:02You're going to make the background blue?
0:56:02 > 0:56:05- Yeah.- You're going to ruin that nice drawing?
0:56:05 > 0:56:08This is looking really good. I'm pleased.
0:56:11 > 0:56:14You were mesmerising at age 27.
0:56:14 > 0:56:16Look at you.
0:56:16 > 0:56:17Oy.
0:56:17 > 0:56:19You're still doing pretty good, honey.
0:56:19 > 0:56:21MARGARET LAUGHS
0:56:21 > 0:56:22You know how to mesmer, don't you?
0:56:28 > 0:56:30OK, here we go.
0:56:30 > 0:56:32HE CLEARS THROAT
0:56:32 > 0:56:35Owl And Pussycat, Some Years Later.
0:56:35 > 0:56:37"So, here we are again, my dear,
0:56:37 > 0:56:42"on the same shore we set out from years ago, when we were promising -
0:56:42 > 0:56:45"but minus, now, a lot of hair.
0:56:45 > 0:56:47"Or fur, or feathers, whatever.
0:56:49 > 0:56:51"I like the bifocals.
0:56:51 > 0:56:55"They make you look even more like an owl than you are.
0:56:55 > 0:56:57"I suppose we've both come far,
0:56:57 > 0:57:00"but how far are we truly from where we started?"
0:57:00 > 0:57:02All right. I'm going to do the teeny-weeny...
0:57:02 > 0:57:05- You can do that little bit in there, yeah.- ..little bit.
0:57:05 > 0:57:09"Under the fresh-laid moon, when we plotted to astound,
0:57:09 > 0:57:11"when we thought something of meaning could still be done
0:57:11 > 0:57:14"by singing, or won, like trophies.
0:57:16 > 0:57:19"I took the fences, you the treetops,
0:57:19 > 0:57:23"where we hooted and yowled our carnivorous, fervid hearts out.
0:57:23 > 0:57:26"And see? We did get prizes.
0:57:26 > 0:57:27"There they are.
0:57:27 > 0:57:29"A scroll, a gold watch
0:57:29 > 0:57:34"and a kiss-off handshake from the stand-in for the muse,
0:57:34 > 0:57:37"who couldn't come herself but sent regrets.
0:57:37 > 0:57:42"Now we can say flattering things about each other on dust jackets.
0:57:42 > 0:57:44"Whatever made us think we could change the world?"
0:57:48 > 0:57:50"Well, my dear,
0:57:50 > 0:57:54"our leaky cardboard gondola has brought us this far.
0:57:54 > 0:57:56"Us and our paper guitar.
0:57:57 > 0:58:03"No longer semi-immortal, but now moulting owl and arthritic pussycat,
0:58:03 > 0:58:10"we row out past the last protecting sand bar towards the salty open sea,
0:58:10 > 0:58:13"the dog's-head gate, and after that, oblivion.
0:58:15 > 0:58:18"But sing on, sing on.
0:58:18 > 0:58:21"Someone may still be listening besides me.
0:58:21 > 0:58:23"The fish, for instance.
0:58:23 > 0:58:28"Anyway, my dearest one, we still have the moon."