Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

Mima Vulovic is a sessional lecturer at York University who also works
at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

Negotiating with the Dead is the product of a lecture Margaret Atwood
gave at the University of Cambridge in 2000. With her customary
incisiveness and wit, she tackles a number of fundamental questions on
the art of writing and the pursuit of a literary career. What does it
mean to call oneself a writer? What sociopolitical expectations and
myths are evoked by the title? How do writers employ or subvert these
expectations? Is there a price to be paid for the commercial success?
And, finally, what is the role of the reader?

“Wanting to meet an author because you like his work,” Atwood
observes, “is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pвté.”
Stripped of seductive prose and plots, an author is always shorter or
older or more ordinary then one expects. Though generally affable with
her own kind, Atwood is a precocious reader, entirely unendowed with
saccharine gifts of diplomacy: in her reading room, no one gets away
with anything! But isn’t that the whole point of meeting an author?
What truly matters is not what she is like, but what she likes!
Negotiating with the Dead is a rare treat for “bookies.”