Two Solicitudes: Conversations

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

This book developed out of a series of Radio-Canada broadcasts in which
English-speaking writer Margaret Atwood and French-speaking writer
Victor-Lévy Beaulieu interviewed each other (in French) about their
lives as writers and anything else that interested them. The script was
later published, as Deux Sollicitudes, in 1996, and now appears in
English translation.

Unfortunately, what makes good radio does not necessarily make good
reading. For one thing, a book is directed to a different audience,
though in this case the intended readership is by no means clear. The
book begins with a journalistic introduction from the producer of the
original programs, which tells us how The Handmaid’s Tale sold three
million copies and was made into a film (the starring actress is duly
identified). In such terms, apparently, literary excellence is to be
judged. Yet the book ends with two formal academic bibliographies. This
makes no sense.

The original Québécois listeners may well have learned something
about both writers, and in any case the voices of the two participants
must have injected some human interest into the program. But I doubt
that most readers of Two Solicitudes will find much that is new. The
information here about the much-interviewed Atwood is common knowledge
for everyone seriously interested in her work. Personally, since I am
less familiar with Beaulieu’s writings, I learned a little, but
nothing, I suspect, that isn’t readily available elsewhere.

The two rate poorly as interviewers. When Beaulieu asks Atwood, а
propos of The Journals of Susanna Moodie, whether Moodie was a writer,
his failure to do even basic homework is painfully apparent. As for
Atwood, she is on record as complaining about the standards of male
interviewers, yet given the chance to set an example, can do no better
than ask Beaulieu if he had girlfriends at school and when he started
smoking.

There is far too much silly repartee; serious questions are too often
brushed aside with facile witticisms. I can see no defensible raison
d’кtre for this book.