We have much to thank Annie the Ant for. Leafing through her first novel (written at the age of six or seven), Margaret Atwood noted drily – with Atwood, it is always drily – that the beginning of her story about Annie’s journey from egg to ant was very boring. “But I learned something about the art of narrative. Which is not to make it so boring at the beginning.”
Before she even hit double figures, the daughter of an entomologist and a housewife was already at the larval stage of what would become a 70-year (and counting) writing career that has granted her every literary prize and critical accolade under the sun and gifted the world a – so far, so gloriously – endless stream of dense, subtle, allusive, brilliant, visionary and always addictively readable books.
Last night, the career and the books were limned and lauded in an edition of Imagine produced and presented as ever by Alan Yentob. In Margaret Atwood – You Have Been Warned! (BBC1) there was, alas, precious little of the woman herself. It was a fine primer for the rest. We heard about her homeschooled childhood in the backwoods of Canada, the sudden change to a city high school, the strangeness of which – to young “Peggy Nature”, as she was known at summer camp – would later form the basis of Cat’s Eye (“Lord of the Flies for girls”) and her rise as a poet, novelist and critic.
This happened first in Canada, where she was instrumental in establishing and describing her country’s national literary identity, and then, with the publication of bestsellers such as The Handmaid’s Tale, around the world. This book, of course, is having a particular moment in the cultural sun, with its television adaptation resonating particularly well – if that’s the word – in the Trumpocene era. “She always understood the way power can go wrong,” noted fellow novelist Ali Smith. “She checks the power structure in everything she writes.” “Having been born in 1939,” said Atwood, after footage of the president’s early speeches, “I never believe it can’t happen here.”
But there was little that a viewer keen enough on Atwood to settle down in front of an hour-long documentary about her wouldn’t have already known. There were tantalising clips from old interviews and the 1984 film Once in August, by Michael Rubbo (which is available in its entirety on YouTube should you wish to see Atwood talking at length about herself and her individual books), which showcased her keen, searching intelligence, as well as much long quotation from her books, poems and essays – all apposite, but feeling a lot like padding with so little contemporary interview material.
Still, there were great moments, such as when she explained that she never intended or claimed to be a feminist writer. When she began to describe the world around her in her writing, she became popular with the movement because “the women in my novels suffer, because most of the women I talk to seem to have suffered”. It is this sense of organic development in an Atwood novel, rather than of writing to or within the imposed constraints of an external ideology, to which, I hazard, we devotees most respond. But we have the books. In a documentary, it’s more of her we need.
Channel 5’s In Solitary: The Anti-Social Experiment was both more fascinating than any programme about four people locked in four featureless portable buildings for five days and less histrionic than any stunt-based documentary by Channel 5 had any right to be. It really was simple. Three volunteers – Lloyd, Charmayne, Lucie – and presenter George Lamb were shorn of their phones, watches and any other communicative connection to the outside world, put in solitary confinement, and told they could press the big red button by the door if they reached a point where they couldn’t stand their own company any more.
Charmayne lasted four and a half hours, and was replaced by Sarah, who was soon literally sick with anxiety and borderline hallucinatory by the end, and George had to come out after 23 hours. The rest made it, but only Lucie thrived on it, using the time to reflect on a bad year and decide what the future should hold.
It didn’t dig deep, but it stayed sober and didn’t obscure the process or the conclusions with extraneous nonsense. It was about, as Sarah – in the neatest summary of anything, anywhere so far this year – put it in their debriefing interviews afterwards, “how you choose to use your mind”. Social media addict Lloyd swore he would see his family more and “not be the pig-ignorant idiot I was … trying to keep an image up for complete strangers who won’t give a damn how I feel.” He answered his phone during the interview, but … baby steps, Lloyd. Baby steps.
