More Margaret Atwood

There are several highly quotable bits in an article about Margaret Atwood in today’s Globe and Mail. Here are a few.

On autobiography:

“If I were going to write an autobiography,” she says, “I'd feel compelled by truth.”

“Are you going to write an autobiography?”

“No. Why bother? Everyone thinks you're lying.”

On working out at a gym:

“Every once in a while, I join some gym and hope I'll follow through on it. But I'm too busy. To take a slice out of your life to go jump up and down seems an amazing waste of time. The discipline in my life all has to do with writing and the laundry. I don't have room for any more discipline.”

On the supposed dumbing-down of contemporary culture:

Unlike many observers of social trends, Atwood doesn't subscribe to the conventional wisdom about the relentless dumbing-down of the culture. She thinks smartness itself may take different forms that the older generation cannot recognize. “It's like birds,” she says. “People thought birds were stupid because they had very small brains. But you could not match the memory of a chickadee. You could not do it. They can remember exactly where they put every seed and they never come back to the same place twice.” Similarly, “it may be that the younger generation is smart in ways we don't identify as being smart.”

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