![]() ![]() ![]() This book is about that kind of darkness, and that kind of desire.”Įach chapter focuses on a specific aspect of writing and she poses questions such as: why does the writer write? who does s/he write for? what is the motivation behind the writing? does s/he have a moral responsibility? what relationship does s/he have with the reader? She explores possible answers to these questions and, as always, provides a profusion of literary examples to illustrate her argument. “Possibly, then, writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back out to the light. From the answers received, she deduces that it is what her book is most about: She considers the long list of motives given by writers when asked why they write and, then, tackles the question of “what it feels like to be a writer”. The set topic she had for these lectures was: “Writing, or Being a Writer”. In her introduction, Atwood gives her usual disclaimer that she is not a scholar and that her voice is that of a writer. I also enjoyed reading Negotiating but found it more difficult to follow as some of the connections she makes can be quite obscure. I have recently read Strange Thingsand Payback, which I really enjoyed. ![]() These were later published by Cambridge University Press in a little volume entitled Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. In 2000, Margaret Atwood delivered a series of lectures on writing in Cambridge as part of the Empson lectures. ![]()
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