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    The Tent

    Author Margaret Atwood
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    Paperback
    $14.00 US
    Knopf | Anchor
    On sale May 08, 2007 | 176 Pages | 9781400097012
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    A delightfully pointed m?lange of fictional pieces from one of the world’s most acclaimed and incisive authors, The Tent is a sparkling addition to Margaret Atwood’s always masterful work.

    Here Atwood pushes form once again, with meditations on warlords, pet heaven, and aging homemakers. She gives a sly pep talk to the ambitious young; writes about the disconcerting experience of looking at old photos of ourselves; and examines the boons and banes of orphanhood. Accompanied by her own playful illustrations, Atwood’s droll humor and keen insight make each piece full of clarity and grace. Prescient and personal, delectable and tart, The Tent reflects one of our wittiest authors at her best.


    “Delectably astringent. . . . These succinct, acridly funny pieces. . . deliver a heady punch.”
    —Los Angeles Times

    “She has a cool wit, sometimes brutally satirical, always entertaining, and serious to the bone.”
    —Katherine Dunn, The Oregonian

    “Atwood’s sentences have more bounce and boogie than those of most twentysomethings.... And although these stories take many forms, from extended metaphor to anecdote, from poem to gag, they are all very much to do with the life and opinions of Margaret Atwood.” —The Times (London)

    “The Tent exposes the nuts and bolts of the tortuous creative process....The book powerfully exhibits the human consciousness in conversation with itself, struggling to establish a voice amid the cacophony.”
    —The Observer
    Life Stories

    Why the hunger for these? If it is a hunger. Maybe it’s more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge, of the life, no matter who lived it.

    It helps if there are photos. No more choices for the people in them — pick this one, dump that one. The livers of the lives in question had their chances, most of which they blew. They should have spotted the photographer in the bushes, they ­shouldn’t have chewed with their mouths open, they ­shouldn’t have worn the strapless top, they ­shouldn’t have yawned, they ­shouldn’t have laughed: so unattractive, the candid denture. So that’s what she looked like, we say, connecting the snapshot to the year of the torrid affair. Face like a half-­eaten pizza, and is that him, gaping down her front? What did he see in her, besides cheap lunch? He was already going bald. What was all the fuss about?

    I’m working on my own life story. I ­don’t mean I’m putting it together; no, I’m taking it apart. It’s mostly a question of editing. If you’d wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.

    I was born    , I would have begun, once. But snip, snip, away go mother and father, white ribbons of paper blown by the wind, with grandparents tossed out for good measure. I spent my childhood. Enough of that as well. Goodbye dirty little dresses, goodbye scuffed shoes that caused me such anguish, goodbye well-­thumbed tears and scabby knees, and sadness worn at the edges.

    Adolescence can be discarded too, with its salty tanned skin, its fecklessness and bad romance and leakages of seasonal blood. What was it like to breathe so heavily, as if drugged, while rubbing up against strange leather coats in alleyways? I ­can’t remember.

    Once you get started it’s fun. So much free space opens up. Rip, crumple, up in flames, out the window. I was born, I grew up, I studied, I loved, I married, I procreated, I said, I wrote, all gone now. I went, I saw, I did. Farewell crumbling turrets of historic interest, farewell icebergs and war monuments, all those young stone men with eyes upturned, and risky voyages teeming with germs, and dubious hotels, and doorways opening both in and out. Farewell friends and lovers, you’ve slipped from view, erased, defaced: I know you once had hairdos and told jokes, but I ­can’t recall them. Into the ground with you, my tender fur-­brained cats and dogs, and horses and mice as well: I adored you, dozens of you, but what were your names?

    I’m getting somewhere now, I’m feeling lighter. I’m coming unstuck from scrapbooks, from albums, from diaries and journals, from space, from time. Only a paragraph left, only a sentence or two, only a whisper.

    I was born.
    I was.
    I.
    Copyright © 2006 by Margaret Atwood. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
    © Ruven Afanador
    MARGARET ATWOOD is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize.

    Atwood has won numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN America Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019, she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to litera­ture. She lives in Toronto. View titles by Margaret Atwood

    “Delectably astringent. . . . These succinct, acridly funny pieces. . . deliver a heady punch.” —Los Angeles Times

    “She has a cool wit, sometimes brutally satirical, always entertaining, and serious to the bone.” —Katherine Dunn, The Oregonian

    "Atwood’s sentences have more bounce and boogie than those of most twentysomethings.... And although these stories take many forms, from extended metaphor to anecdote, from poem to gag, they are all very much to do with the life and opinions of Margaret Atwood.” —The Times (London)

    “The Tent exposes the nuts and bolts of the tortuous creative process....The book powerfully exhibits the human consciousness in conversation with itself, struggling to establish a voice amid the cacophony.” —The Observer

    About

    A delightfully pointed m?lange of fictional pieces from one of the world’s most acclaimed and incisive authors, The Tent is a sparkling addition to Margaret Atwood’s always masterful work.

    Here Atwood pushes form once again, with meditations on warlords, pet heaven, and aging homemakers. She gives a sly pep talk to the ambitious young; writes about the disconcerting experience of looking at old photos of ourselves; and examines the boons and banes of orphanhood. Accompanied by her own playful illustrations, Atwood’s droll humor and keen insight make each piece full of clarity and grace. Prescient and personal, delectable and tart, The Tent reflects one of our wittiest authors at her best.


    “Delectably astringent. . . . These succinct, acridly funny pieces. . . deliver a heady punch.”
    —Los Angeles Times

    “She has a cool wit, sometimes brutally satirical, always entertaining, and serious to the bone.”
    —Katherine Dunn, The Oregonian

    “Atwood’s sentences have more bounce and boogie than those of most twentysomethings.... And although these stories take many forms, from extended metaphor to anecdote, from poem to gag, they are all very much to do with the life and opinions of Margaret Atwood.” —The Times (London)

    “The Tent exposes the nuts and bolts of the tortuous creative process....The book powerfully exhibits the human consciousness in conversation with itself, struggling to establish a voice amid the cacophony.”
    —The Observer

    Excerpt

    Life Stories

    Why the hunger for these? If it is a hunger. Maybe it’s more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge, of the life, no matter who lived it.

    It helps if there are photos. No more choices for the people in them — pick this one, dump that one. The livers of the lives in question had their chances, most of which they blew. They should have spotted the photographer in the bushes, they ­shouldn’t have chewed with their mouths open, they ­shouldn’t have worn the strapless top, they ­shouldn’t have yawned, they ­shouldn’t have laughed: so unattractive, the candid denture. So that’s what she looked like, we say, connecting the snapshot to the year of the torrid affair. Face like a half-­eaten pizza, and is that him, gaping down her front? What did he see in her, besides cheap lunch? He was already going bald. What was all the fuss about?

    I’m working on my own life story. I ­don’t mean I’m putting it together; no, I’m taking it apart. It’s mostly a question of editing. If you’d wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.

    I was born    , I would have begun, once. But snip, snip, away go mother and father, white ribbons of paper blown by the wind, with grandparents tossed out for good measure. I spent my childhood. Enough of that as well. Goodbye dirty little dresses, goodbye scuffed shoes that caused me such anguish, goodbye well-­thumbed tears and scabby knees, and sadness worn at the edges.

    Adolescence can be discarded too, with its salty tanned skin, its fecklessness and bad romance and leakages of seasonal blood. What was it like to breathe so heavily, as if drugged, while rubbing up against strange leather coats in alleyways? I ­can’t remember.

    Once you get started it’s fun. So much free space opens up. Rip, crumple, up in flames, out the window. I was born, I grew up, I studied, I loved, I married, I procreated, I said, I wrote, all gone now. I went, I saw, I did. Farewell crumbling turrets of historic interest, farewell icebergs and war monuments, all those young stone men with eyes upturned, and risky voyages teeming with germs, and dubious hotels, and doorways opening both in and out. Farewell friends and lovers, you’ve slipped from view, erased, defaced: I know you once had hairdos and told jokes, but I ­can’t recall them. Into the ground with you, my tender fur-­brained cats and dogs, and horses and mice as well: I adored you, dozens of you, but what were your names?

    I’m getting somewhere now, I’m feeling lighter. I’m coming unstuck from scrapbooks, from albums, from diaries and journals, from space, from time. Only a paragraph left, only a sentence or two, only a whisper.

    I was born.
    I was.
    I.
    Copyright © 2006 by Margaret Atwood. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

    Author

    © Ruven Afanador
    MARGARET ATWOOD is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize.

    Atwood has won numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN America Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019, she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to litera­ture. She lives in Toronto. View titles by Margaret Atwood

    Praise

    “Delectably astringent. . . . These succinct, acridly funny pieces. . . deliver a heady punch.” —Los Angeles Times

    “She has a cool wit, sometimes brutally satirical, always entertaining, and serious to the bone.” —Katherine Dunn, The Oregonian

    "Atwood’s sentences have more bounce and boogie than those of most twentysomethings.... And although these stories take many forms, from extended metaphor to anecdote, from poem to gag, they are all very much to do with the life and opinions of Margaret Atwood.” —The Times (London)

    “The Tent exposes the nuts and bolts of the tortuous creative process....The book powerfully exhibits the human consciousness in conversation with itself, struggling to establish a voice amid the cacophony.” —The Observer

    Additional formats

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