Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (Paperback)
- Category: Short Stores / Essays
- Publisher: Anchor (Sep 9, 2003)
Our Shelf Talker
This group of essays has footnotes and a bibliography and is meant to have high seriousness, but it's easy to read. It's meant to ask the question, why do I write? She realizes that she is negotiating with a lot of dead writers representing the playing field in which she herself is writing. Ms. Atwood writes with such extraordinary understanding of the nature of writing, you can't take your eyes off the book. Anyone who wants to write should read this book.- Lee from the Faith Middleton Show
Description
What do we mean when we say that someone is a writer? Is he or she an entertainer? A high priest of the god Art? An improver of readers' minds and morals? And who, for that matter, are these mysterious readers? In this wise and irresistibly quotable book, one of the most intelligent writers now working in English addresses the riddle of her art: why people pursue it, how they view their calling, and what bargains they make with their audience, both real and imagined.
To these fascinating issues Margaret Atwood brings a candid appraisal of her own experience as well as a breadth of reading that encompasses everything from Dante to Elmore Leonard. An ambitious artistic inquiry conducted with unpretentiousness and charm, Negotiating with the Dead is an unprecedented insider's view of the writer's universe.
To these fascinating issues Margaret Atwood brings a candid appraisal of her own experience as well as a breadth of reading that encompasses everything from Dante to Elmore Leonard. An ambitious artistic inquiry conducted with unpretentiousness and charm, Negotiating with the Dead is an unprecedented insider's view of the writer's universe.