Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (Hardcover)

by Margaret Atwood (Author) "Writing, Writers, The Writing Life - if this last is not an oxymoron..." (more)
Key Phrases: Childe Roland, Brown Owl, Isak Dinesen (more...)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (March 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521662605
• ISBN-13: 978-0521662604
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #310,927 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Margaret Laurence, NOT Margaret Atwood..., July 1, 2002

By	jp (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

I feel the need to respond to reader "Liz," who believes that the author's "alcholism" [sic] was to blame for her disappointment in this book. Liz clearly confuses Margaret Atwood for Margaret LAURENCE, the brilliant and troubled Canadian writer who committed suicide in 1983. Atwood is alive, well, and (according to all reliable reports) in no way suffering from "alcholism." I would respectfully suggest that a little more scholarship and considerably less judgmental commentary (not to mention careful proofreading) are in order before posting reviews on Amazon.com.

As a longtime fan of Atwood's work and as a writer myself, I found her insight fascinating, though I can understand the disappointment some readers felt; this is not a handbook or a how-to, it's an intellectual memoir and will consequently be a let-down for many. But if you are curious about analysis and process more than in absolutes, there is much here to interest and entertain. Atwood-the-writer can seem remote in her fiction; here she is personable and humane. Anyone who has put pen to paper will recognize and value much that is to be found in this volume.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Graduate-level Course in 220 pages, August 30, 2003

By A Customer

I just finished reading this book--twice!--and may just read it again. An intelligent, provocative, and very funny discussion of life lived in the writing realm. Each of Atwood's chapters could support a book-length volume of its own. Her ability to cross the boundaries of time, genres, genders, the human and the divine is astonishing. She is genius.

The back matter--notes, bibliography, acknowledgments, and index--are invaluable, and if you'd like you could launch a lifetime of study just using her references as the guidepost. This book has gotten me excited again about literature--a dive deep into the profound waters, far from the frothy, frivolous "acclaimed" writing that has increasingly made me feel so discouraged and alienated.

No, this is not a how-to. This is a wondering-how-and-why.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Part of a Great Tradition, April 24, 2003

By A Customer

You have to wonder if most of the previous reviewers of this book have actually read any of Atwood's fiction. If they had, they would have known the kinds of topics that interest her and that she might pursue in lectures about her career as a writer. It's hard to imagine, for example, criticizing Atwood for drawing references from 19th century literature. I see this book as following in the tradition of Virginia Woolf and Eudora Welty, by combining stories about the author's life as a woman with her reflections on what it has meant to write fiction of the highest order.