Margaret Atwood, Author: It's going to depend a lot on how dedicated Americans are to the idea of democracy.

If they're not dedicated to it, fine.

They'll live the dream.

The dream being a totalitarian society.

We'll see how well they like that.

Marcia Franklin, Host: Coming up…she's never been one to mince words…and those words have been read by millions around the world.

A conversation from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference with acclaimed author and public thinker, Margaret Atwood.

Stay tuned.

Announcer: Major funding is provided by the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Franklin: Hello and welcome.

I'm Marcia Franklin.

You may not know my guest's name, but chances are you know some of her works.

Just one of Margaret Atwood's books, "The Handmaid's Tale," has sold over eight million copies – and that's just in the English language.

In 2017, Hulu turned the bestseller into a series that ran for five seasons and won 15 Emmys and two Golden Globe awards.

The dystopian novel, which imagines a world in which women's bodies are not in their control, is also perennially on lists of the most banned or challenged books in our country's libraries.

That's a feather in the cap for Atwood, though, who has no problem speaking up about issues of totalitarianism.

At nearly 85 years old, she's been in the public sphere since the 1960s and is the author of more than 50 books, ranging from what she calls "speculative fiction," to poetry, graphic novels and essays.

I sat down with Ms. Atwood at the 2024 Sun Valley Writers' Conference for a wide-ranging discussion, one that included reflections on the success of "The Handmaid's Tale," her thoughts on potential threats to American democracy, and…my birthdate.

Well, welcome, welcome to Sun Valley.

I know you've been to Idaho before, but it's great to have you back again.

And I think I will only say this once in my life, but from one Gemini rising to another, welcome.

I understand you're a Gemini rising.

Atwood: I am.

Franklin: And I was doing my research, and I found that out and I thought, "I wonder what I am?"

Atwood: And you found out.

Franklin: So I sent in my time of birth and date of birth and got back to one of these places that sends you something back.

Atwood: You can do it online.

Franklin: Yes.

I did it online.

Atwood: Yes.

Franklin: I don't know that I actually fit the description.

Apparently, I'm supposed to be a social butterfly, which I am not.

Atwood: Well here you are.

Look.

This is social butterfly stuff.

Franklin: Is it?

Atwood: Sure.

Franklin: Okay.

Atwood: You're talking to people.

You're being charming.

Franklin: Well, it's fun, isn't it, to, to read about astrology?

I know you're interested in tarot.

Atwood: Well, they're tools of the trade.

Because if you are somebody studying literature and history, you need to know about them.

These were the belief systems of a lot of people for a long time.

So even if you're looking at, for instance, uh, Renaissance portraits of important individuals, you need to look at their hands and see which fingers the rings are on.

Because each of those fingers represents a planet.

And everybody likes it, because it's talking about THEM.

What's your sun sign?

Franklin: Well, I'm a Taurus, so apparently, I'm a hierophant.

I looked it up.

That's the card in the tarot.

Atwood: Oh, we think that, do we?

Uh, well, its governing planet is Venus.

So you're probably very interested in home decor.

Franklin: I couldn't be further from interested in home décor!

(Laughs) Atwood: Well, that'll be your Gemini rising.

The other thing about it is no matter what it says, there's something else that contradicts it.

So it's very useful that way.

Franklin: You know, I know that you don't believe you're a soothsayer .

Um, but you do allow, I think that your work has been prescient, in part because you base your work on a lot of times things that have actually occurred.

"Handmaid's Tale" has within it -- it's heavily researched; everything in it happened at one time or another in the world.

Atwood: Yes.

Franklin: But it does seem lately that there's been an acceleration of some of these… Atwood: Yes.

Well, let's go back to its publication date, which was, um, 1985.

Me having rather cornily written most of it in 1984.

Sorry about that, George Orwell, but it could not be avoided.

I started writing this at the moment when the, uh, fundamentalist religious people had decided that they could become a political force, which they have now become.

But that had just begun then.

Franklin: You know, we've had an invasion of the United States Capitol, a pandemic, laws now requiring teaching of Bible in school, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, um, an attempted assassination of a former president.

Yes, these things have happened before, but they are, it does seem as if the subjects of many of your writings are coming faster and more furiously, does it not?

Atwood: Oh, it's just like the fifties, dear.

(Laughs.)

What were we afraid of then?

We were afraid of being blown up by atom bombs.

People were quite frightened of that.

They were afraid of communists.

Um, and there was no Roe v. Wade.

There was no birth control of that kind.

Franklin: Are you concerned?

Atwood: Of course everybody in the world is concerned about that.

Um, what does America want to be?

Does it want to be the world leader, or does it want to be an isolated, fairly parochial thing unto itself?

And it's always been having this discussion with itself.

It's gone back and forth.

Franklin: You've talked about the religion, the Christianity that is being, uh, touted by some leaders as "bearing as much relation to the core tenets of Christianity as gravel does to breakfast."

Atwood: True.

Yes, this isn't Christianity, and you'll find a number of Christians who will say that.

So, Christian nationalism, like this "white supremacy Christianity," is not Christianity.

It denies the core tenets of its founder.

So, "Love your neighbor."

How do you interpret that when you're burning down people's churches?

Is that loving your neighbor?

Thinking that your group of people is superior to all other groups of people, that's not Christianity either.

And I am, I do have a religion.

I'm a very strict agnostic.

What that means is that knowledge and faith are two different things.

Once you start confusing the one with the other, you're in real trouble.

Franklin: To what do you attribute the longevity of "A Handmaid's Tale," aside from the fact that a series was made?

Atwood: "Handmaid's Tale" is about an ordinary person in extraordinary times.

Not a hero, not a villain, just an ordinary person living their life.

Which means it's quite relatable, because very few of us are heroes.

We don't know how we would've acted in the extraordinary times that we read about.

We like to think that we would've been courageous, but probably we wouldn't have been.

Franklin: We don't have time to go deeply into "The Testaments," but it was fascinating to drill down into Aunt Lydia and hear her interior monologue, hear her wrestling, hear her justifying, you know, all of the things that she did… Atwood: Okay, there will always be people willing to take those jobs.

And there will always be people frightened into taking those jobs.

Uh, because it's always better when the witch is burning to be the person piling on the wood than it is to be the person trying to stop it.

It's a much less vulnerable position.

Franklin: But if you play your chess pieces right, um, as we see Aunt Lydia trying to do in the sequel, uh, you might have, you might have the last laugh.

Atwood: Well, there's a number of examples of that, too.

Franklin: Yeah, yeah.

Atwood: There's some pretty good stories about people who are highly placed in the KGB, just for instance, who became double agents.

Because they had gone into it thinking, you know, this set of idealistic premises.

And once they got in," found it was something quite different.

Franklin: You have said that you wrote The Testaments" for your readers, because there were so many questions that people had.

Atwood: That's right.

Franklin: They wanted a resolution.

Had those readers not come up to you or asked for it over and over again, would you have... Atwood: Overview.

Franklin: ...written?

Atwood: So, 1980s, "A Handmaid's Tale" appears.

This movement to take over the United States with a religious totalitarianism was just taking off.

Uh, so I felt, "Okay, I've put everything into the book, that's it, make of it as you will, but I don't need to write as equal telling you what happened."

Uh, time moves on.

We're now in 2016.

This movement has become quite strong, and who gets elected?

We have a right-wing person being elected, uh, who would not be averse to knocking out the Constitution, getting rid of the power of Congress and taking over the Supreme Court, which is what you need to have if you're going to have an effective authoritarian dictatorship.

That's what you need.

You need to have no real opposition, and you need to have no separate judiciary.

The will of the judiciary has to be as one with yours.

If you watch Stalin's show trials, you can see that in operation.

Uh, so at that point, I felt that I had to go back and revisit it and look at how such a regime might collapse.

Franklin: I do need to ask you a question that's difficult for me to ask and potentially difficult for you to talk about.

But you wrote a beautiful obituary of Alice Munro.

Atwood: I know.

Franklin: Munro, your friend of more than 50 years, I think 55 years, something like that.

Atwood: Yeah.

Franklin: Alice Munro's daughter, after she passed away, um, wrote an essay about how the second husband of Ms. Munro, her stepfather, had molested her.

Atwood: At the age of nine.

Franklin: At the age of nine.

And she had eventually told Alice and, um, was met with no support.

And even when her stepfather pled guilty... Atwood: Yes.

Franklin: ...in 2005, Alice stayed with him.

Did not leave him.

Atwood: Correct, yeah.

So she was a literary friend.

She was not a confidante.

So this was news to me, that, um.

By the, you know, he was…husband was dead.

Alice had dementia.

She didn't know who people were anymore.

Uh, I learned about two years ago that there had been something, but I didn't know any of the details.

Franklin: So it was; I've seen you quoted as saying it as shocking to you as it was to everyone else.

Atwood: Exactly.

Franklin: People were talking about rescinding or revoking her Nobel Prize.

You can't do that.

Atwood: You can't do that.

Franklin: Nobels are given.

They're not revoked.

But as a friend, even if it was a long literary friendship and admiration, how do you feel about – you know, people are throwing away her books?

Atwood: Okay, there's a couple of pieces to this, and believe me, people have asked.

Um, so I got a call from the reporter doing the story before the story broke, right?

And she told me quite a lot about this, including the age of the girl, the kind of letters he wrote, in some sort of attempt to justify himself?

I mean, that's, that is sicko.

Um, so you're asking me, should they throw away her books?

Franklin: I'm asking, yeah, you what your sense is of... Atwood: You read people differently, but you don't not read them.

So we know quite a lot about how awful Dickens was to his wife.

At least I do, because I'm a Victorianist.

Uh, we know that Baudelaire had syphilis.

Where did he get it?

We won't even go into that.

Does that mean we shouldn't read those authors, or does it mean we should read them differently?

It just means that you have a context.

So when I was studying works of literature, it was in the age of the "explication du texte."

You just studied the text.

You didn't study anything about the author's life.

At all.

Just wasn't there.

So, studying Alice Munro, I would suggest that people look into southern Ontario, pretty gothic towns, which is where she came from.

We have now had a number of pieces about, "Was she herself sexually abused?"

Or just abused in other ways, which she certainly was.

Uh, "What was the background?

What were the expectations?

Why is her work so dark when she herself was so outwardly smiley?"

Why did people ever get the idea that she was a sweet old lady?

She never was.

Uh, so even I knew that.

Franklin: Do you believe she should have left her husband?

Atwood: I'm not her.

She was a very impractical person.

Franklin: So she might not have done too well on her own.

Atwood: And she's not me.

Franklin: Yeah.

Atwood: Let's, let's just add that in.

Franklin: Sure.

Are you pained that people are now going to stop teaching her or throwing her books away?

Atwood: I don't think it's up to me to be pained about that.

Franklin: Right.

Atwood: They will make their own decisions.

That's up to them.

I've done a lot of informal therapy on people calling me up and saying, "Wah.

What shall we do?"

I said, "She's dead.

You know, she's dead.

He's dead.

The people that you should be concerned about now are the children, if you wish to be concerned about people."

And the family decided together that they were going to make this public, because I think they'd had enough of it.

I think they'd had enough of buttoning up… Franklin: Of an open secret.

Atwood: …and not saying anything.

Franklin: Yeah, the children are supportive of their sister.

Atwood: Exactly.

Franklin: I noted that when you, in "Lives of Girls and Women," she writes, "People's lives in Jubilee, as elsewhere were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable.

Deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum."

Atwood: There you have it in a nutshell.

Franklin: Deep caves.

And what's in those deep caves that are paved with kitchen linoleum?

You wrote at the end of your really interesting essay, lovely essay from 2008, prescient again, I suppose, "The world is profane and sacred.

It must be swallowed whole.

There's always more to be known about it than you can ever know.

Within any story, within any human being, there may be a dangerous treasure.

Atwood: Of course.

But how could we ever have thought otherwise if we had actually read her work?

It's very dark.

Franklin: Yeah.

Uh… Atwood: So I don't know what her considerations were, but I think one of them was probably that she didn't know how to manage on her own.

She was fairly old by then.

Writing was what she did.

Uh, she was not a practical person; she didn't drive.

She hadn't had other jobs.

What was she going to do?

And if you think she was making lots of money out of short stories, you're dreaming.

Franklin: Interesting.

Um, out into the future, I love the fact that you're the first writer in the "Future Library," which is in Norway.

Atwood: Yeah.

Franklin: I think it's been 10 years now.

2014 is when… Atwood: Yes, they're very -- it's their 10th year anniversary.

They're very pleased about that.

Franklin: Yeah.

So they accepted…you were the first -- whatever you wrote, we don't know, but we know the title.

It's called "Scribbler Moon."

Atwood: Yes.

Franklin: And we don't know if it's poetry.

We don't know if it's essay, or whatever.

Atwood: So here was the mandate.

The mandate was "Write a manuscript.

Any manuscript made of words."

No fair putting your photo album in.

It could be any -- it could be one word, it could be a novel.

It could be a poem, it could be a laundry list, it could be a letter.

Anything made of words.

You can't tell what it is.

Just the title.

Two copies only.

They go to the "Future Library of Norway."

I gave them a hint -- archival paper.

(Laughs.)

You have to specify that.

So I put it, mine in a box, put a nice blue ribbon on it, went to Norway.

Thought they would ask me at the Customs, "What's in the box?"

And I would have to say, "I'm not allowed to tell you," and then we would be in trouble.

But that didn't happen.

And you go to Oslo.

You walk into a forest that they have planted where the trees will grow for a hundred years.

In the hundredth year, the boxes will be opened.

No pressure on me.

If you're anywhere within the next 30 years, you're probably not going to be around when they open the boxes.

Some pressure on year 95, I would say.

Franklin: (Laughs) And then the trees and the forest will be what's cut down to make the paper.

Atwood: They will make the paper.

That's the idea.

And then the Future Library of Norway will be printed on this paper.

So Katie… Franklin: Too bad they have to cut down trees, though.

Atwood: They're planted trees.

Franklin: I know.

Atwood: Yeah, it's not a pristine old forest.

Franklin: I know she put a printing press in there, just in case those things don't exist anymore.

(Laugh.)

Atwood: Just in case.

And if it's a small language -- this is an around-the-world project -- if it's a small language, they put a dictionary in, in case it goes extinct.

Franklin: But what I love is you're pretty much up for anything.

Atwood: Not anything.

Franklin: Well, okay.

I mean, but you've done a flamethrower.

You know, they made a book that couldn't be burned of yours, and you took a flame thrower to do it.

Atwood: The unburnable book.

Franklin: I mean, you're game for a lot, which is fabulous, I think.

And you keep learning and growing.

Um, what compels you?

What keeps pushing you?

I mean, you were very active on Twitter, too.

I don't know that you are still, now that it's X… Atwood: Less.

Franklin: But you took to that medium.

Atwood: Well, it was fun at the beginning.

Okay, these are all Gemini rising things.

You want to be quite familiar with them.

Franklin: I don't know that I have the energy that you do, though.

Are you like, an early-morning riser?

Do you just have naturally a lot of energy?

Atwood: I do have a fair amount of energy, it's true.

But you can get some more.

Franklin: Oh, really?

Where's the elixir?

Atwood: Um, well, we'll go into your eating and living habits after this session.

Franklin: Okay!

(Laughs.)

Franklin: I'm afraid to have you read my palm.

Atwood: Oh, I'd be happy to do that after we finish.

I can already tell you a couple...never mind.

Franklin: (Laughs.)

Atwood: Yes.

I'm not going to do it on air.

Franklin: I'm dead in a week?

Are you enjoying or are you… Atwood: Are you right-handed?

Franklin: I'm left-handed.

Atwood: Oh, interesting that you showed me that hand first.

Franklin: Yeah.

Atwood: OK. Franklin: I'm left-handed.

Um, why?

Atwood: Because if you're left-handed, your left is your dominant hand, and your right is your recessive hand.

If you're right-handed, it's the other way around.

Um, your recessive hand is the hand you were dealt.

Franklin: Yes, right.

Atwood: And your dominant hand is the hand you have played.

Franklin: Except for most left-handers, including myself, have to be ambidextrous.

So I use a mouse right-handed, I cut right-handed and I have… Atwood: Yeah.

That can cause problems when we're looking at your lifeline.

Franklin: Yeah.

(Laughs.)

Oh dear.

Um, I'm not going to ask you to predict who's going to win the election… Atwood: Thank you.

Franklin: …in the United States, which will happen right after this program airs.

But talk about the tenor, where do you think we are headed.

And if there's some foreboding, what the key ways are to lift ourselves up to be our better selves?

How are you feeling about the near future of our country?

Atwood: Okay.

It depends when you're going to air this, of course.

So let us just not try to predict too much.

But what you're really saying is: how close to a totalitarianism is the United States?

Um, let's find out.

I think it would be difficult to implement a countrywide totalitarianism the way Nazi Germany did.

But with the aid of the internet, uh, credit cards and other traceable things, it might be a bit easier than, than you would think.

So, whenever people start talking about building detention camps for anybody, you know who else is going to go in there?

So you may say, "Well, it's for illegal immigrants."

Those are not going to be the only people who end up in there.

They will be political, uh, enemies that their neighbors have informed on.

This is just according to history.

Sorry, but that's what happens.

So it's going to depend a lot on how dedicated Americans are to the idea of democracy.

If they're not dedicated to it, fine.

They'll live the dream.

The dream being a totalitarian, uh, society; we'll see how well they like that.

If they are dedicated to it, they will oppose such a society.

But it's going to be quite difficult altogether because we are in the age of multiple truths.

We have never not been in that age.

I'm reading about the 14th century right now, and the rumors that went around as to who was responsible for the Black Death.

And this was all gossip and rumor, but it travels very quickly, surprisingly quickly, even if you don't have internets and radios and telephones and all those things.

Uh, so, what is truth?

This has always been an issue.

What is the real cause of bad events?

This has always been an issue.

Were you having a plague because Apollo was mad at you?

How many sheep do you have to sacrifice?

Uh, this has, this has been a motif of, of human beings ever since they got language.

So, let's just see where it goes.

But don't treat it as if it's something absolutely new and unprecedented, because it's not.

And if you want the playbook of how these things go, you know, how did totalitarianisms go, one of the first things that happens in them is, is a purge of the believers.

Why is that?

So what do we have with Hitler?

We have Night of the Long Knives.

Who got, who got eliminated then?

Other Nazis whom he saw as rivals.

And why them?

Because they were still true believers.

They still believed in the socialism part of national socialism.

And he did not.

So they get eliminated.

Uh, who did Stalin purge in the 1930s purges?

It was the old Bolsheviks, because they were still believers, and he was not.

So, suppose these people get power.

The first people to be purged will be the true believer Republicans.

Just saying, you know.

So if I were them, I would be thinking quite hard about giving a small group of individuals that amount of power over them.

Franklin: You're constantly learning.

You're constantly trying new things.

Um, you know, you worked with Disco on the Utopian, on the Utopian Project.

Atwood: Yes.

Franklin: That was really interesting.

Atwood: Yeah.

Franklin: You know, social media, Substack.

I mean, you're constantly trying new things and I'm wondering what excites you out there?

What's next that you'd like to maybe… Atwood: Well, the exciting thing is that you don't know what exciting thing will come along next.

So if I already knew, it wouldn't be exciting.

Franklin: Fair enough.

Well, I look forward to seeing and knowing what that is, because I know you'll bring to it really an inimitable style and wit… Atwood: Well, thank you.

Franklin: …and depth to it, that will make all of us interested in whatever that new thing is.

Atwood: You're extremely optimistic.

Franklin: I'm optimistic about your ability to… Atwood: That's very nice.

Franklin: …bring us new worlds.

Atwood: That's very lovely.

Thank you.

Franklin: You're welcome.

Franklin: You've been listening to author Margaret Atwood.

Our conversation was recorded at the 2024 Sun Valley Writers' Conference.

And yes, she did read my palm after we spoke, and apparently, I've cheated death so far.

Certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

My thanks to conference organizers for allowing us to conduct interviews like this one at their renowned event for nearly 20 years.

If you'd like to watch any of them, check out our playlist on YouTube, or find us on your favorite podcast platform.

For Idaho Public Television, I'm Marcia Franklin.

Thanks for spending time with us.

[Music] Announcer: Major funding is provided by the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.