Scientist of the human heart: Atwood's disconcerting strength comes from relentless observation and dissection.

Scientist of the human heart: Atwood's disconcerting strength comes from relentless observation and dissection. The Tent Margaret Atwood McClelland and Stewart 156 pages,hardcover ISBN ISBNabbr.International Standard Book NumberISBNInternational Standard Book NumberISBNn abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m0771008732 The Tent is Margaret Atwood's third book of short prose Short prose is a generic term for various kinds of very short fictional prose; short prose may or may not be narrative. Short prose pieces are considerably shorter than a short story, i.e., usually less than c. 1,000 words. piecesthat might be called prose poems, sketches or musings. As in Murder inthe Dark (1983) and Good Bones (1992), Atwood collects a number ofdisparate short writings--many of which have appeared in journals orelsewhere. Even at her most tentative and fanciful, Atwood is worthreading. She has much to tell us--some of it urgent--and her way ofcommunicating things of importance is unique. Atwood approaches human life--our lives--like a scientist. She is acareful observer: she declines embellishment; she employs logic. Thispositioning of herself probably owes much to her father, an entomologistat the University of Toronto Research at the University of Toronto has been responsible for the world's first electronic heart pacemaker, artificial larynx, single-lung transplant, nerve transplant, artificial pancreas, chemical laser, G-suit, the first practical electron microscope, the first cloning of T-cells, , who took his family with him on summerfield trips to camp in northern Quebec to study the habits of insects.In Morning in the Burned House (1995), her most recent collection ofpoetry, Atwood wrote in "Bored" of the tedium she feltassisting her father on his doings ("Such minutiae mi��nu��ti��a?n. pl. mi��nu��ti��aeA small or trivial detail: "the minutiae of experimental and mathematical procedure"Frederick Turner. ") andexpressed the view that she would now find fascinating what she thenfound boring ("Now I would know"). She herself has been abirdwatcher bird watcheror bird��watch��er also bird-watch��ern.A person who observes and identifies birds in their natural surroundings.bird watching n. over the past several years, a passion shared with GraemeGibson Graeme C. Gibson (born 9 August 1934) is a Canadian novelist who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He is a Member of the Order of Canada (1992), and was one of the organizers of the Writer's Union of Canada (chair, 1974-75). , who has recently published The Bedside Book of Birds (2005) andclaims that he has recorded over 80 species of birds in their downtownToronto Downtown Toronto is the heart of the City of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is approximately bounded by Bloor Street (including areas slightly north of Bloor around Yonge Street) to the north, Lake Ontario to the south, Bayview Avenue - Don Valley Parkway to the east, and Bathurst garden. Atwood dedicates The Tent to him. Even in her earliest work, Atwood drew from the worlds of scienceto describe human behaviour. Who can forget the frisson of firstreading--or, for the lucky ones like me, hearing Atwood read from--her1971 Power Politics: I approach this love like a biologist pulling on my rubber gloves & white labcoat Atwood approached more than love like a biologist. As she makesclear, like insects, birds and animals, we too are a species subject tothe immutable IMMUTABLE. What cannot be removed, what is unchangeable. The laws of God being perfect, are immutable, but no human law can be so considered. laws of nature. In her poem "Man in aGlacier"--a poem about the death of her father--she compares thetwo- or three-thousand-year-old remains of a man preserved in ice("everything intact") to the slides ("aginggelatine") that preserve all that is left of her father. She refersto "our bad godmothers" Chemistry and Physics: It was they who were present at our birth, who laid the curse on us: You will not sleep forever. Death is the logical end of the natural process of life, present atconception. Atwood comes at this truth from many directions. In Murderin the Dark she ponders the word "plot," with all itsramifications ramificationsnpl → Auswirkungen plfor fiction and our lives. In "Happy Endings"she considers different endings to the following standard situation:John and Mary meet.What happens next? After (mis)leading us through several developments, she leaves uswith this stark, disturbing truth: The only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die. Her reduction of the plots of fiction and life to simple scientificprinciples is reminiscent of the sketches of political economist StephenLeacock. In his 1910 "A, B and C: The Human Element inMathematics" from Literary Lapses, for example, he spoofs typicalmath problems. "A, B and C do a certain piece of work. A can do asmuch work in one hour as B in two, or C in four. Find out how long theyworked at it." Leacock applies human characteristics to A, B and C:"B is an easy-going eas��y��go��ingalso eas��y-go��ing ?adj.1. a. Living without undue worry or concern; calm.b. Lax or negligent; careless.c. fellow, afraid of A and bullied by him, butvery gentle and brotherly to little C, the weakling." Both Leacockand Atwood generate black humour black humourHumour marked by the use of morbid, ironic, or grotesquely comic episodes that ridicule human folly. The term came into common use in the 1960s to describe the work of novelists such as Joseph Heller, whose Catch-22 (1961) is an outstanding example; Kurt through this interplay of the literaryand the scientific. Atwood's characteristic effects are frequently based on suchlogical applications of scientific principles and methods to humanbehaviour. Take her chilling description of a lover in Power Politics: After all you are quite ordinary: 2 arms 2 legs a head, a reasonable body, toes & fingers, a few eccentricities, a few honesties but not too many, too many postponements & regrets but you'll adjust to it ... Or her characterization in "Homelanding" from Good Bones: My eyes are situated in my head, which also possesses two small holes for the entrance and exit of air, the invisible fluid we swim in, and one larger hole, equipped with bony protuberances called teeth, by means of which I destroy and assimilate certain parts of my surroundings and change them into my self. At times her observations of people seem to be made through amicroscope. She offers this clinical description in"Boyfriends": "Up close they dissolved into texture, twosquare inches of skin, a fly's view, every hair distinct, bothclearer and more obscure." By shifting her viewpoint--sometimes tobizarre, imagined characters--Atwood not only gets at certain truthsabout us and our lives, she also creates an unsettling un��set��tle?v. un��set��tled, un��set��tling, un��set��tlesv.tr.1. To displace from a settled condition; disrupt.2. To make uneasy; disturb.v.intr. atmosphere thatjolts us out of complacency. At times this technique shifts her workinto the genres of science fiction or horror. The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and Oryx oryx(ôr`ĭks), name for several small, horselike antelopes, genus Oryx, found in deserts and arid scrublands of Africa and Arabia. They feed on grasses and scrub and can go without water for long periods. and Crake crake:see rail. (2003)--as wellas several of her short stories, such as "Hairball hair��balln.A small mass of hair located in the stomach or intestine of an animal, such as a cat, resulting from an accumulation of small amounts of hair that are swallowed each time the animal licks its coat. " inWilderness Tips (1991) and "Giving Birth" in Dancing Girls See Opera girl (1977)--can be considered science fiction. In "Cold-Blooded"from Good Bones, alien creatures establish contact with"blood-creatures," so-called "after the colourful redliquid that is to be found inside their bodies and that appears to be ofgreat significance to them in their poems, wars and religiousrituals." In The Tent, a short sketch of a lecture on domestic lifein the 1950s, "Winter's Tale," uses the language ofhorror story horror storyStory intended to elicit a strong feeling of fear. Such tales are of ancient origin and form a substantial part of folk literature. They may feature supernatural elements such as ghosts, witches, or vampires or address more realistic psychological fears. : "the young are staring at you with fascinated horror,as if you're about to pull off one of your legs, revealing a greenand mossy moss��y?adj. moss��i��er, moss��i��est1. Covered with moss or something like moss: mossy banks.2. Resembling moss.3. Old-fashioned; antiquated. amputated stump." Elsewhere, she summarizes a stage ofEnglish history: "Oliver Cromwell had gone on the rampage, andCharles the First had had his head cut off, and thousands of soldiersand civilians had died cruel and ghastly deaths, with their intestineswound out of their bodies and their heads stuck up on stakes." Inthe moral fable "Our Cat Enters Heaven," God is sardonicallyimagined as a cat who preys on little pink "mice" which arehuman beings ("Our heaven is their hell") andbelieves--logically--in torture before death. In many adaptations offairy tales--themselves edgy with horror--throughout her work, sherenders them relevant to our time. In "Encouraging the Young,"she imagines her aging self as the witch in "Hansel andGretel Hansel and Gretelfattened up for child-eating witch. [Ger. Fairy Tale: Grimm, 56]See : CannibalismHansel and Gretelwoodcutter’s children barely escape witch. [Ger. Fairy Tale: Grimm, 56]See : Escape ," calling to the young from behind bushes in the woods: I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves. Atwood is drawn to Darwinian theory--a scientific principle thatwould have informed her father's entomological en��to��mol��o��gy?n.The scientific study of insects.ento��mo��log studies. Survival(1972), with its emphasis on animal victims, no doubt grew out of thatinterest. In Life Before Man (1979) she likens Nate'sexcruciatingly gradual moving in with Lesje to the slow process ofevolution. In Surfacing (1972) her narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. reaches sanity by strippingoff the trappings of civilization to reveal her essential animal self. Elsewhere, the horror of a ruthless world "red in tooth andclaw Tooth and Claw could refer to: Tooth and Claw (Doctor Who), a television episode Tooth and Claw (short story collection), by T.C. Boyle Tooth and Claw (novel), by Jo Walton Tooth and Claw (1998 novel), by Stephen Moore " often informs Atwood's writing. In The Tent--aselsewhere, especially in Oryx and Crake--she pictures a world ofDarwinism in reverse. A horror indeed. With the same tongue-in-cheekdetachment as Jonathan Swift in A Modest Proposal (which suggested thatthe Irish famine could be mitigated by eating babies), Atwood picturesan apocalyptic world in which the planet Earth self-destructs. Herwell-known commitment to environmental health and global peace--and herconcomitant aversion to the abuse of resources and war--find expressionin such writings. In "Worm Zero," one of the three novels shewon't write soon, she explores the disastrous effects that wouldoccur if worms were to become extinct. In "Something HasHappened" she suggests a membrane that has gradually cut offhumanity from the world around it. And in "Eating the Birds"she explores a world in which humans have so badly mismanaged life thatwe have passed the point of no return: "We're ankle-deep inblood, and all because we ate the birds, we ate them a long time ago,when we still had the power to say no." And she describes the agingprocess as a gradual decline: in "Voice," a startling star��tle?v. star��tled, star��tling, star��tlesv.tr.1. To cause to make a quick involuntary movement or start.2. To alarm, frighten, or surprise suddenly. See Synonyms at frighten. storythat personifies the voice as an independent double to the person, shewrites: It's begun to happen, the shrivelling. Only I have noticed it so far. There's the barest pucker in my voice, the barest wrinkle. Fear has entered me, a needleful of ether, constricting what in someone else would be my heart ... How much of my life do I have left? This reversal of Darwinian progress, where the fittest survive andpopulate a stronger, better universe, into a vicious, sordid decline oflife recalls William Golding's chilling Lord of the Flies Lord of the Fliesshowing man’s consciousness and fear of dying. [Br. Lit.: Lord of the Flies]See : Death . These various applications of science to literature giveAtwood's work its peculiar tone. Much has been said about theflat-voiced, deadpan manner in which she reads her work. In fact thisstyle of reading is an extension of her manner of writing. Atwood isangry. She is furious that we make war, that we abuse resources, that wehave oppressed op��press?tr.v. op��pressed, op��press��ing, op��press��es1. To keep down by severe and unjust use of force or authority: a people who were oppressed by tyranny.2. others--women, Natives, animals, the helpless. She isangry that we are greedy meat eaters and writes satirically in"Thylacine thylacine(thī`ləsīn')or Tasmanian wolf,carnivorous marsupial, or pouched mammal, of Tasmania. The thylacine is often cited as an example of convergent evolution: It is superficially quite similar to a wolf or dog, Ragout ra��gout?n.A well-seasoned meat or fish stew, usually with vegetables.[French rago?t, from rago?ter, to revive the taste, from Old French ragouster : re-, " in The Tent of the creation of a new meatby cloning. She is even more furious that we are in denial in denialPsychiatry To be in a state of denying the existence or effects of an ego defense mechanism. See Denial. about it all.Her anger is not the kind that expresses itself in shouting andgesticulation or throwing things about. It is the white-hot rage wherethe teeth are set, the voice drops to a lower register and speech slows.In "Strawberries," a sketch in Murder in the Dark, an angrynarrator retreats from a spat to pick strawberries, and sees things withincreased clarity, in scientific detail: Nothing was hazy. Everything was very clear, clearer than usual, my hands with the stained nails, the sunlight falling on the ground through the apple-tree branches, each leaf, each white five petalled yellow centred flower and conical fine-haired dark red multi-seeded dwarf berry rendering itself in dry flat two dimensional detail, like background foliage by one of the crazier Victorian painters, just before the invention of the camera; and at some time during that hour, though not for the whole hour, I forgot what things were called and saw instead what they are. It is anger like this that gives Atwood her clarity of vision andher use of the precise language and methods of science to convey it. Shebelieves that it is the writer's task to convey that vision, withclarity. She imagines the vulnerable writer in her title piece "TheTent," occupying that fragile space in which creation occurs."You write as if your life depended on it," she says,"your life and theirs." What Atwood wants us to understand is the urgency of her recall tosanity. Our lives, she believes, do depend on it. We must, she pleads,look at what is happening and take responsibilities before it is toolate. It is a plea that has been present throughout her writing from thebeginning. "In view of the fading animals," she writes in thepoem "They are hostile nations" from Power Politics: The proliferation of sewers and fears the sea clogging, the air nearing extinction we should be kind, we should take warning, we should forgive each other In a brilliant poem called "The Cell" from Morning in theBurned House, she examines the beauty of a cancer cell as if through amicroscope: as an alien, a success, all purple eye and jelly tentacles and spines, or are they gills, ... The lab technician says, It has forgotten how to die. But why remember? All it wants is more amnesia. More life, and more abundantly. To take more. To eat more. To replicate itself. To keep on doing these things forever. Such desires are not unknown. Look in the mirror. Disgusting, shocking--all the more disgusting and shocking becauseof its detached tone--this is Atwood's voice at its best. As sheunequivocally states in "Orphan Stories" in The Tent,"All observations of life are harsh, because life is. I lament thatfact, but I cannot change it." Almost as an afterthought, Atwood offers us a thread of hope thatmight lead us out of the frightful maze of modern life in the last twosketches in The Tent. In "Tree Baby" she lists a series ofnames for the infant: Catastrophe, Flotsam A name for the goods that float upon the sea when cast overboard for the safety of the ship or when a ship is sunk. Distinguished from jetsam (goods deliberately thrown over to lighten ship) and ligan (goods cast into the sea attached to a buoy). , Sorrow, No-family, Bereft,Child-of-a-Tree. But she then turns to the possibility that it may becalled Astonishment, Nevertheless, Small Mercy or Beginning. And in"But It Could Still," the planting of tulip tulip[Pers.,=turban], any plant of the large genus Tulipa, hardy, bulbous-rooted members of the family Liliaceae (lily family), indigenous to north temperate regions of the Old World from the Mediterranean to Japan and growing most abundantly on the steppes bulbs with their"small green shoots" on "the darkest day of theyear," marks faith that they were "intending to grow."Science can show us what is disastrously wrong, but perhaps science cansave us. After all, in the same story, a copy of Darwin's On theOrigin of Species stops an oncoming bullet from killing a soldier. We dedicate this issue of the LRC (Longitudinal Redundancy Check) An error checking method that generates a parity bit from a specified string of bits on a longitudinal track. In a row and column format, such as on magnetic tape, LRC is often used with VRC, which creates a parity bit for each to the memory of Jane Jacobs Noun 1. Jane Jacobs - United States writer and critic of urban planning (born in 1916)Jacobs whodied on April 25, 2006, at the age of 89. An original thinker in the fields of urban studies, economics andsocial philosophy, she became, through adoption, one of Canada'sgreatest intellectual treasures. The magazine mourns her passing. We named Jane Jacobs's final title, Dark Age Ahead, to The LRC100: Canada's Most Important Books. In 2004 the magazine produced aspecial issue largely devoted to her thought. Culture resides mainly in people's heads and in the examplespeople set, and is subject therefore to mortality. Dark Age Ahead Elspeth Cameron is a professor of English and Canadian Studies atBrock University. She has won numerous awards for her studies ofCanadian cultural figures, and will publish a biography of sculptorsFrances Loring and Florence Wyle in 2007.