Book Report: The Tent

The Tent by Margaret Atwood: Torgo disapproves

I heard Margaret Atwood on NPR a week or two ago. It was an extended Weekend Edition piece on sci-fi. There were bits on Asimov, "Lost," etc. I hadn't heard Atwood speak before, or read any of her novels, but I knew her name.

I wasn't particularly impressed. She sounded like a hack. I guess she's written some stuff that vaguely qualifies as sci-fi, but she came off like a dabbler.

So I'm not sure why picked up "The Tent" in the library the other day, but I did. It's short, barely 150 small pages, so that was a factor. But it's a frustrating, sloppy muddle of a book.

The credits page lists her accomplishments. She's written novels, poems, kids' books, and more. "The Tent" feels like the half-starts and rejected ideas from all those genres. Nothing is longer than 5 or 6 pages. That's not a bad thing, but no idea feels developed or, really, even fully thought through.

What annoys me most about this book is that it was published. Paper was wasted on it. People buy it. Libraries stock it. But if anyone with a name less known that Margaret Atwood submitted it to a publisher, it would be rejected.

Worse still, I hate when writers get to a point in successful careers where they publish their doodles. And I don't just mean their half-assed ideas. "The Tent" features 'artwork' by Atwood. By 'artwork,' I mean doodles that look like something a junior high kid draws in the margins of textbooks. If a visual artist submitted those drawings for inclusion in a book, the writer would be offended.

Then, at the end of the book, there are the credits for where the pieces in "The Tent" were published before. Basically, it's a list of journals who wanted Atwood's name on their cover, taking space from writers with good material and less name recognition (JK in Chicago? maybe). After the credits, there's a picture of the author, looking smug and self-satisfied, as though she's saying, "Look, I haven't even read this stuff. I didn't even check for spelling! And here it is. And you read the whole thing! Sucker."