10 things we learned from Margaret Atwood’s Desert Island Discs

Margaret Atwood can lay claim to being one of the world's most famous authors. She has spent decades imagining strange and fantastical worlds that sometimes feel alarmingly close to our own.

The author of The Handmaid’s Tale and 50 other books has the rare honour of already being cast away to the mythical desert island in 2003. But on this trip, she tells Lauren Laverne about caterpillars, operas, and how hope endures.

Here are 10 things we learned from her Desert Island Discs…

Margaret Atwood says her very existence can be traced back to a large, green caterpillar her father found as a child in rural Nova Scotia. “He took it home, made it a little cage, fed it leaves, and it turned into a beautiful moth,” Margaret explains. “That’s what hooked him on entomology. Had he not seen that caterpillar, he would’ve taken some other path in life, never met my mother, and I would not exist.”

As a teenager, he was enlisted to help teach at a local school. “My father saw my mother sliding down the banister of Truro Normal School and thought to himself, ‘that is the woman I will marry.’ And he did.”

2. Her classroom was the Canadian wilderness

Long before she explored dystopias, Atwood was living off-grid in Northern Quebec. Her father’s work meant the family spent most of each year in the woods, with no electricity, no running water, and no formal schooling. “There wasn’t any television. No radio really, no movies, no theatre. But there were lots of books, and there were always drawing and writing materials,” she says. “So of course books became the art of choice.”

Her mother loved the outdoor life. She would speed-skate, canoe and fish. “She was a good fisherwoman,” Margaret adds. “Although she had a deal with my dad: she would catch them, he could clean them.”

3. Her first literary hero was an ant

Atwood wrote her first book at the age of seven. The main character was an ant, which she explains gave her a useful lesson in action, plot and structure. “They don’t do anything for three-quarters of their life,” she says. “They’re an egg, a larva, a pupa. Nothing happens. And then they get legs and can move around. But that’s a long time to wait for any action... I don’t recommend it as a protagonist.”

4. She staged an opera to get out of sewing stuffed animals

In high school, her Home Economics teacher “made a terrible mistake: she allowed democracy into the classroom.” The teacher let the class vote on what they should do as a final project. She assumed they’d choose to make stuffed toys, but instead Margaret led a campaign for them to create an opera. And won.

The result was a fully staged production about three synthetic fabrics — Orlon, Nylon, and Dacron — and a love interest named Sir William Woolley, who shrank from washing. It was set to Offenbach’s Barcarolle, which is Margaret’s third disc choice.

Years later, Margaret sang a fragment of her lyrics to the director of the Canadian Opera Company. His verdict? She had “ruined Barcarolle forever”.

5. Her early efforts as a writer were straightforward romances…

From the start, Margaret wanted to write what she called “deathless masterpieces”. But she was also realistic about the need to make money. So, she got a copy of Writer’s Market and learned what paid best: true romances.

Margaret Atwood in the Desert Island Discs studio.

I think I'm going to get in a lot of trouble.

Margaret Atwood didn't know how audiences would react to The Handmaid's Tale.

“I did give it a go,” she says. “But I wasn’t any good at it. You have to have a feel for it, and I thought they were too silly.”

6. … but her first novel was inspired by a 35-page laxative questionnaire

Before she was a full-time writer, Margaret worked in market research. One of her jobs involved reviewing questionnaires to take to customers. “My favourite questionnaire was the 35-page laxative questionnaire. I said, ‘People are going to kick you out after the first five pages.’ They said, ‘Yes, but those who stay for the full 35-pages: that’s our target market.’"

She used those experiences in The Edible Woman, her first published novel and a book that landed just as second-wave feminism was breaking through. “I was writing it before that hit,” she says. “So, I got two kinds of reviews: one by people who thought I was immature, and one by people who thought it was part of the new wave.”

7. She thought The Handmaid’s Tale was “too weird” to write

The idea for The Handmaid’s Tale had been brewing for a while, but even Margaret thought it was a stretch. “I thought it was quite bonkers,” she admits. “But I was in West Berlin in 1984, still encircled by the Wall. People were afraid to talk to you, and to each other. Every 50th person in East Germany was a spy.”

She eventually showed the manuscript to her friend, the novelist Valerie Martin. “I said, ‘would you mind reading this and telling me if it's too mad?’” She added, “I think I'm going to get in a lot of trouble.” Martin replied, “I think you’re going to make a lot of money.”

They were both right.

8. The novel was based entirely on things that had already happened

“I wanted to be able to point to the source of whatever idea and say, ‘don't say that I just made this up out of my twisted, weird imagination.'”

The book became a global phenomenon and was adapted into an opera and a successful television series. But initial reactions in the United States were split: “On the one hand, ‘Margaret, don't be silly, that would never happen here.’ On the other hand, ‘how long have we got?’ I've always been somebody who has never believed it can't happen here. It can happen anywhere, given the circumstances.”

9. There are two Margaret Atwoods — and one of them is a little dangerous

Margaret says every writer is “at least two beings”, the one who lives and the one who writes. “I think it's a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde arrangement. Mr. Hyde is the writer, and I'm kindly Dr. Jekyll.”

When she’s in Hyde mode, the ordinary world falls away. “I think every writer does that when they're in mid-write. However, there are interruptions – you have to be able to shift back and forth pretty quickly, especially if you're in the midst of a family.”

She even tried a sign on her door saying, ‘do not disturb’. “Nobody paid any attention.”

10. She buried a book in a Norwegian forest, to be printed in 100 years

In 2014, Atwood became the first contributor to the Future Library of Norway, a project where one author a year submits a secret manuscript, to be printed a hundred years later using trees planted for the purpose.

“You can’t tell what’s in it. But it has to be made of words,” she says. “No good just sticking your photo album in. But it can be anything – a novel, a letter, a poem, your laundry list.”

What matters, she adds, is what it implies: “There will be people. There will be people who can read. The trees will grow. That’s hopeful.”