Icons excited to share stage.
Mutual admirers Atwood and Morissette look forward to chat
Two Canadian icons are giddy with excitement about meeting each other for the first time.
Pop rocker Alanis Morissette and acclaimed author Margaret Atwood have never spoken, but they’re mutual admirers and can’t wait to chew the fat in front of an audience Friday at the Winspear Centre.
When asked if she’d participate in the one-of-akind talk organized by the University of Alberta’s Festival of Ideas, “it was an immediate yes,” Morissette said from Vancouver with a hearty chuckle. “It’s an honour. Margaret Atwood is so smart and warm and I feel like when she writes, she channels. I hate to put that label on it for her. She’s got this incredible gift that she’s been generous enough to continue to use.”
“Oh, who wouldn’t agree? Come on!” Atwood said from Toronto. “I think it’s a scream. Possibly some people think it’s an odd thing for a writer to do. And that’s good.”
The talk is a bridge event for the biennial Festival of Ideas, which happens again in 2014. “Amazingly enough, they both said yes in the very first minute,” said festival director Miki Andrejevic. “I think they really would like to be on the stage together and talk.”
Morissette, the multiGrammy-winning singer who rose to international stardom in the mid-1990s with her iconic album Jagged Little Pill, anticipates “a lively back and forth” with Atwood. “I look forward to seeing where the similarities and commonalities are in our life and lifestyle,” Morissette said. “I look forward to seeing how she integrates her gift and talent in her day-today life — you know, is it imperative to write? I just have a million questions.”
Atwood, too, is itching to pick Morissette’s brain at the sold-out talk. “It’ll be interesting to hear her story, what sort of obstacles she’s had to overcome, how she has dealt with reaction to her work, what she’s going to do next, those kinds of things,” said the writer, whose jaw-dropping list of publications has earned her many major literary awards, including the Booker Prize, Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award.
In her busy touring days, Morissette would often read Atwood’s novels on the road. “I would ensconce myself in my hotel room if I wasn’t needed and read her books literally cover to cover. I love her,” she said, taking a moment to make fun of her own gushiness. “I love her!” she repeated, this time in a silly, high-pitched voice.
Of course, reading was a pre-motherhood luxury. She gave birth to her son, Ever, in 2010 and “I have sevenminute windows now.” She’s determined to get through Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy before the event, though. “I’ll have read it, or most of it, by the time I get there. I want to have respectfully done my homework. I’ll read it at two in the morning when everyone’s asleep.”
The tussles between public life and private life, career and family, will no doubt be a point of discussion for these two women, who each have one child (Ever turns three on Christmas Day; Atwood’s daughter, Jess, is just two years younger than Morissette). “I’m running on empty all the time,” Morissette said. “As soon as Ever was born, coffee became my new best friend.”
Atwood’s a coffee lover too, “and let’s say I would be rather frightened by the idea of stopping.”
And the 74-year-old has no plans to slow down. With the trilogy complete, Atwood can now hunker down to work on what she calls an “unorthodox” short story manuscript as well as a prose retelling of The Tempest. She’s one of several high-profile authors who’ve agreed to reinterpret a Shakespearean play in writing for a series being published by the Hogarth imprint. Her output is impressive, for any age, and she’s optimistic time is on her side.
“Unless I get run over by a bus, judging from my mother’s family, I will live to be quite old,” she said. “If I get the other genes, it might not be quite so long.” At 39, Morissette is still young. She recorded her last album, Havoc and Brights Lights (2012) in her living room while breastfeeding Ever. “The studio’s gone now. It’s a playroom. Symbolic,” she said.
Still, Morissette plans to record a new album in 2014 — as soon as she finishes the book she’s working on, her first. No info yet on the publisher, title or release date, but the singer describes the writing as “spiritual, psychological, very autobiographical with humour peppered throughout.”
She’s eager to talk to Atwood about the writing process. Creating a book has been “a wild ride and it’s a decidedly different process for me than writing records.”
Morissette won’t sing at the event, and doesn’t expect Atwood to read, either. The evening is a purely unscripted talk, moderated by Globe and Mail books editor Jared Bland, with an audience Q & A.
“It will be a good way to exchange ideas on where we think it’s all going,” said Atwood. By “it” she means a whole lot of things: life, the human race, the planet, creativity, culture and, of course, the place and power of women today.
Both Morissette and Atwood are emblematic of strong female voices in literature and popular music; both have been pioneers in pushing the boundaries of gender equality, changing women’s lives with their art — Atwood as the dystopic feminist novelist, Morissette as the angry-girl-rocker.
“The big question is, what are we going to wear?” Atwood said, half-joking, halfserious. “What do you wear to be onstage with a singing star?
“Should I dress down, or should I dress up? I don’t think I should do the sixinch stiletto heels. I think I would fall over.”
Their sense of humour is well-matched.
“Tell her she’d better get her leather pants out or it’ll be really awkward,” Morissette said. More laughing down the phone. “No, I’m gonna go kinda medium. No taffeta dress but no sweatpants either. Tell her not to worry. Whatever she wears will be fantastic.”