Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature by Margaret Atwood

Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature Reviews

• 
  Kirsty

  I found out about Margaret Atwood's Strange Things whilst reading through Kirsty Logan's blog, and noting down all of those books which she has loved. I have read - and largely enjoyed - several Atwood books to date, but this marked my first taste of her non-fiction. I am rather obsessed at present with accounts of northerly snow-covered spaces, in which barely anyone lives.
  
  Strange Things, which is subtitled 'The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature' therefore seemed a perfect tome for me. It is comprised of four essays, which were originally given at the University of Oxford. Her rendering of these essays is incredibly readable, and each, as anyone who is at all familiar with Atwood's work, is so intelligently written. The essays, which focus upon four core stereotypical representations of Canadian life and literature, are varied and memorable, and this is a volume which I would recommend to any world traveller.
• 
  El

  Who else better to write about the uses and mythologies of Canada in (Canadian) literature than Margaret Atwood? Here she does not glorify it. She admits there is very little to reference, and what there is is not very pretty. These lectures explores from cannibalism to Wendigo and other stuff in between. She is sassy and sarcastic, and if you take every word she says literally then the joke is on you. She knows her shizzle and in true Atwood form discusses the symbolism of the North and Canada in some detail.
  
  As usual she has given me a list of books I now must find. Perhaps a trip to Canada would help...
• 
  Alexa

  This is a great collection of essays, showing Atwood’s humor and wit and joy in the themes of Canadian literature. It’s an interesting analysis of many of the same themes that can be seen running through her own work – and it’s a lot of fun to read just for the sense of connection it gave me to Atwood the real person (who wears earrings that match her lecture topic!).
• 
  Tim Martin

  This book is the transcript of four lectures author Margaret Atwood delivered in spring, 1991 at Oxford University, part of the Clarendon Lecture Series in English Literature, which as she wrote was a series of lectures designed as “a kind of half-way house between the non-specialist public and the ivory tower – between those who gobble up the literary comestibles, in other words, and those who inform them about the structure and nutritional content.”
  
  The four lectures basically did read like academic literature, with long quotes, but the quotes being excerpts of novels or poems (or I believe several entire poems or nearly so) still read nicely and made me want to find several of the sources quoted and referenced and read them myself purely for pleasure (I have already ordered one novel on the Wendigo, titled _Winter Hunger_ by Ann Tracy, a 1990 novel). She was quite witty and very rarely ever dry and if she was dry it was only for a moment. She also summed up and reiterated points perfectly, both helping the reader understand the points she was trying to make all while not being tedious or repetitive.
  
  The first lecture was on the use and portrayal of the doomed Franklin expedition in Canadian literature and also about the fatal allure of the far North as portrayed in Canada’s literature. She discussed how why being lost, going crazy, and possibly if not probably dying in the frozen North was “still alive and kicking as a Canadian theme, even though most Canadians live in cities,” and how the North came “to be thought of as a frigid but sparkling fin de siècle femme fatale, who entices and hypnotizes male protagonists and leads them to their doom” (but not female protagonists as she discussed in the fourth lecture). Through a series of quotes and references, Atwood showed that early on Canadian literature showed that more often than not the North was established as an “uncanny, awe-inspiring in an almost religious way, hostile to white men, but alluring” sort of place, that “it would lead you on and do you in; that it would drive you crazy, and, finally, would claim you for its own.” It was interesting that she showed that the North was almost always depicted as “active, female, and sinister,” and also that the “Franklin story and the Titanic story have interpenetrated one another,” how one has influenced the other as far as how they are portrayed or referenced in Canadian literature. I had read about the Franklin expedition but hadn’t appreciated how it resonated with Canadian authors and readers.
  
  The second lecture was titled “The Grey Owl Syndrome,” about “that curious phenomenon, the desire among non-Natives to turn themselves into Natives; a desire that becomes entwined with a version of wilderness itself, not as a demonic ice-goddess who will claim you for her own, but as the repository of salvation and new life” (the Grey Owl in the title name is discussed at length in the lecture, a Englishman named Archie Belaney of Hastings, England, who emigrated to Canada and became enamored with the Ojibway Indians and the North, later changing his name and his history to become Grey Owl, a world-famous naturalist and writer, only later found out by the public to not be a Native American, tarnishing his reputation after his death).
  
  Atwood noted that this subject is “of course, a minefield,” as swirling around it is the “appropriation debate,” with the anti-appropriationists saying that non-Natives have no right to write as if they were in fact Native peoples, or even write about Native issues, or even to put Native characters in their books (or more reasonably point out that Natives “are tired of being defined and spoken for by non-Natives,” though some as ironically trying to defend Natives by saying that non-Natives should not write about them miss the point that if non-Natives never get to write about Natives, this would “render Native people invisible or non-existent in the work of non-Natives”). More reasonable still are those who say that “non-Natives – whether writers or anthropologists – should not retell Native myths and legends without understanding them,” and that “this argument is not based on genetic or racial entitlement but on knowledge and accuracy.”
  
  Lots to digest in this chapter, from the positive transformative power of the North in many Canadian stories (such as in _Wacousta_ by John Richardson, published in 1832, where in “the British part of the narrative…[the protagonist is] a wronged and pathetic figure, but as Wacousta he is possessed of supernatural strength and ferocity, and is somehow, well, taller”), the Woodcraft Indian movement (“an experiment in boy-control”) which later was, speaking of appropriation, taken over and pushed aside by the Boy Scouts, notes on the duality of the Grey Owl syndrome (“Grey Owl is a quester in search of himself, a doomed hero who renders himself alien both to his original homeland and to his adopted space”), with Atwood closing with an admonishment to not “repudiate or ridicule…grown men playing feather dress-ups – but to take it a step further: if white Canadians would adopt a more traditionally Native attitude towards the natural world, a less exploitive and more respectful attitude, they might be able to reverse the galloping environmental carnage of the late twentieth century and salvage for themselves some of the wilderness they keep saying they identify with and need.”
  
  The third lecture was “Eyes of Blood, Heart of Ice: The Wendigo,” the main lecture I was interested in when I bought a copy of this book. A well-done chapter, it showed a “specific case” of “going crazy in the North – or being driven crazy by the North,” with this specific case “Illustrating the extent to which Native motifs have infiltrated non-Native literature and thought,” that being the Wendigo, which is both a creature and something someone can become as in to “go Wendigo” or “become Wendigo.” Noting that some Canadian writers bemoaned the lack of ghosts in Canada, Atwood noted that the Natives saw that “the wilderness was not empty but full, and one of the things it was full of was monsters.” Atwood reviewed many of the appearances of Wendigos in novels and poetry (all non-Native as far as I can tell), providing a definition of the creature along the way, nothing it a giant spirit-creature, that it has a heart made of ice, has enormous strength, can travel “as fast as the wind,” may have once been a man or woman, and “its prevailing characteristic seems to be its ravenous hunger for human flesh.” She noted that the fear of the Wendigo was twofold: “fear of being eaten by one, and fear of becoming one.”
  
  One of the most interesting observations in this lecture was that ghosts, in a traditional ghost story or Gothic tale, “may exist in one of three relationships to the human characters in the story.” The spirit may simply be a “manifestation of the environment,” such as say finding a ghost in a haunted house, that the spirit’s presence has nothing at all to do with the inner lives or past of those who encounter it, that it simply is an outgrowth or feature of whatever place it is found. A second type of relationship has the ghost or spirit or supernatural creature having some sort of specific connection to the person encountering it, be it a message or a reward or a punishment. The third type of relationship is that the ghost or spirit “is a fragment of the protagonist’s psyche, a sliver of his repressed inner life made visible.” She writes:
  
  “Wendigoes of this third sort are likely to be human beings who have “become Wendigo,” who have turned themselves inside out, so that the creature they may have only feared or dreamed about splits off from the rest of the personality, destroys it, and becomes manifest through the victim’s body. These tales are tales of madness…”
  
  Atwood noted that the Wendigo lends itself well to the first and third types of tales but not as well the second, as Wendigoes, being “devoid of language, are very bad at communication.”
  
  The final lecture was on the appearance of women in Canadian literature of the North. I was prepared, to be honest, to be less interested in the topic, sorry to say, but it was as entertaining and well written as the rest of the book. She noted for instance that frequently female authors make the North feminine when in relation to male characters but are more apt to make it sexually neuter when the protagonist is a woman (and also that the wilderness offers renewal and refreshment, perhaps at least in part due to the “absence of men from the scene”). Atwood also noted that there are three patterns of female writers of the North, the tourist (such as in Anna Jameson’s _Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada_ which depicted a journey in Canada where she “was free to admire the scenery”), the coper (such as Catherine Parr Traill’s _The Canadian Settler’s Guide_, which “written as a warning to prospective immigrants…emphasizing “hardship and catastrophe – people were always stealing things from her or stuffing dead skunks up her chimney, or the house was catching fire in the middle of the winter…[p]eople in her books go mad, commit murder, get lynched”), and the “dismayed” (though to me all seemed dismayed at one point or another, as even the tourist admired the North “from a distance…up close it was too full of mosquitoes.”
  
  The book _Winter Hunger_ I mentioned earlier, which features Wendigoes, is discussed in this lecture, not the one dedicated to the Wendigo, as Atwood at length discussed the book, noting:
  “But what _Winter Hunger_ is really out to puncture is the concept of romantic love. The greed behind Alan’s hunger is his stifling wish to possess Diana, to posses all of her, especially her soul. He is devoured, in the end, by his own too-intense, too-selfish desires, and once again the Wendigo becomes the incarnation of spiritual selfishness, though this time with a sexual twist.”
  
  A good read, I have never before given any thought to reading Canadian literature or was even aware of it, but now there are several stories I would like to track down. If you have any interest in the Wendigo this is a good resource to read.
  
• 
  Melissa Jeanette

  This was a lot of fun to read. I chose it as additional research for a paper I was working on, and I'm glad I did. There were so many funny, poignant, insightful moments that I had a mountain of sticky notes hanging out the side by the the end (as it was a library book and I couldn't underline to my hearts content). It was almost painful to remove stickies when I finally had to make the "not applicable to my research" decisions. I found the chapters on the Franklin expedition and the Wendigo to be especially interesting, but there isn't a single chapter I didn't thoroughly enjoy. I have a whole list of new reading I want to do thanks to this book, and I'd say any book that makes you want to explore it's themes more deeply has done it's job very well. I think this book would appeal to almost anyone. If you're interested in Canadian literature, then obviously it's up your alley. However, even if that's not the case, this still sits well within the margins of a light, entertaining, and engrossing read. I had read some Canadian literature previously, such as
  The Afterlife of George Cartwright and
  Icefields, but I don't think such previous knowledge is necessary to enjoy the book.
• 
  Rosanna (prosesroses)

  Strange Things puts together 4 chapters or lectures on Canadian literary themes connected to the north that Margaret Atwood gave at Oxford University.
  
  Atwood is terrific writer and speaker, witty and engaging. It really shows here. This book is a great extension of Atwood's previous book on CanLit themes, Survival, and is actually written better than that. At 126 pages, it goes by fast. Atwood interweaves haunting imagery, mythology and real-life Canadian events into themes that illustrate the Malevolent North as truly fascinating.
• 
  Tiffany Risner

  Although I try not to focus on nationalistic pieces of writing, I felt compelled to read and review this collection of lectures that Ms. Atwood delivered in 1991 because she references so many other Northern texts, authors, ideas and symbology. She claims not to be an academic, but qualifies herself on the basis of her own “amateur enthusiasms.” Her four lectures are on the following subjects: The tragic Franklin expedition, The Grey-Owl Syndrome in which whites want to be Indians, The Wendigo (a sort of abominable snowman, and Northern Women (two types). She tries her damnedest to keep her lectures interesting, and although I wasn’t there, I would’ve been on board for at least three out of four.
  
  In the first lecture, she gets the audiences attention with blood, claiming that the Canadian Maple Leaf on the flag is actually a blood print from where someone got axed in the snow. She also swears by her research that during the Franklin expedition, the cannibalistic men possessed a “bootful of human flesh.” It was a tragedy in that the men had little experience and yet they refused the help of experienced Natives. They died eating their own canned food because it was leaking lead and poisoning them. I appreciate her diversion which includes famed Alaskan poet, Robert W. Service to solidify the idea that the North is a savage female. It is alive, in a sense, and will take your life and your soul, as it desires. It is a spirit of its own accord, in a place where God couldn’t help any body.
  
  
  
  The opposing view was that the North was home, and to many non-Natives, it could be a place of “salvation and new life.” Where literature is concerned, there are non-Natives writing about Natives in an attempt to explain them to other non-Natives. A few of the non-Natives are upset by this and begin to defend the Natives, who probably could care less. The point I’d like to make is that non-Natives don’t read non-Native literature. It has to be “translated” culturally in a way that a person who is between cultures can do their best to explain how Natives are. It is really up to the individual to make judgments as to whether the narrator can be trusted. It can’t be assumed that all non-Natives writing about Natives are horribly inaccurate, although it can be assumed that much gets lost in translation. However, non-Natives can’t be expected to fully understand another culture and so some manipulations must be made for the sake of the non-Native audience. Some things must be experienced. It is the mode of writing then which gives us folly. I don’t think the author is to blame. Ms. Atwood also makes it seem as if a person must look somewhat Native to pass for one. I disagree here also, because I’ve seen pale, red-haired Jamaicans who are absolutely Jamaican on the basis of culture. A person can’t be judged by their looks, but can be categorized by the lifestyle and attitude in which they assimilate. This person shows respect for a particular culture, not solely admiration, as Atwood believes. She says it’s easier for a non-Native to “go Indian” than to “go African or go Chinese.” Further, she explains how “a play about a fake Indian inspired a real one.” But in actuality, the Native student helping with the play Wacousta! had to learn about someone else’s culture before he could get the idea to write a play. Indians may tell stories, but they don’t write plays unless someone shows them what a play is, and then they are perfectly capable. I don’t really see the irony here that Atwood is talking about. I agree with her that it is sad how Seton wrote a guide on how to be Indian (Book of Woodcraft) and it got watered down to become the Boy Scouts handbook, but in a way it is now more widely read and continues to be popular as a result. For an audience of non-Natives who read, the writing has to be tailored to their taste.
  
  In the third lecture, she identifies the Wendigo how it is different from other folklore monsters, and then she discusses the different types of Wendigo, since because it is a legend each telling of it is slightly different depending on the storyteller. In some instances, the Wendigo comes after non-Natives who are greedy and in other instances there the Wendigo strikes any one for no particular reason at all. All the same, non-Natives are warned: don’t come to the North and be arrogant or stupid because something will get you. I believe that Atwood is hinting that the Wendigo is a mirror to white men who displayed these characteristics, but can be conclusive about it because the Wendigo probably existed before white men came to the North. In any event, it seems fitting to have an evil monster in a harsh environment. It wouldn’t make sense if it were opposite. If a Native told me there was an Angel Alien of the North, I probably wouldn’t be as interested in hearing about it, nor would I believe. The Wendigo is believable, though, because at least one other notable author discussed it with a degree of seriousness in his book True North (Merrick). A land-borne malevolent creature in a vast space unexplored is still plausible.
  
  I have the most fun with this last lecture, and maybe it’s because I’m a woman, or because Ms. Atwood is a woman, or maybe it’s because of her extended reference to a female Wendigo in Ann Tracy’s Winter Hunger, which I have now added to my list of books to read. The lecture takes on a feel of a discussion, where she asks the audience rhetorical questions and I feel myself creating answers. I’m calling out: Wicked Stepmother! I’m thinking of an essay I wrote about the women’s part in Elizabethan drama (with an intended pun on the word “part”). I’m imagining myself as a frontier woman who writes. Her division of women in time is between the first wave whose “husbands — had dragged them there” and the second wave of women “marched off into the woods alone.” She includes a delicious example from Margaret Laurence, who came from the second wave looks back at how the first wavers had it in The Diviners. I enjoyed the inclusion of a female “coper,” who watched her husband lose his mind to the North’s waterfall and it’s paper-mill power plant. I thought at first it could be satire, but I agree with Atwood that it was all “an incarnation of that cold, savage, alluring female power of the North. Next is the escapist, named Maggie in the novel Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson. While seeking refuge, asylum and spiritual refreshment, I believe she realizes that she is a person separate from what society has constructed. She has to un-learn how to be part of everyone else’s world-view and re-create herself without any outside influences. I totally get this. Finally, we have Lou, who can be classified as a woman who desires the other, which I can only understand as a perturbed sense of reality – or one who has gone wild herself. Ms. Atwood refers to this as a woman who has been “altered.”
  
  Atwood could be a woman altered by the North, because in her last paragraph, she can’t help but make a plea for the environmental danger that the North (and the rest of the world) is in. She doesn’t strike me as the political type. More so, I see her as a mom defending her home and her future children of legendary writers. I don’t think this was the main message of her lectures, but it coincided with the mood she created, which was haunting. She strikes me as a woman who wants to get into your soul as much as the North does, to possess you with her allure and to leave you like a cold breeze.
  
• 
  Allison

  If you are ever investigating Canadian Folklore then this is a must read. Even for fun, the four stories touch the very soul of the mythologies of how this country came to be and the ties we feel to the vastness of the wilderness and the north.
  If you didn't know about the lead sealed tin cans you will learn more about Franklin and perhaps a reason for the disastrous outcome.
  The Grey Owl Syndrime is told in a way that reminds us of why we all believe in nature.
  I hadn't heard of the Wendigo before but I believe it now! Especially in the winter.
  And Linoleum Caves. Well let's just say good for us.
  Many thanks Ms. Atwood for an enlightening and enjoyable experience of Canadian Northern imagery*.
  
  *with references.
  
  "The earth, like trees, dies from the top down. The things that are killing the North will kill, if left unchecked, everything else."
  
  Now I think I should read Surfacing again. It's been a while.
• 
  Kat

  If you've ever wondered what a lecture given by Margaret Atwood would be like, then read this book. "These lectures are roughly grouped around certain image-clusters that have appeared and reappeared in Canadian literature, and which are connected with the Canadian North." Of the four lectures, I most enjoyed the Wendiog one, and found a new book that I want to read. An afternoon of reading well spent.
• 
  Kirsty

  I'm a bit obsessed lately with the north and ships/oceans, and this scratched my itch nicely. Atwood is always readable and intelligent, and this book was no exception.
• 
  Taraya

  Simultaneously laugh-out-loud hilarious and agonizingly repulsive. This book covers the interpretation and representation of the Canadian north in Canadian literature.
  
  A quick read itself, Atwood provides a brief overview of early Can. Lit. and it’s treatment in various formats - novels, poems, etc. An updated version covering the last forty years of literature would be welcomed, but probably won’t materialize.
  
  Highly recommended!
  
  FYI: if you like to drink while reading - any beverage - choose something that won’t hurt when you snort it out your nose. Atwood’s witty repartee and snazzy rejoinders to already-published materials will leave snorting. It’s your choice if you want to drink while reading.
• 
  Barkha

  Nice analysis of the North in Canadian literature. Extreme living is fascinating. What caught my fantasy was also the 'cabin fever' syndrome, which we often see as a result of isolation or living under extreme weather conditions.
  
  Life in the vast snowy landscape can be very hard, especially for the early settlers and explorers. It's amazing to explore the motifs in Canadian literature around the same.
• 
  Carole B

  Such a lovely survey of Canadian literature in lectures long enough to show Atwood's sense of humor and thorough knowledge, short enough to be digested.
• 
  Mar

  3.5
• 
  Catherine Bailey

  Very much the written lectures for an English Lit class. Well researched but if you're not familiar with a host of Canadian writers it doesn't really stick. 3.5 stars.
• 
  K✨

  read for thesis research and now i really want to become a canlit scholar tbh
• 
  Kevin

  “What do we mean by ‘the North’? Until you get to the North Pole, ‘North’, being a direction, is relative. ‘The North’ is thought of as a place, but it’s a place with shifting boundaries. It’s also a state of mind.”
  - Pg 8
  
  This book a collection of four Clarendon lectures Atwood gave on the topic of ‘The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature’.
  
  Things I learned from this book:
  
  -Arpeggio, a type of broken musical chord.
  -Scabrous, rough and covered with scabs.
  -Intercostal
  -Plantigrade
  -Diminuendo, Decreasing in Loudness.
  -Autochthone French Native
  1. an original or indigenous inhabitant of a place.
  
  
  Further Reading -
  
  A Discovery of Strangers by Rudy Weibe
  Frozen in Time by Owen Beattie
• 
  Sian Lile-Pastore

  i like books about snow and ice and 'the north' so i liked this. it's a series of lectures that atwood delivered in oxford and looks at the wendigo, women writers in the 'canadian wilderness'and lots of other things. it's really interesting.
• 
  Meg

  Love Margaret Atwood, can't wait to see how this works out.
  
  Fascinating, amazing, funny. Drags a little on the chapter about white Canadians who want to become Indian, but overall very good.
• 
  Stephanie

  Quite riveting, especially for a book of literary criticism. Far more relevant and insightful than the points in Survival.
• 
  Janet

  As funny, smart and compelling as her fiction.
• 
  A.-C.

  Loved it. Very insightful and witty. I always enjoy the way Atwood's work - fiction as well as non-fiction - few authors or critics resonate as well with me as she does.
• 
  Anna

  I like Atwood's writing so much I actually enjoyed this piece of non-fiction and I read more than I needed for my paper. Which really means something.
• 
  Shonna Froebel

  
  http://cdnbookworm.blogspot.ca/2015/1...