| Review: Margaret Atwood SURFACING |
| Every once in a while, it’s interesting to revisit
a piece of literature. Surfacing by Margaret
Atwood came out in 1972 and had significant impact. It was a breakthrough
in style and content, and because it so powerfully portrayed the conflicts
and difficulties of the emerging feminist movement became a mandatory
book for women’s studies. But it was more than that. Surfacing reflected the effects of the 1960s on western culture, the tarnishing reputation of America due to the Viet Nam war, the burgeoning environmentalist movement, the sexual revolution, the power and disillusionment of the baby boomer generation. In other words, with Surfacing, Atwood managed to snap a wide angle photo, to catch civilization on the edge of a moment some would call ascent and others would call the opposite. Whatever you’d call it, it was a time when it seemed the world would never be the same again. Fast forward to 2005. One always approaches a book one last read more than 25 years ago with some trepidation. Especially a book one remembers as seminal. For one thing, Surfacing broke barriers of style and technique. Distinctive in 1972, how would it fare today? And with thirty years of life experience under one’s belt, would the book still allow for discovery? Would it still have vitality? Relevance? For this reader, Surfacing remains timeless. And thirty years, apparently, is a drop in the bucket. What seemed, in the ‘70s, to be forward progression, a matter of fixing, an inevitable advance forward in human evolution, was little more than youthful illusion. The path of man is crazily oblique. A step forward endlessly compromised by the assaults of fear, inertia, misperception, misunderstanding, contrary belief. In the simplest terms, Surfacing is about a woman’s search for self, her search for truth. Deconstruction occurs as she rids herself of false belief, innocence, trust, naiveté. And as layer after layer peels away, a clarity of vision is achieved, followed by a tentative step toward life, a flicker of hope—not for her, perhaps, but for what may come after. Surfacing reaches into the recesses of the experience of life, and the experience of life changes little. Tools change. Attitudes swing. But the thing that human beings chase, how we cope, fail, wonder – that is changeless. And that is the axis on which Surfacing spins…one woman’s response to her own unique set of circumstances acting as a mirror to all of our responses to all circumstances…yesterday, today, tomorrow. What once seemed a breakthrough writing style now simply seems like good writing, but Surfacing still disturbs, demands, lingers, informs—is still a novel that seriously asks something of a reader. If you haven't already, read it...and if you have, read it again.
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