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2001-01-25

This old bumper sticker phrase first got my attention on my friend Margaret's roommate's car back when she lived in Somerville a long time ago. I remember filling a large hideous room with my loud voice and that unique brand of self-amusement so dear to the chronically intoxicated, as I kept repeating, "Witches Heal, indeed!" Lesbians, other lesbians�their lust for car ownership, their delight in bumper stickers printed with slogans, their wish to shock the lower middle classes, their pretensions to spiritual consequence, their game-shows of sanctified knowledge, their absolute utter shallowness�it was as if every bit of everything that pissed me off about them at that time were packed inside that little phrase.

Margaret Atwood, who is not a lesbian, is one of the very few writers whose books I will buy in hardcover editions. But it's not just her ability to get me to part with money that leads me to call her a witch�to accuse her, in the old style. It's not her wealth, her repute, her beauty, her brilliance and uncanny memory, nor her additional research assistants�I believe all these to be gifts and hard work rewarded. But neither is it entirely the gleaming core of sorcery, the glowing cauldron fire which endlessly refracted flashes mica-like across the surface of her prose, rendering its reading irresistible.

No, Margaret Atwood really is a witch. Beware her embedded spells, impossible to decipher or reverse, which she casts�wickedly�to cause a stir among your sleeping dragons, engendering comic slips of the tongue up above.

I have evidence, and a very specific means of proof. If and when you read Margaret Atwood:

You will meet a person for the first time, and this person, say, will have a heavyset build. Suddenly you will find yourself talking about Margaret Atwood, recommending her, recommending a book. You will find yourself saying, "Well, it's about this woman who's really very fat, she's a fat person, really, but then she loses all this weight, but she never stops feeling like a fat person inside, it's really very�" and you will watch helplessly as the space between you fills with disbelief and pain.

Or perhaps your best friend has just introduced you to his new boyfriend, whom you know to have accosted your friend on the street in the guise of a successful lawyer from Johannesburg seeking street directions on his first visit to Boston�when in fact, as he has recently and only quite subsequently admitted, he's really a Midwesterner who's been living in graduate school housing at Harvard for the past fifteen years. Suddenly you find yourself talking about Margaret Atwood, recommending her, recommending a book�oh shit, you're recommending Lady Oracle again! You hear yourself saying, "Well, it's about this woman who lies, all the time, lies about her identity, her whole life is entirely grounded upon lies. . ." and you go on, and on, and on, unable to stop yourself.

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