Nations never build apparently radical forms of government on foundations that aren’t there already thus China replaced a state bureaucracy with a similar state bureaucracy under a different name, the USSR replaced the dreaded imperial secret police with an even more dreaded secret police, and so forth. On November 16 I find another writerly whine: “I feel sucked hollow.” To which I added: “But functional.” The book appeared in Canada in the fall of 1985 to baffled and some times anxious reviews- Could it happen here?-but there is no journal commentary on these by me. On June 10 there is a cryptic entry: “Finished editing Handmaid’s Tale last week.” The page proofs had been read by August 19. I recall her saying, “I think you’ve got something here.” She herself remembers more enthusiasm.įrom Septemto June 1985 all is blank in my journal-there is nothing at all set down, not even a puffball-though by my page-count entries it seems I was writing at white-hot speed. I finished the book there the first person to read it was fellow writer Valerie Martin, who was also there at that time. I see that I left Berlin in June of 1984, returned to Canada, spent a month on Galiano Island in British Columbia, wrote through the fall, then spent four months in early 1985 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I held an MFA Chair. I recall that I was writing by hand, then transcribing with the aid of a typewriter, then scribbling on the typed pages, then giving these to a professional typist: personal computers were in their infancy in 1985.
I did not anticipate any of this when I was writing the book. Is it entertainment or dire political prophecy? Can it be both? Revelers dress up as Handmaids on Halloween and also for protest marches-these two uses of its costumes mirroring its doubleness. The book has had several dramatic incarnations, a film (with screenplay by Harold Pinter and direction by Volker Schlöndorff) and an opera (by Poul Ruders) among them.
People-not only women-have sent me photographs of their bodies with phrases from The Handmaid’s Tale tattooed upon them, Nolite te bastardes carborundorum and Are there any questions? being the most frequent.
It has been expelled from high schools, and has inspired odd website blogs discussing its descriptions of the repression of women as if they were recipes.
It has become a sort of tag for those writing about shifts towards policies aimed at controlling women, and especially women’s bodies and reproductive functions: “Like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Here comes The Handmaid’s Tale” have become familiar phrases. It has sold millions of copies worldwide and has appeared in a bewildering number of translations and editions. The Handmaid’s Tale has not been out of print since it was first published, back in 1985.
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