I am looking into purchasing this after all of the tabs I made in my library copy. Atwood writes to the reader and the writer at all stages of life, in what is a love letter to her peers and predecessors and readership and new writers.

Introduction: Into the labyrinth: Atwood offers over two pages of reasons as to why one writes: "To record the world as it is. To set down the past before it is all forgotten. To excavate the past because it has been forgotten... Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die. Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know we are alive... Because to create is human. Because to create is Godlike... To create a national consciousness, or a national conscience.. To demonstrate that whatever is, is right" (xx-xxi)

Orientation: Who do you think you are: "Perhaps this had something to do with my eventual writing life - the inability to distinguish between the real and the imagined, or rather the attitude that what we consider real is also imagined: every life lived is also an inner life, a life created" (7)

Duplicity: The Jekyll hand, the Hyde hand, and the slippery double: "The double is more than a twin or a sibling. He or she is a you, a you who shares your most essential features - your appearances, your voice, even your name - and in traditional societies, such doubles were usually bad luck" - including Narcissus (40)
"Can an 'author' exist, apart from the work and the game attached to itThe authorial part - the part that is out there in the world, the only part that may survive death - is not flesh and blood, not a real human being. And who is writing 'I'? A hadn't must hold the pen or hit the keys, but who is in control of that hand at the moment or writing? Which half of the equation, if either, may be said to be authentic?" (45)
"The act of writing takes place at the moment when Alice passes through the mirror. At this one instant, the glass barrier between the doubles dissolves, an Alice is neither here nor there, neither art nor life, neither the one thing or the other, though at the same time she is all of these at once. At that moment time itself stops, and also stretches out, and both writer and reader have all the time not in the world" (57)

Dedication: The great god pen: "If sacrifice was demanded of the male artist, how much more so of the women? ...[cites Scarlet Letter]... A man playing the role of Great Artist was expected to Live Life - this chore was part of his consecration to his art - and Living Life meant, among other things wine, women, and song. But if a female writer tried the wine and the men, she was likely to be considered a slut and a drunk" (83)

Temptation: Prospero, the wizard of oz, mephisto & co: "The reader will judge the characters, because the reader will interpret. We all interpret, every day - we must interpret, not only language, but a whole environment in which this means that... Language is not morally neutral because the human brain is not neutral in its desires" (111)

Communion: Nobody to nobody: "The book, as a form, expresses its own emotions and thoughts, while concealing from view the person who has concocted them. The difference between Cyrano and the book in general is that Cyrano give vent to his own emotions, but the thoughts and emotions in a book are not necessarily those of the writer of it" (133) (on Cyrano de Bergerac)
"Keats praised negative capability, and unless a writer has something of this quality, she will write characters that are mere mouthpieces for her own views. But if she has too much negative capability, doesn't she risk being turned into melting wax by the strength of her audience's desires and fears, interacting with her own? Ho many writers have put on other faces, or had other faces thrust upon them, and then been unable to take them off?" (159)

Descent: Negotiating the dead: "Borges, in his 'Nine Dantesque Essays,' puts forward an interesting theory: That the entire Divine Comedy, al three sections of it... this whole vast and intricate structure was composed by Dante mainly so he could get a glimpse of the dead Beatrice, and bring her back to life in his poems. It is because he is writing about her, and only because he is writing about her, that Beatrice is able to exist again, in the mind of the writer and reader" (p. 172)