Margaret Atwood

Deborah Solomon interviewed Margaret Atwood for the New York Times Magazine.

Two of their exchanges:

As one of Canada ’s most esteemed novelists and poets, you are about to deliver a series of public lectures on a seemingly nonliterary subject, “Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth,” which is also the title of your latest book. Your timing is perfect.

Well, I didn’t do it on purpose. It’s not my fault. I didn’t make those banks collapse.

* * *

So what led you to take up the subject of debt?

Long ago, I was a graduate student in Victorian literature. When you think of the 19th-century novel, you think romance — you think Heathcliff, Cathy, Madame Bovary, etc. But the underpinning structure of those novels is money, and Madame Bovary could have cheerfully gone on committing adultery for a long time if she hadn’t overspent.

Read the complete Q & A.

Read more about Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth.

--Marshal Zeringue