Wilderness Tips Summary
Margaret Atwood

Wilderness Tips Summary

The accelerating pressure of time is a palpable force in the psyches of Atwood's characters in this collection. The majority of the pieces involve figures who are looking back over their lives, usually elegiacally but sometimes with downright bitterness or uncomprehending confusion. Repeatedly, the past proves its power to live on in the present in mysterious, sometimes deforming, ways. Richard, the middle-aged professor of "Isis in Darkness," has just decided to commit himself to a retrospective study of the work of a poet named Selena, a friend who had long epitomized for him the artist's quest for aesthetic and intellectual authenticity. Her slow descent into alcoholic disillusionment and literary marginality speaks to him of a martyrdom he avoided by choosing instead the safer, if soul-deadening, path of the tenured university hack. Marcia, the central consciousness of "Hack Wednesday," also broods over where her career finds her, although she...

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