Atkinson, a former stripper, drew heavily upon her life experience in
writing the novel. She had expected that it would be published with
little fanfare, read only by a handful of women; she was as surprised
as anybody, after its original 1995 publication, when it became one
of Canada's best sellers and was eventually shortlisted for the
Governor General's Award, a Canadian literary award roughly
equivalent to the British Booker Prize. Having recently completed her
college studies, Atkinson, who has dual Canadian-American
citizenship, is currently living on the East Coast, where she can both
help promote the American edition of Highways and
Dancehalls and work on her second novel. Although she enjoys
aspects of living there, she does not expect it will be permanent. "My
whole life has been about loss and the acceptance of loss," she says,
"about change and getting comfortable with the feeling that you're
always falling, that you're never going to get back to normal. So
wherever I am, I just try to be there."
RH: Where did you find the time to juggle dancing and
writing?
DA: The time is there. It's not like you're a stockbroker. You're
expected to be on stage for a twenty minute show five or six times a
day, six days a week. There's time to write in the morning, between
shows and at night. It just depends on how you want to spend it, and
I'm not interested in alcohol and drugs. It doesn't enhance the
coordination you need to dance, and it especially seemed like a poor
idea to lose control of my critical faculties in a roomful of people who
all wanted to get me into bed. They want to buy you drinks, and
management likes to see you in the bar with the men, but you don't
have to be shit-faced to do that, and it helps if you're not. So I
always asked for grapefruit juice or milk, you know? If you're not
drinking, you can think clearly, and if you think clearly... well, for
me, the need to write things down was immediate.
RH: Did you ever get any "Oh, she's a writer" flak from other
dancers or bar patrons?
DA: I didn't talk about it, and I hadn't published anything.
Nobody knew about it, but I was certainly considered a weirdo.
Everyone was a misfit; each biker was a misfit, each dancer was a
misfit. It was a catchall lifestyle for misfits. I was weird for not
drinking, and for not wanting to do coke, and for not wanting to
party a lot. I was weird for keeping to myself, and for having a
disconcerting gaze. I was always being told from the moment I
entered the public school system as a small child that I was different
and weird, so it didn't surprise me that they found me weird as
well.
RH: Did you have any literary aspirations before you started
dancing?
DA: It was never a question of literary aspirations. I was born
a writer. I've been a writer since early childhood in the same way
that people that are gay discover that they're gay and then wonder
what they're going to do. I see it as much of an affliction as a
blessing; it's an identity that I've had to struggle with because it's a
peculiarly bifurcated way of seeing. Most people process reality
moment to moment, and maybe look back on a moment later. I think
artists are burdened with a double gaze -- a filmmaker will see
whatever's happening, but he's also framing a shot in his mind; a
writer will experience something, but at the same time hope that it
can be redeemed later. That double way of seeing can complicate
your life. A writer is a person who works overtime trying to impose
meaning the chaos that life hands us.
RH: Do you have time to read a lot, or do you spend the majority
of your time writing?
DA: I often look like I'm not doing much of anything, and I'm
not one of those writers who has to one-up everybody by saying that
they write from 8:00 to 5:00 or some damn thing. I don't think it
works that way. I wrote my first book for forty-five minutes a day
in a laundromat. You have to stay open to life and open to reading.
There comes a phase towards the end of a manuscript where you
don't to read anybody else, but for the most part reading feeds your
mind, and it's a good plan for anybody who wants to write.
I really like Anita Brookner, Barbara Pym, and Jean Rhys; what those
three women have in common is that they all deal with the subject of
the woman alone, struggling for dignity in a world that doesn't
particularly value the woman alone.
RH: This is one of the most relentlessly personal novels I've read
in a while.
DA: Margaret Atwood has said that you write the book of your
life over and over again in different ways. I know that this novel is
like many first novels in that it's heavily autobiographical, and that
critics can get you on a double bind; if you admit that your novel was
autobiographical, they dismiss it as not being 'real' fiction, but if you
say that it has nothing to do with your life, they ask you how you can
dare to write about something you don't know. I'm proud to have
written a book that grapples honestly with the harder truths of my
life and to have employed the craft of fiction in doing so.
Someone once said that you write the books you wish had been
available to you when you were growing up, and I suppose that I
thought that somewhere there's an underage teenage stripper sitting
on the edge of a hotel bed, or the edge of a bathtub, in a hotel suite
in a mining town in British Columbia, and she's thinking about killing
herself because she doesn't think anyone understands her. This book
was written for her.
RH: How hard was it for you to dig that deep into yourself to write this novel?
DA: At first, I really didn't want to talk about the feeling of
being physically defective. When I got my first writing grant, I
couldn't move for three months. My arms literally couldn't move. I
sat at the edge of the bed and stared at the opposite wall. Weeks
went by, and I realized that I had a problem, but I was threatened
by the challenge to be honest at the level that I eventually reached
in my writing. It didn't come easily. I have the verbal facility for it,
but the emotional strength to allow yourself to be looked at so
intimately by strangers was really difficult. I finally did it by
realizing that other people would benefit from my honesty in the
same way that Dorothy Allison's writing has helped many women,
including me.
In the process of writing the book, I had to face what I call my
triple-layered shame. First there's the shame of being unrespectable.
There's still a Madonna/whore line drawn, where it's fine if you're a
model wearing next to nothing on MTV, but if you're actually a
stripper, and you actually take it off, it's somehow different.
Even harder than that was the shame of having been disfigured and
of having been ill. I had been scarred. No matter how screwed up
any of those centerfold bunnies had been inside, they always looked
picture perfect. You never see a model with a scar, you know? It
seems like there's something unforgivable about reminding people of
their mortality and physical frailty. We lock up our amputees, make
them shut-ins so we can keep them out of our faces.
The third layer of shame comes when people say, "Well, why aren't
you over it? Don't be a victim. Get over it already." Ultimately, the
path to empowerment requires that you accept yourself, all the
feelings of vulnerability and inferiority, the ways in which you were
made to suffer and suffer. I actually disagree with a lot of the ways
that certain aspects of the New Age or self-help movement have
been twisted around to make already suffering people feel bad about
the fact that they're still reeling. There should be more compassion in
the world; that's why I wrote the way that I wrote, and took the
risks that I took emotionally. There are people who really need it,
and somebody has to give them support.
RH: And afterwards, when the book came out?
DA: I really only expected that the book would be picked up by a local
publisher and read by a handful of strippers and biker chicks on the
B.C.-Alberta circuit, so it blew my mind when it came out
internationally and middle class women were calling me and telling
me how much they identified with the main character. In a way, it's
consoling; it makes me glad that I took the plunge and came all the
way out... [The initial publicity] was something to go through and to
grow through. It was deeply taxing on my psyche, and I ended up
retreating to the mountains to sleep for six weeks when I was done.
It's getting easier, and it helps if I can get a feel for who I'm talking
to before we talk about the book, but tt's still a daunting proposition
to face the book every time I do an interview.
