Genius and Despair

Reading Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood this morning, I'm tempted to give up blogging. I'm tempted to give up any writing at all, including mundane necessities like emails and cover sheets. No, I shall simply call, and give up writing altogether. Because never, ever, ever will I be able to write anything remotely as funny, macabre, sad, and unexpected as that which flows forth from Ms Atwood. Take:

I live in a house, with window curtains and a lawn, in British Columbia, which is as far away from Toronto as I could get without drowning. The unreality of the landscape there encourages me: the greeting-card mountains, of the sunset-and-sloppy-message variety, the cottagy houses that look as if they were built by the Seven Dwarfs in the thirties, the giant slugs, so much larger than a slug needs to be. Even the rain is overdone. I can't take it seriously. I suppose these things are as real, and as oppressive, to the people who grew up there as this place is to me. But on good days it still feels like a vacation, and an evasion. On bad days I don't notice it, or much else.

Or take:

Jon left me the key in an envelope under the mat, and a note saying Blessings, which is a measure of how much he's softened, or mellowed. Blessings is not his former style. He's temporarily in Los Angeles, doing a chain-saw murder, but he'll be back before my opening.

Or, a page later:

Jon has told me he isn't sure this hacked-up body-part stuff is the sort of thing he should be doing. It's too violent, it doesn't contribute to human goodness. He's coming to believe in human goodness in his old age, which is certainly a change; I've even found some herbal tea in the cupboard. He claims he'd rather make friendly animals for children's shows. But as he says, you have to eat, and there's just more demand for hacked-off limbs.