\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA<\/span> lot of people have died, so I can actually say these things without destroying somebody\u2019s life. Except for the people whose lives I wish to destroy.\u201d Thus spake Margaret Atwood in a recent interview about Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, in a clip that has gone viral. \u201cThey deserve it,\u201d she says, of the people she hasn\u2019t said such nice things about. Asked if she likes holding a grudge, she replied: \u201cI don\u2019t have a choice. I\u2019m a Scorpio.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of the clip\u2019s appeal is Atwood\u2019s icily sardonic delivery: you can understand why a recent review of her autobiography describes her as \u201ca literary mafia don\u201d, reminding those who have crossed her that she knows who they are, even if they remain unnamed, or pointing out that they may well be dead by now anyway. It reminds me a bit of the writer who once said to me: \u201cIf you wait by the bend in the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will eventually float past\u201d. Not a Buddhist proverb, for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n It\u2019s that same wry acknowledgment of the supposed wrongness of one\u2019s own grudge-holding that makes Book of Lives so funny. From Atwood\u2019s response to one hatchet job being the immortal words: \u201cPiss up a rope, wanker\u201d, to her account of hiring an exorcist to banish the possible ghost of her husband\u2019s ex-wife, the woman who unfairly labelled her a \u201chomewrecker\u201d, her vengeance is too hilarious to be judged entirely cold.<\/p>\n Though is it revenge, to name and shame those who have wronged us, in the telling of our own stories? There\u2019s a notion that to bear a grudge is somehow petty, and to a certain extent, it is public delight in that pettiness that has made the clip of Atwood take off online. Perhaps it\u2019s the notion that prize-winning, household-name authors should be above such feelings, that there is a certain glee, not to mention comfort in discovering that, like the rest of us, they are nurturing a mental \u201cshit list\u201d of people who have hurt them.<\/p>\n I suspect that it\u2019s more than that. In today\u2019s therapy-led culture of forgiveness, closure and moving on, bearing a grudge simply isn\u2019t the done thing. It\u2019s all about processing the crimes that have been done to us and liberating ourselves from the supposed toxicity of our ongoing resentments. We meditate and try to wish \u201cloving kindness\u201d even to those who have been cruel to us. Resentment is unhealthy, supposedly, and makes us bitter. We are supposed to \u201clet it go\u201d. But what if we can\u2019t? Furthermore, what if we don\u2019t want to? What if all this pressure to forgive becomes an additional burden? \u201cI\u2019m trying so hard, but I just can\u2019t forgive her\u201d, a friend said recently, of her narcissistic mother. \u201cWhy do you have to forgive her?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n Maybe I\u2019m a long way from reaching enlightenment. I don\u2019t think bearing a grudge \u2013 which carries a mental load \u00ad\u2013 is the same thing as accepting that some things still cause us pain. Besides, it is indeed death, not forgiveness, that liberates the memoirist. Now that they can\u2019t sue you, you can finally have your say, without having to dress it all up as fiction \u2013 as Atwood said she did in Cat\u2019s Eye, her masterful novel about the lifelong impact of bullying between girls. \u201cIt was true that parts of the novel were autobiographical,\u201d Atwood now writes. \u201cI avoided saying so because the chief perp was still alive: she became a teenage friend and we\u2019d kept in touch. But now, she and her immediate family are all dead.\u201d The bully\u2019s name was Sandra.<\/p>\n In Cat\u2019s Eye, the bully is Cordelia, and women who have their own Cordelias still break down in tears when they meet Atwood. Such is the legacy of girl-on-girl cruelty, and the recognition that reading Cat\u2019s Eye provokes. My mother gave me a copy of it during my own awful time with bullies. Still, when I think of my first year of secondary school, the image that comes to mind is that of the dark, glacial toilet block in which I\u2019d hide at breaktime, and its blue walls (I have always hated blue walls). I have had many years of therapy. Like Atwood, I understand that the person who bullied me was damaged. Understanding isn\u2019t forgiveness, though, and it doesn\u2019t surprise me that so many people struggle with the latter when their bullies later reach out to them in search of absolution.<\/p>\n Atwood may ham up the revenge angle \u2013 it\u2019s great fun and excellent marketing. She notes that bearing a grudge isn\u2019t an especially attractive thing in a person (\u201cI struggle against it, but not very hard\u201d). At the same time, her naming of Sandra doesn\u2019t feel petty or gleeful at all. She avoided doing so sooner to avoid hurting her.<\/p>\n To be bullied as a child is to feel great shame, and to tell the truth is, I believe, its radical antidote. As someone who has written a memoir herself, I know it\u2019s a process that, when done well, is a continual act of self-interrogation: why am I telling this story? You can always tell when a writer is simply score-settling. In the Book of Lives, something deeper is going on, rooted in the understanding that a long life, even a highly successful one, will always have moments of pain. It doesn\u2019t mean that the pain can\u2019t be funny. Laughing is, after all, all part of the process.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Matters of Opinion<\/span><\/p>\n Guardian columnists and writers on what they\u2019ve been debating, thinking about, reading, and more<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cA lot of people have died, so I can actually say these things without destroying somebody\u2019s life. Except for the people whose lives I wish to destroy.\u201d Thus spake Margaret Atwood in a recent interview about Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, in a clip that has gone viral. \u201cThey deserve it,\u201d she says,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[12016,3430,335,19379,433,1165,1444,3429,3038],"class_list":{"0":"post-33947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-atwood","9":"tag-cosslett","10":"tag-feel","11":"tag-grudge","12":"tag-holding","13":"tag-lucy","14":"tag-margaret","15":"tag-rhiannon","16":"tag-wrong"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}