Payback: Debt and The Shadow Side of Wealth - Background

Background

Toronto-based author Margaret Atwood was asked several times over numerous years to deliver a Massey Lecture, which would be broadcast over the radio on CBC Radio One's Ideas and published by the House of Anansi Press. When she finally agreed, she chose her subject to be sociobiology of literary criticism, and specifically how an author's gender and age affects critical reception. However, after delivering lectures at Oxford University and Cambridge University on similar topics she re-considered her choice. She began thinking of 'debt' as a topic after writing "Letter to America" for The Globe and Mail in March 2003 (later reprinted in The Nation) regarding the pending invasion of Iraq and asking whether Americans understood the debt to which they were committing.

Atwood was scheduled to release her new novel in fall 2008 and deliver the Massey Lectures in fall 2009. At the insistence of Atwood's American editor at Doubleday, her Canadian and British editors and agents agreed in January 2008 to postpone the release of her novel by one year to avoid competing with the US Presidential election for attention. The people organizing the Massey Lectures, Sarah McLachlan of House of Anansi Press, John Fraser of Massey College, and Bernie Lucht of CBC's Ideas, discovered this re-scheduling via a newspaper article. They asked Atwood to deliver her lectures in fall 2008, meaning the text would be due in June. She agreed on condition of Massey College providing research and technical assistance. The text was written between late January and June 2008, during which Atwood took time for two vacations (birding in Cuba and in France). The original title was to be Debt but Scott Griffin, owner of House of Anansi Press, convinced Atwood to change it to something less depressing.