“Lady Oracle” by Margaret Atwood (post 6): Protagonist Joan says, “I was more than double, I was triple, multiple” and had written “Lady Oracle” in a trance.

Joan is being interviewed about her recently published book, Lady Oracle (a different kind of novel, within the novel, but with the same title):

“At this point I told the truth. I shouldn’t have done it, but once I’d started I couldn’t stop. ‘Well, I was trying some experiments with Automatic Writing,’ I said. ‘You know, you sit in front of a mirror, with a paper and pencil and a lighted candle, and then…Well, these words would sort of be given to me. I mean, I’d find them written down, without having done it myself, if you know what I mean’ ” (1, p. 237).

On page 246, Joan says:

“This was the beginning of my double life. But hadn’t my life always been double? There was always that shadowy twin, thin when I was fat, fat when I was thin…It was never-never land she wanted, that reckless twin. But not twin even, for I was more than double, I was triple, multiple, and now I could see that there was more than one life to come, there were many.”

I reserve comment until I finish the novel.

1. Margaret Atwood. Lady Oracle. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1976.