Bonus Atwood! 14 Days

I was looking through my "want to read" tags in Libby and found a piece of Atwood that I forgot! She edited a book called 14 Days, a collection of stories written by 36 different American and Canadian authors, and told by the inhabitants of a New York apartment building during COVID-19 lockdown. The anthology was a fundraiser for the Authors Guild Foundation, specifically for writers who were suffering financially during COVID-19 due to cancellation of their book tours and speaking engagements. Though it came out in 2024, before the memoir was published, it is not mentioned in the memoir, nor is her primary collaborator, Douglas Preston.

I wish I had not read Preston's preface, which rather pompously proclaims that this collection is completely different from the Decameron or the Canterbury Tales. I disagree. This is exactly like those collections, in that a group of varied characters get together and tell stories to pass the time. If he is referring to the twist at the end, honestly, anybody who thinks about it for more than a minute can guess what it is going to be. So don't. 

I found many of the stories entertaining, but several of them seem to have an agenda or an ax to grind. Several of them were implausible as oral narratives spoken on a rooftop, in that they were way too detailed and gave a lot of background, often historical, often pushing the recognition of minority groups. I have nothing against that, but rather than add to the stories, it just seemed to be stepping up on a soapbox placed there for a different purpose. 

The most confusing story, by Ishmael Reed, is about an academic and his wife who put together a discussion group about the Decameron. The attendees come with guns blazing, destroying Bocaccio for his lack of woke values. The white guy who just wants to read a book by a dead white guy is humiliated. What's ironic is that they are criticizing Bocaccio's didacticism while being didactic. Which is why I'm confused: are we making fun of cancel culture or agreeing with it? At any rate, we can still study old literature, in fact we need to, in order to learn about our history. If we only read things that espoused our values, we would learn a lot less. I'm pretty sure Reed (I won't call him Ishmael, haha) is with me on this at least partway, but let me know in the comments if I'm wrong.

Back to Atwood, I was a bit let down by her contribution, too, which is about a spider turned into a young woman and working as a bed bug exterminator. It's shorter than most of the stories and introduces the magical realism that will prevail by the end.