From Margaret Atwood, a Dose of Reality

Over coffee one morning here, the conversation jumped from publicists trying to keep her interviews on schedule (“Oh, poo on them”) to women’s fashion (“Structured skirts. Can’t wear them. I’m too short”) to the flood of new writers (“It’s like everyone’s blogging about how they brushed their teeth this morning.”)

Ms. Atwood is known for her quirky dark humor. But she’s also fearless in jumping, feet first, into serious issues like global debt, the environment, gay rights and censorship.

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“Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what,” she continued, referring to an ancient script used in the Middle East. “Before cuneiform, in Sumer, there were little clay envelopes, baked so they were sealed. And inside were small objects that represented animals. These were early waybills, early record-keeping. And if you were missing a sheep or lamb or calf from your delivery, you had to pay. That was when debt was tangible.”

Now, she said, debt has become “bit-ified,” with, for example, people taking mortgages and breaking them into bits, then selling them to other people. “And when it all fell apart, and they tried to figure out who, exactly, owned the mortgage on a house, they couldn’t.” Meanwhile, she added, “governments hurl taxpayers’ dollars into a bottomless pit.”