INTERVIEWER
Can you look over your past work with pleasure? Would you change it if you had the chance?

ATWOOD
I don’t look over my past work very much. I would not change it any more than I would airbrush a photo of myself. When I do look at my work, I sometimes don’t recognize it immediately, or I’m indulgent, as one is toward the work of the young. Or I wonder what I could possibly have been thinking about–and then I remember. I suppose when I’m eighty I’ll have a good old pig-out on my past productions, but right now I’m too occupied with what’s on my plate. What a lot of food metaphors!