By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — The Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood keeps busy — in addition her literary and TV work — flying around the world on an almost monthly basis to give lectures at universities and book festivals in over a dozen countries. Look up in the sky at any moment, and you might catch a glimpse of a 747 carrying Dr. Atwood to Israel or Britain or Australia or Mexico.
In 2010, in fact, Atwood flew to Jerusalem to receive the million-dollar Jerusalem Prize endowed by the Dan David Foundation and awarded jointly with Tel Aviv University to recognize human achievement that ”cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms,” in three categories: the past, present and future. Atwood’s prize was for the category The Present — Rendering the 20th Century.
To book the literary rockstar for a lecture takes ingenuity, PR savvy and patience, as Atwood’s schedule is almost always full and making contact with her or her office assistant in Toronto is not a simple matter. But dozens of speaking dates materialize month after month, and persistence by college English professors and lecture hall bookers almost always pays off. Still, what happened at Dartmouth College this month makes for a great one-of-a-kind Atwood story, and I’ll let the professor who told the story on stage during her recent lecture tell it again here. It’s one for the books.
You see, when the Toronto novelist visited Dartmouth College across the border in New Hampshire in mid-April to meet with seniors in a climate fiction seminar, little did the delighted Ivy Leaguers know that they owed Atwood’s visit to a chance encounter on an airplane two years ago that put a Dartmouth professor named Sonu Bedi in a seat next to her.
According to a delightful news article by Dartmouth PR maven Charlotte Albright, Professor Bedi explained in his introduction to the SRO lecture that Atwood’s visit to Dartmouth was ”a stroke of luck.”
“Two years ago, he was seated next to her on a plane [from Chicago] to Indiana, where they were both scheduled to give lectures,” Albright wrote, adding: “Bedi thought the person sitting next to him was the famous writer. But he wasn’t certain.”
Then he told the crowd, with Atwood sitting next to him on the Dartmouth College stage: “She graciously asked me what my talk was about — and you know, you ask an academic what they are going to talk about and they will answer– so I did.”
Then he said he asked his seatmate, “What is your talk about?” “She said, ‘I am going to talk about a book I’ve written called The Handmaid’s Tale,’” Bedi said. “That’s how we came to have Margaret Atwood here today.”
Bedi, a professor in Law and Political Science at Dartmouth, later arranged Atwood’s visit and appeared on stage with her during her talk. After I read about the Atwood-Bedi airplane encounter at 32,000 feet, I told the professor I planned to write about the anecdote and asked him by email: “Was the plane leaving from Boston with both of you on it and seated next to each by complete random chance? What was your lecture titled and where did you give it?”
Professor Bedi was kind enough to answer in internet time, from his university office in New Hampshire to my kitchen table ”office” in Taiwan.”Thanks for the email,” he wrote. “I’m glad you enjoyed [the write up about Atwood’s Dartmouth lecture. In 2017, I was on my way from Chicago to Indiana to give a talk on race and the reproductive market at the Political Theory Colloquium at the University of Notre Dame. She was on her way to give a speech at Notre Dame, too. Thanks for your kind email. It was my pleasure to bring her to campus [in 2019.] I was pleased that so many enjoyed her lecture.”
So there you have it: a chance encounter of a literary kind due to the seating arrangement on a jet airplane. One thing led to another. Moral of the story: Always keep your eyes open and be open to whatever happens next. Parting words: Bedi’s second email, after I asked him what he thought about the possibility of Atwood receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature this October: “I hope she gets it.”
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Bloom is a freelance writer and inveterate web surfer based in Taiwan. He may be contacted via dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com