This is a fantastic piece. Atwood's approach to fiction qua metafiction (fiction about writing fiction) is very witty and instructive for writers of all ages and disciplines. I would even argue that it is instructive for the existentialist or psychoanalyst. The introduction of multiple plot lines (or trajectories of the story) helps illustrate her point that "the stretch in between" the beginning and end of a story is what is truly invigorating. This stretch is simultaneously elastic and always already open to alterity, simply waiting the endless insertions of "a what and a what and a what". This metacommentary on fiction by Atwood deliberately avoids the effacement of alterity in the plot lines provided, and instead reveals the infinitude of singularities that can be created even with a few characters and a short span of time.
Atwood's fiction qua metafiction rises (albeit subtly) to the level of the philosophical as she reveals that "John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die." The inevitability and authenticity of this ending is inescapable for the character and writer, and paradigmatically the human. To put it more finely, Atwood gestures towards a metacommentary on human existence by revealing the obvious, yet disavowed, fact that we all die. This can be read as an encounter with the Real that gets disavowed through ego speech and the play of the Imaginary and Symbolic. Atwood's work throws the reader (and text) into relief, allowing for a temporary break from the Symbolic and descent (or ascent) into the Real. The pre-infantile knowledge of beginning and end as simultaneous banality rushes (breaks) in. Following Atwood's logic qua advice, what should be cherished is that "stretch in between", in other words, the quotidian or the everyday.
