The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986). 

I worked transferring books to computer discs, to cut down on storage space and replacement costs, they said. Discers, we called ourselves.  We called the library a discotheque, which was a joke of ours.  After the books were transferred they were supposed to go to the shredder, but sometimes I took them home with me.  I liked the feel or them and the look.  Luke said I had he mind of an antiquarian.  He liked that, he liked old things himself. 

COMMENT

     It seems that before the repressive Gilead theocracy took over Offred had a job at a library.  Notwithstanding her prowess at Scrabble, she was para-professional staff, not a  librarian. The detail of the library job shows Atwood as a master satirist.  Offred herself has been an  book-burner, albeit an inadvertent one.  Now the book burners are in charge and the world is a total nightmare.  The digitized books did not survive regime change, and this, along with the lack of paper money and elimination of newspapers has helped  fanatics suspend the Constitution. Libraries have been burned, there are no computer connections and women are forbidden to read.

    In the afterword a group of historians discuss Offred's narrative and describe how it had been recorded orally using an already obsolete technology of musical tape cassettes.   In order to transcribe them, the historians-of-the-future have to reconstruct a tape player.  

   Atwood's awareness of library preservation formats is extraordinary and prescient.   Oppression of women has left a gap in the historical record for Gilead scholars, but so has the use of non-archival digital technologies.