Alice Munro: A Tribute
Alice Munro: A Tribute
The stories
Seven stories by Alice Munro briefly discussed for the memorial
via invitation from Tara Penry
In my life of reading Alice, I’ve covered nearly all fourteen books and taught many of the stories when I was a professor of creative writing at George Washington University.
In my tribute, I discuss seven of the stories that I chose to teach and use fragmentary notes, not to explain, but to intrigue —plus an eighth story that I include with a link to The New Yorker because it is so timely in this year of our loss of a woman’s rights over her own body. (I note here that “Menesteung” that appears in Best American Short Stories of the Century is brilliant; I still teach it regularly, so I omit it here because I don’t want to scoop what I do with this incredible short story.)
“Labor Day Dinner” from The Moons of Jupiter; also anthologized: The loss of connection, the hope of love unfulfilled, the deadly acceptance that hangs onto longing … A gorgeously layered story, as are all of Alice’s stories, that focuses close-in on Roberta, magically done with interior work, with flashback, and with Alice’s use of omniscience so rarely used in the modern day short story and so effectively done.
“Deep Holes” “Some Women” and “Face” from Too Much Happiness, winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize: The first two: You gotta read them to understand the depth, the greatness and the ability to reach into the souls, hearts, dreams and losses of women. “Face”: A first-person story with a man as narrator. Risk and security. The novel-like feel that characterizes Alice’s work. Primal injury. Freudian trauma. The father who will not look at the child with the birthmark on his face. A childhood girl, the central “drama” when the rupture with the girl occurs, her action misunderstood as cruel. The girl doesn’t see our main character as needing to be hidden though hidden he has been, in most ways, all his life. A loving gesture revealed.
“Runaway” and “Passion” from Runaway: “Runaway”: Carla’s story. The bargains we make and that there is no place to run. “Passion”: “Grace’s view of her place in Maury’s world, the subtle sensuality in Alice’s work, the cost that comes with getting away. Grace paid a price, a price she ultimately was willing to pay.
“The Bear Came Over the Mountain” from Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Marriage: The story Sarah Polley read in The New Yorker on an airplane and decided to make into the film Away From Her with a luminous performance by Julie Christie.
Note: The New Yorker thought Alice’s stories too long and cut portions. Her confidence by now firm, she replaced all the cuts when the story was published in her collection.
I add here that Alice, in this story, uses the technique I term “modular” fiction, characteristic of so many of her stories, meaning the story is not driven by the seeming orderliness of a time-driven chronology and the result is always meaning that strikes the heart.
For all of you passionate to write, late-starters and workshop attendees, read Alice if you have not. And remember this revelation from Alice’s daughter’s book Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing Up with Alice Munro1: “‘Boys and Girls’2 was one of her favorite stories, though not her best technically because of a certain disjointed quality she couldn’t correct. With this story, going against her usual instinct not to discuss her work, she brought the unpublished manuscript to a creative writing class at UVic …. One of the group’s participants, Lawrence Russell, attacked the story savagely, saying it was something a typical housewife would write. She wasn’t able to write anything for about a year after that episode.” —if one can even imagine such for this prolific genius. I know that Grace Paley had a similar experience—but even worse, from a creative writing professor.
My point: Rejection, misunderstanding are part of the process. Don’t give up. Look for a teacher who understands the difficult and weighty task of teaching and mentoring.
Here’s a link to her 1998 short story “Before the Change”3 that has abortion as part of its layered subject of not being seen and secrets that plague us.
Love,
Sheila Munro, Lives of Mothers & Daughters: Growing up with Alice Munro: a memoir, A Douglas Gibson Book, Toronto, 2001.
Published, of course! in 1968 in The Montrealer, before it was collected with fourteen other stories and published in Alice Munro’s first edition of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968).
Listen to the story and discussion via The New Yorker podcast. With my thanks to
who sent me the link.
Love this, Mary. Such an important reminder that even those who we consider great have experienced self-doubt, have been eviscerated by people who think far too highly of their own opinions. That’s a good thing to remember in those quiet moments when we’re wondering if we’re “good enough.”
What a brilliant classroom instructor you must be !!
I wish I could remember who, but there was an interview I heard recently with an artist who said he learned the hard way not to tell others about something he didn't like about his own work. Once he told them, it spread like a virus to critics who seized upon something they wouldn't necessarily have noticed had he not expressed his own self-judgment. A different angle of Alice's instinct not to discuss her own work. Ultimately you have to be confident in what you put out, as everyone looks to give a critique, whether or not invited. That discussion should be had in a safe place, as you mention, with a "teacher who understands the difficult and weighty task of teaching and mentoring".
I appreciated "Before the Change". Thank you for sharing this tribute to Alice Munro's body of work.
(Now I need to watch "Away from Her"!)