What's so great about Alice Munro?

Almost any of her story collections should give you an idea of what she's capable of. She's never obvious even when her subject matter is well-worn. She's innovative within the genre of traditional fiction. She's extremely inventive when it comes to constructing her stories. The fact that she's been doing it for so long and still maintains such a high level of craft is what boggles people's minds. You could easily teach a fiction-writing course based on any one story from a dozen different collections of hers. Her stories aren't "easy" even if on the surface they appear to be.
But really, her gift is to provide great stories for people who like great stories and great writing on every level for people who love that. (and if you love both then you should be able to find something to like about her.)

I would say: pick up the Hateship, Loveship..collection. Read the first story. If you don't like that one then she isn't for you.

What can I say, she just impresses the hell out of me. And I came to her late. Only in the last couple years. I never used to read her stories in the New Yorker.

add Flannery O'connor(Munro is much influenced by her),Carver,Cortazar,Borges,Kafka, abd Balzac to that list.

the one canadian short story writer that i find comparable or even superior is sharon butala.

Actually, I pretty much would, though Carver and Cortazar would be a little lower than the others. I went for my first three mainly becuase of the sheer size of their output, as well as its quality.

she's my favorite writer i've discovered over the last two or three years. she is unbelievably great. my only complaint (in the middle of a story) is she has these *moments*. but then she does amazing things with the moments. but then i wonder, are moments really like that?

but then i think she knows this, and she uses these moments to illuminate everything.

<3 <3 <3

cosign 1000%

i've been getting really into her work the last 6 months, and 'open secrets' is the greatest short story collection i've ever read. scott totally otm: she's so elegant, and there's not a wasted word, and such a natural flow to her prose. i like that a lot of her stories have these sinister undertones.

The short story writer I've most imitated, ever since I read "The Albanian Virgin" fifteen years ago. I've taught "Royal Beatings," "Floating Bridge," and "The Turkey Farm" quite a bit. The seemingly artless manner in which incidents accumulate, illuminated by the perceptions of an older narrator, always astonishes me.

i wld say pretty much everything

stayed up l8 last nite reading all of &cship, marriage feeling bewildered by something so great. the last story is just ...damn but there were a few others the one that opens the collection and the one with the golf course "nettles" are so n/l i kind of want to talk about them like physical effects like something that happened 2 me

idk maybes its kind of like that franzen review/meltdown theres no way to talk about her stories just u have 2 read them but... idk. my head is filled w/ them

also what should i read next i bought lives of girls and women and open secrets and id already read runaway and dance of the happy shade. recs plz

the only other one i've read is moons of jupiter - i think that's what it's called? anyway it's awesome but yeah i would like some recs too

i wonder, are moments really like that?

The fact that she has you wondering means that, within the universe of the story she is telling, she was able to convince you of their reality. That is part of her storytelling art.

The fact that, after laying down the book, you have lingering doubts about the reality of those moments means to me that she is probably placing an exaggerated throw-weight into those instants, in order to increase their immediate impact on the reader. A writer like Henry James would arrange such moments so that their impact grew in retrospect.

This is a rather small weakness in my opinion, but it is a gauge as well.

no one ever tells me anything so i went to the bookstore and bought a bunch of her books all at once gathered up the slim gray volumes and read through them v. quickly all wknd @ the beach

*spoiler*

at the end of lives of girls women which has the best title when the girl sleeps with the dude from the lumberyard and fails her exams daydreaming of sweat and pleasure i felt kind of angry with her like she was such a fool but i *think* i wasnt supposed to or at least i should i *get* what she was doing what was really impt &c

still i felt sad and irked by her

the collection with "Save The Reaper!" (published in '98) is marvelous.

To be honest I can't really recommend any one in particular--every one of her books (haven't yet read the most recent) struck me as being pretty bloody excellent.

Open Secrets is a good starting place. Or Hateship, Friendship...

but, yeah, just dive in.

though maybe don't start with The View From Castle Rock just cuz it's a little different. combining historical autobio stuff with fictional stuff.

(i mention those two books - Open Secrets and Hateship...just cuz i feel like they contain one knockout punch after another.)

yeah hateship is all killer no filler although still MAYBE not as a good as runaway

moons of jupiter has a couple of really fantastic ones too... "hard luck stories" is like a vision or a song or something idk

The thing I think is really startling about her is her descriptions which are eerily precise and cliché-free.

yah she really "captures it," as they say

new book out later this year!!

i luv munroe

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6hDZt1e0ofY/SYx69iz66mI/AAAAAAAADT0/dPnDpZBnOxI/s320/jim-j-bullock.jpg

the penguin classics covers are amazing:

http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/41V377QRHBL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/51hlVD4wUzL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/41QAT49B1DL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/41EF0SFENYL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/513YKKJrmeL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/415A6QDNDEL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/4141QK017FL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Stock photos of self-conscious women. Fitting?

the ones with faces seem out of place.

idk i think theyre waaaay nice than stock photos are mb i just like the stock photo aesthetic

the girl in "there's something..." is mesmerizing to me

The new collection is her best since Hateship...

there's only been one other btw them (?) which is my absolute favorite of hers. although there's something i've been menaing to tell you has the story about the dude that tries to walk on water.

Yeah, they're lovely. I thought they were Hoppers for a minute

I believe they're not stock, but were taken especially for the books.

Alice Munro is like the female northern version of William Faulkner.

o_0

there's only been one other btw them (?)

Runaway
The View From Castle Rock

Oh they're def not stock

woo a copy of 'hateship, friendship' showed up at work today, i can read this person now

you will love it (maybe)

hateship is a good place to start, it's pretty much amazing

Yup.

i really like those penguin classics covers, why do they not have them over here

picked up 'open secrets' & 'the love of a good woman', half way thru the latter now. kinda wonder what im going to do when i run out of her books, i always love knowing that theres more of them to read

I know! I've only got Castle Rock left unread, and I'm trying to hold off on that until she gets a new one out, so that I won't be without something to live for.

i just looked on wikipedia + ive got 6 more to go which is a relief

hahaha this was exactly my thinking, but then i got greedy and read the last 3 in recent months ;_;

haha i think in a two month period last summer i read eight of her books i think they sustained me

some of her stories so many of them really are like a long swim in the ocean you come out of them feeling refreshed & born anew

yes.

luckily for me, although i read super fast, i retain close to 0%, so i'm looking forward to rereading her entire back catalogue.

when i read 'runaway' it was summer and i was staying in a cabin on a farm in oregon and the landscape suited the stories really well.

estela do you think a lot of settings/characters have a distinctly new-zealandy feel to them?

*a lot of HER

yes i do, sometimes anyway. not so much with stories set in the past; i think there are religious differences between canadian olden days people and nz olden days people, which has a strong bearing on the characters. her writing is not like new zealand writing though, her extreme talent aside, her work can be dark and menacing but she's not gloomy in the way of nz writing.

just reading 'open secrets' for the first time + man... carried away - thats a story right there

is that the one with "The Albanian Virgin"? Good stuff.

yes it is!

Get your hands on this immediately. It's cheap too!

i would but i've already got most of her other stuff :)

carried away is absolutely devastating. it was the first story i ever read of hers and, as much as i love her, i don't think i've read anything that has topped it.

i know right! i would agree w/ you that its definitely right near the top, amazes me how much she crams into that story

Having read everything else by her, I'm still holding off on Castle Rock. I fear she will die and I'll have nothing left to read of hers.

Reread "Carried Away," inspired by this thread. I didn't sort out the relationships, but I retained the memory of the letters Louisa received, and how the quiet authority of the last paragraph carries as much emotional weight as the conclusion to any novel.

A few of my favorite Munro stories:

Floating Bridge
Miles City, Montana
The Albanian Virgin
Save the Reaper
Turkey Season
Dimenions

'miles city, montana' is so so good. so is 'carried away'.

i think my favorite story of hers is 'nettles' from i think 'hateship...' which is just so perfect and real i can mistake it for my own memories

She had a new one in last week's New Yorker--haven't read it.

It's called "Gravel" and it's average.

Average for Munro (ie, still ace), or average for the rest of us (ie, just average)?

I thought it was better than basically every fiction story they published this year, but I'm a sucker for her stuff. Just bought the selected short stories.

I would never associate Alice Munro with romance or romanticism, but sometimes she so perfectly describes longing:

From carried away: He could no more describe the feeling he got from her than you can describe a smell. It’s like the scorch of electricity. It’s like burnt kernels of wheat. No, it’s like a bitter orange. I give up.

From comfort: Her memory of Ed Shore’s kiss outside the kitchen door did, however, become a treasure. When Ed sang the tenor solos in the Choral Society’s performance of the Messiah every Christmas, that moment would return to her. “Comfort Ye My People” pierced her throat with starry needles. As if everything about her was recognized then, and honored and set alight.

<3

She's got a story in the new Granta.

http://www.themillions.com/2012/07/a-beginners-guide-to-alice-munro.html#comments

ignore that. there are abt a million other websites that will give you a better intro

This woman should have won three Nobles by now.

Read Dolnick's essay about Munro that he published as a short ebook--it's OK, but mainly seems to consist of arguments about why short stories aren't as dumb as you think, which for someone like me who doesn't even think that made the whole enterprise a bit of a waste of time

r.i.p. lit crit

happy birthday, cutey.

https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/431093_10150638970355665_1200768662_n.jpg

Thanks for that pic, Scott--I was reading 'The View from castle Rock' over the weekend, and with its overt autobiographical stuff I was wondering what she looked like when young

It's the only one of hers I hadn't read yet--with her being quite old I 'd been holding off in case she died and there was nothing else new by her to read, but now I see there's a new book scheduled for later this year, so I can relax a bit

this is fun!

http://www.themillions.com/2012/07/a-beginners-guide-to-alice-munro.html

http://m.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hateship-friendship-wiig-steinfeld-pearce-379743

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/523488_10151148349010665_222119545_n.jpg

Pretty excited to read this!

oh word

review by michael robbins, one of america's best-selling poets:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/books/ct-prj-1118-alice-munro-dear-life-20121116,0,1117418.story

TNR's review.

>:O http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n11/christian-lorentzen/poor-rose

haha, this is great

Reading ten of her collections in a row has induced in me not a glow of admiration but a state of mental torpor that spread into the rest of my life. I became sad, like her characters, and like them I got sadder. I grew attuned to the ways life is shabby or grubby, words that come up all the time in her stories, as well as to people’s residential and familial histories, details she never leaves out. How many rooms are in the house, and what sort of furniture and who used to own it and what is everybody wearing? To ask these questions is to live your life like a work of realism.

feel like a lot of specific readings are questionable, and it's, i think, something like: one part stuff actually not-great about alice munro's fictional project to one part author of the article's lack of sympathy with the not-necessarily-in-their-own-terms-objectionable aspects of that project to one part the burnout inevitable if you read ten collections in a row (!) to one part munro's own slight decline over recent years

but still fun to see i guess

i like how mental torpor = being hyper-aware of your surroundings and asking lots of questions. he admits that he feels differently and sees the world differently after reading her work! she has an effect! and yeah you probably WOULD get really bummed out if you read ten collections in a row.

i don't think it would be any great shame for someone to just admit that they got bored of reading about small-town shabbiness in provincial Canada.

i don't think i actually read munro for the realism. i mean it feels real detail-wise, but what the hell do i know about canada in the 50's and 60's? not a whole hell of a lot. and i don't seek out tons of other writers who write about small town canadian life in the early and mid 20th century. that's not what i'm in it for. there are hundreds of decent regional writers. but i don't think people rave about her because of her expert eye for period detail.

that's not the same thing as reading her 'for the realism' tho

i don't even know what i was going on about. just wish that guy would look up the word torpor. as far as realism goes, i actually think part of munro's appeal for me is escapism. reading her is like following someone else's dream. but someone with interesting/entertaining dreams. most dreams are boring. and not worth following. i'm not a fan of dream novels. but i do like people who put me in another place that i would never be without them. and i don't care if that place is real or not. i guess that's the appeal of most writing. for me anyway. i mostly read sci-fi now for that reason.

in any case, a trained eye for detail is very much a part of what makes realism work but that is not what makes her stories work for me. a large part of what does make them work for me is going from point a to point b and being kinda blissfully unaware of how i got there. in the best cases. not everyone bats a thousand. you have to go with the flow of the river though. there is trust involved. if you don't like where she is taking you there are always chances to close the book.

mb this guy was forced to read all ten collections in some kind of clockwork orange style scenario

the stories blur if you read too many of'em at once but that's normal -- it happens every time I read a story collecction

^^^^^^^^

I gobble collections too quickly and I'm left with just an oconnorness or a carverness or a xueness or a barthelmeness or w/e, but how the hell else am I supposed to read?

Bum. She has announced she is retiring from writing.

i think its fine. she's 81. plus, i can imagine she'll write some more stuff anyway. kinda hard to stop if you've been doing it as long as she has.

the last collection seemed to imply this was the case, maybe, a little

but, yeah, i mean, good on her, i think?

I'm all in favour of people quitting while they're ahead--see E M Forster--I just want more good stuff because I'm greedy

Good for her. I've got enough Munro to reread the rest of my life.

not why forster quit iirc

only just saw this! sad news

Great profile in today's NY Times. Amazing that she published her first stories at age 37, in 1968.

Yep. She gives me hope. Prodigies are rare.

Nobel Prize!

WOOOOWWWWW

https://twitter.com/Nobelprize_org/status/388258838744297472

fuck yeah

this news makes me v happy

she deserves it!

Hurrah!

Congratulations to Ms. Munro. Many excellent writers do not get the prize because the selection committee tends to shun controversy, but she is at least as deserving as the winners of the past.

<3 you baby if you're reading this lol xxx

heyyyyy way to go, alice, great work!!

i'm really pleased about this.

yeah this rules

nice little retirement present. beats a gold watch.

i think i'll let myself read a new story of hers to celebrate, i've been hoarding a pile of unread ones like silas marner but without the gloom.

wow cool that THE AMAZING RANDY writes for the onion now

http://www.theonion.com/articles/thunk-u-for-nobbel-prise-me-happie-now,34171/

nobel prizes for algernon.

haha yes i've had the newest book for awhile now and am putting off reading it, since it's probably the last one!

ex boyfriend just said her work was "overrated." How much do I pay bounty hunters?

Tell me one great Munro short story to read. I've never gotten through one.

"Floating Bridge"

Meanwhile, in Norway,
I've heard a buncha people complain about how the Nobel "once again" picked someone "no one has heard of." Wtf.
Quite a few of her books have been Norwegianed, for what it's worth.

Uh, I love "Englished" but "Norwegianed" was a lousy idea.

James Wood: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/10/alice-munro-our-chekhov.html

i've been wondering recently why munro seems so underexposed despite being so beloved. like, is it just that she writes in a relatively unpopular form (the short story)? how much does it have to do w/ her being a woman? or canadian i guess? (or am i just mistaken about her popularity?)

"or am i just mistaken about her popularity?"

this

maybe i need a more literary friend group

she definitely has fans in the u.s. (among literary types who have been reading her in the new yorker for years and her trade paperbacks are fairly ubiquitous and she always gets gushing reviews in newspapers so anyone who buys lit books based on those reviews has to know about her) and canada, but i don't know about elsewhere. my opinion is skewed though cuz i have lived in philly, marthas vineyard, and western mass for decades now and those places are filled with brainiacs who read a ton. but her rave newspaper reviews are nation-wide. i would say "college-educated New Yorker Magazine reader" would seem to be her target audience here BUT i think there is also book club crossover with her and i kinda can't believe Oprah never raved about her but maybe she did and i missed it.

also, yeah, short story collections one notch above new volumes of poetry as far as sales go probably. with some exceptions.

she is listed on oprah mag's fave women writers list:

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Favorite-Women-Writers/3

and she gets reviewed by francine prose in O mag:

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Too-Much-Happiness-by-Alice-Munro-Book-Review

she is way too subtle for an oprah bookclub choice

As much as anything, I became more aware of her as each Best American Short Stories annual, from the late 80s through the 90s, featured one and sometimes two of her stories, without a break in the run.

Would it shock y'all to know that Bret Easton Ellis thinks she's overrated?

http://i39.tinypic.com/ff48q0.png

http://stcommunities.straitstimes.com/show/2013/10/18/ill-health-keeps-canadian-author-alice-munro-nobel-ceremony

"Short story writer Munro, 82, revealed in 2009 that she had undergone coronary bypass surgery and had had cancer treatment."

http://25.media.tumblr.com/aa3ee53eb18c9323f19043a1b81aab70/tumblr_mutvbot7CZ1qb4dbmo1_500.jpg

some of her stories so many of them really are like a long swim in the ocean you come out of them feeling refreshed & born anew

― polymath & psychics club (Lamp),

otm. I had a similar response reading the late story "Fiction" in one sitting this morning. Wow. She has a talent for drawing circles around circles, and when I'm afraid she's spinning away from the center she pulls the circles together and tight.

yeah maybe it was on this board where someone described her stories as kind of starting in the middle and then expanding outward like tree rings

the retail person in me wants to know more about alice in her bookstore days.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXU1priUUAA3wHj?format=jpg

my eyes are terrible. i see james joyce.

https://shortstorymagictricks.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/munro-alice-1965.jpg

i like the peek at her shelf. i feel like i'm spying.

i didn't even see that she had died! well, i'll be reading her for as long as i live. don't know if there is more that i can say. i used to say she was my favorite living writer. now i don't know what to say! she lived long. she wrote good.

Just reread “Family Furnishings”. Not much happens. Everything happens. A genius.

"My stepfather sexually abused me when I was a child. My mother, Alice Munro, chose to stay with him"

https://archive.is/bYm7R

jeeeeeesus

Ugh. Munro has a story sequence in Runaway about a woman whose child abandons her.

She said that she had been “told too late,” she loved him too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children, and make up for the failings of men. She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.

fuck that is awful

the commonness of that dynamic doesn't diminish its horribleness. obvious who the real predator is but in these situations a victim who sides with the predator turns into just as much of one themselves. this sort of thing is close to my own family dynamic so unfortunately i won't be able to revisit munro's work. to hear that her daughter eventually was able to reconnect with her siblings, who reached out to her and confirmed her experience, fills me with great satisfaction.

as far as awareness about abuse goes, it does seem to be growing, and i think it's more possible than it used to be to combat it.

but in these situations a victim who sides with the predator turns into just as much of one themselves.

i should be more clear here, i'm referring specifically to alice munro in the role of an adult co-conspirator.

absolutely heartbreaking, she was failed by so many adults.

Not just Alice Munro, but also her father and stepmother who kept sending her back to the house every summer despite being told about what happened.

In the two directly autobiographical stories in "Hateship...", Munro writes about her tendency to bracket off and ignore other people's suffering -- so yeah, that tracks. Awful.

This is also the story of my grandmother. I told my wife about it and she quickly named around five other ppl in our lives who have been through this

Not having a single trusted adult to protect you - a truly horrific experience for a kid, with a lifelong impact. Idk if I can reread her work when I know this about her, and she’s one of my favorites. But this taints her work, for me.

feel exactly the same.

There was something particularly heartbreaking seeing an obviously intelligent person use the language of liberation to excuse her own callousness. I know this situation is common and eternal but "Expecting me to put my child ahead of myself is patriarchal thinking" is such a boomer flaw.

The daughter has written about this in the past. It's so horrible that Munro's reaction was to treat her daughter like "the other woman" in an affair. The daughter felt like Munro was not getting it and described the abuse in detail to her, and a few days later Munro told her, "I've decided to forgive you for what you said to me."

ouch. i was sad that nobody came to this thread when she died. so wasn't expecting this kind of revive. sad. life if sad for so many. i can totally see one of her characters not leaving someone because of something like this. she was enough of a cipher to me that i just saw her as the omnipresent creator in her stories. not someone i tried to match with her work. though i knew there were close similarities. "this person should run away" is something you could say when reading a lot of her stories. ugh. i don't even know what to say.

I knew nothing about her other than the late starts and periods of isolation.

The daughter has written about this in the past. It's so horrible that Munro's reaction was to treat her daughter like "the other woman" in an affair. The daughter felt like Munro was not getting it and described the abuse in detail to her, and a few days later Munro told her, "I've decided to forgive you for what you said to me."

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes), Monday, July 8, 2024 3:46 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah this sort of thing is like... how abuse works. kind of a textbook case. i think alice herself was probably abused. that's how you get into these kinds of relationships to begin with. i mean not necessarily but i think that's often the case.

i think this particular piece, written by her daughter, is really powerful because of how it ends.

It seemed as if no one believed the truth should ever be told, that it never would be told, certainly not on a scale that matched the lie.
Until now.

there's this sense of battling one of the greatest storytellers and letting truth resound. lion roar stuff. i'm so proud of her.

ending the cycle is one of the noblest things a person can do

Recognizing it is a cycle is the first, hardest step.

the siblings seeking to understand what happened & get help to do that was such a moving coda too

yup

yeah, so many times that person just has to lose everyone, i'm proud of her siblings for coming around. that's three more people trying to end the cycle.

and it speaks to the power of the idea that you are not your parents. showing up for each other, or even the act of TRYING to is such a meaningful act of love but it takes a lot of courage

nine years old, wtf. all that "homewrecker" stuff is vile at any age, but at primary school age?!

The lineup of supposedly smart men who misunderstood Lolita is gross too: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/article-andrea-robin-skinner-reminds-us-that-monsters-lurk-within-classic/

I'm finding it darkly funny that of all the problematic/"red flag" 20th century authors regularly lambasted on social media, turns out Alice did something arguably more fucked up than any of them.

Glad Norm McDonald isn't around to see this

Read this: https://www.thecut.com/article/alice-munro-daughter-sexual-abuse-family-secrets.html

Really good piece.

Then there is a story I immediately thought of when the news broke yesterday: “Vandals,” published in The New Yorker in 1993, shortly after Andrea sent a letter to her mother outlining what had happened to her and shortly after Alice left the stepfather, then returned, and clearly hoped in a delusional way that this would all blow over.

In the story, a woman named Bea asks a much younger woman named Liza to check on her house while Bea is at the hospital with her husband. Liza goes to the house and trashes it, and in the context of the story, this at first seems so random that it catches you off guard. Then you come to understand that Liza was abused by Bea’s husband in childhood and that when she looks at the house and the yard, she sees “a bruise on the ground, a tickling and shame in the grass.”

Bea knows about the bruise. That much the story does make clear. “Bea could spread safety if she wanted,” Alice wrote. But to do so, she would need “to turn herself into a different sort of woman, a hard-and-fast, draw-the-line sort, clean-sweeping, energetic, and intolerant.” This, Bea is not able to do. This, Alice was not able to do.

I had never read this story. Somewhat curious now, perhaps for the wrong reasons.

A great story. Munro peaked in the '90s.

Right when she found out about this

this story from the Runaway collection might need a second look:

"Silence" – Juliet hopes for news from her adult estranged daughter Penelope.

yep, I mentioned it Sunday. Chilling.

is there a *least likely cancellation* thread? not saying that people are saying don't read her anymore but its so easy for people to just...not read someone anymore if they read someone negative about them. for some reason this is reminding me of the buffy sainte-marie thing. there were also old letters in that story. there have to be old letters if its an alice munro scandal.
that Cut thing is good at explaining why these things are so hard to grapple with. there is so much people don't know about families. and people will defend horrible people forever. you think you can't understand why but its really easy for people to do. even if it means losing a daughter. it happens more than you would think!

I was trying to articulate my feelings on this to my husband last night: I generally don’t really believe in the separation of the art and artist anyway, but when the “wrong” they’ve committed is so entwined with the type/subject of work they’ve done, it’s impossible for me to separate the two.

AM’s stories are these really insightful glimpses into the lives of ordinary women, and I cannot reconcile a woman who writes like that with a woman who would speak to and treat her female child in the way she did. So now I don’t trust her writing or how her writing made me feel, or what I interpreted from it. I can’t imagine rereading any of her stories without this knowledge just constantly on the edge of my thoughts.

Not sure I’ve explained this very well.

It makes sense that one's reactions to revelations about an author's life might be more "finely tuned", just because readers receive much more specific thoughts, ideas and impressions from words than if the writer were, for instance, an abstract painter.

I think one thing that's really difficult to reconcile is how sometimes artists can be very good particularly on the topics their crimes relate to...so the art ends up feeling like a confession?

or maybe like a world they've created in dialogue with a dark path they're on. in any case my feelings about rereading any munro echo just1n3's.

it's really a bit creepy. i don't doubt she was some kind of victim too, this stepfather sounds like a manipulative, narcissistic, sociopathic nightmare out of a horror movie. but at a certain point, you cross over from being manipulated and over into being a manipulator yourself. and in this case arguably an unreliable narrator not just of your own life, but your own child's.

I can't get over this guy writing all these literary-sounding letters about how a 9 year old seduced him.

and comparing himself to humbert humbert. i hadn't realized how widespread the misreading of that book is. it is obvious that humbert is a fucking delusional psychopath who is incapable of understanding other people outside of the role they play in the narcissistic drama in his head.

that is like the source of the book's humor. it's the same thing with pale fire.

people who have no excuse always look pitiful when they flail around trying to find one. its pathetic. (talking about the stepfather...)

And we can stay rooted in the world of Nabokov's novels and trust the author because we don't have creepy true stories about him to apply to the text.

Not sure I’ve explained this very well.

― just1n3, Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Excellent post.

Unlike, say, Woody Allen, whose work shriveled as he kept going, Munro's got richer, vaster, stranger; she didn't need to write novels when she was writing stories with the complexity of Faulkner (and Ontario is her Yoknapatawpha). Now that we know what she allowed to happen to her daughter and her reluctance to stand up for her, it seems to me like she drew on some dark, demonic power to write so well about damaged lives and the people doing the damaging. .

I can't imagine not rereading Munro without having her sins foregrounded, but I can't imagine myself not reading her either. Beyond the sentimental reason that she's brought me much pleasure she's also meant too much to me as an influence and model (Munro being an absolute blank as a public figure helps).

I begrudge no one who thinks, "eh, fuck her." And I can imagine a point as I get older when those sins smother my pleasure too.

i haven't read much of her. what is your favorite of her stories?

Hard to say. "Miles City, Montana." "Floating Bridge." "Runaway." "Save the Reaper!" "Meneseteung."

yeah, i'm with alfred. i have loved her writing so much and she has inspired me so much. all positive things. she has put joy and craft and a love for writing - and people! - out into the world for millions of people and that has to mean something. i do feel terrible for her daughter and her family. i certainly know the devastation and trauma that that kind of thing can inflict upon people. i have dealt with it in my own life as many here probably have as well.
its a personal choice when these things happen. i don't want to listen to buffy sainte-marie. i don't watch woody allen movies anymore. but i still love hitchcock. i can still sing along to michael jackson on the radio. i dunno. we all have lines.

Herman Melville was terrible to his family

well, that's the thing. a hundred years from now and this family stuff will not be remembered by many but the stories might endure. you never can tell. she might not be the kind of thing people want to read 100 years from now. she didn't write enough about living underground and hiding from the sun.

I absolutely love Munro, and part of me is thinking "thank God I can take her off my list now, there was so much left to read on it, and now I don't have to bother." Oddly enough I just read the "Hateship..." collection this month and I'm selfishly glad I got to finish and enjoy it before this awful story broke.

I guess my "personal choices", as Scott puts it, about what artists I want to keep in my life, are more about my laziness than my morality. I don't watch Woody Allen or Louis CK anymore, because a lot of their work feels like a fucking chore, whereas I feel like nothing could be easier or more pleasurable than slipping into "Rear Window" or "I Just Can't Help It" for the twentieth time. That said - I still don't want to listen to "Ignition" again.

As for me, I had yet to read Munro and ordered "Hateship..." two days before this story broke out. I will read it and some connections will be mortifying, but that's how it is. It's not in my control what people do and when I will hear about it. I also believe great works can outlast the rest - there are many examples, and we typically do not wait 100 years, we often do not wait at all. Now that she died, there is no one to confront, banish, or hold accountable. In the end, I can reconcile feeling sympathy for the daughter, incomprehension at AM's personal choices, and reading her works... at least with the knowledge. Art is rarely pure, artists are not paragons of virtue, art is often an expiation... and that is also why we read.

I'm sure there's a lot more to come out of this story but it confuses me that the impulse on hearing about it is to prevaricate or distance oneself as a reader/consumer. Like that's the important thing to get straight.

I am sympathetic to this but we are only connected to these individuals as readers and what is there to get straight aside from feeling horrified for the victim?

I'm conscious of sounding hectoring which I don't mean to and people are just spitballing on a web forum. I'm in a different position since the art doesn't mean much to me in this instance but either way 'my relationship to the art' feels like an ugly framing device. For me, when it's this raw, I have a sense of wanting to wait - to give the emotional response a chance to settle.

But, as you say, sympathy aside, perhaps that's all we really have to offer.

yeah man idk, the more i grow as an individual the less i care about Art as some kind of daddy and the more i care about people who overcome trauma. obviously not everyone has to feel that way but in these kinds of conversations with these kinds of artists it always feels like there are a handful of (mostly men tbqf) who are on the side of the metrics and the universal standard of Art and while the other pov is represented it's kind of relegated to something minor. i want to advocate for it as the major thing. art is always with us, we will always have art we feel is great and ineffable and all that, but abuse and such, that's worth fighting for or worth drawing a line in the sand for, because abuse is bad for people, canceling alice munro is not. not sure how that sounds and it's not directed at anyone specifically itt, it's just how i feel.

i do think this comes down to personal exerience, essentially - either you can read her now or you can't, and i think that depends on your own background, your own trauma or lack of it. but i also feel like every time this happens it's really important for people to understand how this kind of thing affects people, to go a little further with the empathy.

for me there are artists who are or were obviously big ol jerks and I can still listen to them, but once they cross the line into something truly darker, it's really hard for me to ever want to see their books on my shelf, or their music in my collection ever again. I'm not sure where the line is exactly, it kind of differs depending on the situation. I know it when I see it.

it's okay not to know the line too! Nor do you have to defend yourself when you see that line comes imo.

For me for example, can I still listen to Grimes? Yes, and pretty frequently. Can I listen to Roisin Murphy? I don't know that I've done so since she revealed herself for what she was. And I listened to Roisin Machine as much as any album in that year or so after it came out.

roisin murphy has been an interesting example for me. being a terf is a kind of abuse i think. at first it was like, oh well this opinion is common, i don't want to stop listening to her. but the more i thought about it, where someone has to be to be like that in public, the more it illuminated about where she's coming from and how shallow she is. and being here, on this message board, with trans people i know and care about, helped bring me around to that too.

there are a lot of women writers writing about young women and girls with a darker or less foreclosed perspective, some of them "high-quality" literary fiction and some of them not. i'd rather read a cute ya author who i know isn't out there tossing their child into a pit, you know?

xp lol

🤜🏻💥🤛🏻

Yeah I know by that same rationale why would I want to listen to some narcissistic user, someone who decided she would enjoy the attention and adoration of the scene that she secretly bore some measure of disgust for, why would I listen to her when I got to listen to Kylie Minogue? Or Fever Ray?

*when I could listen to

haha absolutely

For me, it comes down to if I can enjoy the artwork without the Bad Things the artist has done intruding into my brain.

I know Marvin Gaye was a shit, but I can listen to him without thinking about it for whatever reason.

I can't listen to any Michael Jackson, because I start thinking about abused kids. I can't listen to the Jackson 5, because I think about the little kid singing who would grow up and abuse kids.

If the person is an active, living artist, I don't want my money going to them if they are an abuser.

I had never heard of Alice Munro before this. I love a good short story so I'm tempted based on what was said about her earlier in this thread. And she's dead, so it's not like she's benefiting off of me reading her works. But it sounds like the abuse echoes in the content of her stories, so I probably won't bother.

i always wonder how much i should even know about someone. before the internet i didn't really read much about artists and their lives. i mean, i did, but i don't think i ever learned too much that was scandalous. i read hollywood babylon. but for the most part i didn't seek out juicy tidbits. didn't read a lot of biographies. i liked the mystery of artists. i was always very uncomfortable meeting my heroes.

I know Marvin Gaye was a shit, but I can listen to him without thinking about it for whatever reason.

when i listen to marvin gaye i *do* think about how his entire life was fucked and doomed and how much he inflicted that on others... doesn't interfere with how much i love the music for whatever reason

i tried relistening to early red house painters a few months ago because it was my birthday and that stuff is the core, the heart music to me, but the experience was mostly miserable (how many of those songs are about abusive relationships???). i put on the golden age by american music club after and it was like breathing air again

Idk for me it’s like, art isn’t something that springs out of nowhere, with the person producing a mere conduit. The art is the person. If you don’t know anything about that person, the art will give you some kind of story about them. But once you know some truths about that person, well then it’s not just the art giving you their story, but now their story is influencing how you see their art.

I’m not good at talking about this stuff, sorry. Props to map for being so articulate.

so many great artists seem to be psycopaths lmao, better imho to have other heroes xp

i think your posts about this have really clarified how this stuff affects me, just1n3, as i really suck at talking about it

haha thx justine! hi ivy!

i think i get most depressed when i realize the art only exists so the artist could have access to more people to abuse. (obv we are talking way beyond alice munro now)

There's part of me that wants to spend more time with their work, seeing what made their life not completely wasted or toxic. It's a more magnified version of, say, knowing a pastry chef who's an asshole (I've known a few!) but appreciating what they make because it's their most generous, least fucked-up part.

People who take their own lives...that's where I land closer to what a lot of you are describing here with Munro. It takes a lot for me not be distracted by that, or to see the work as a reflection of that dark impulse.

that's an interesting pov.

Idk for me it’s like, art isn’t something that springs out of nowhere, with the person producing a mere conduit. The art is the person.

You're not having any trouble explaining yourself pithily.

For me I guess when that happens, I see the art as an honest journal of their own life, and it's one that I have to look at with some measure of respect for what they went through. When you have musicians for example who tell stories full of empathy or longing, and meanwhile they're sliding into the DMS of underage fans or something, it just feels like sensitive guy bait meant to lure people in.

So much male '70s soft rock codes in that fashion.

i learned something about an artist whose most famous work was not only profoundly influential for me aesthetically, thematically, etc. but which was likely instrumental in me figuring out i was a trans lesbian, a work that if i ever actually start writing my n*vel it will inevitably be compared to, and what i learned about him suggested that he had not actually internalized the themes of his own work, which is just..... *siiiiiigh*. but it also makes me think about how i expect to hear something unsettling about ***** ***** one day, despite the fact that his best work prioritizes female subjectivity even as its being undermined and abused and destroyed by men, and i think about how artists are often working through nigh-unconscious guilts and regrets in their work, and the art does not, cannot make up for the harm they caused others, but that it doesn't exactly nullify the usefulness of the art and the degree to which it helped me realize things about myself. idk, i think i can read alice munro in the future under these conditions but it's always fraught, unknowable until i get there

Or I don't know things start to come off as justifications for the harm done to other people. And yeah they code as the sort of wistful explanations of the complexities of being a man, and yet why do such complexities lead to them wanting to have a specific, simpleminded pattern of abuse they return to over and over again. Obviously that's just the most common one, there are other forms of abuse or abhorrent views from all genders. Xxp

Xps thanks, I really appreciate that bc ilxors are generally highly articulate and I get self conscious about being much less able to say what I want to say.

I’m a notorious grudge-holder so it’s pvmic for me to renounce my admiration of an artist once I find out they’ve really hurt someone/s. But it’s not the kind of standard I think everyone should have. And if you’ve benefited from the influence of an artist’s work, the way ivy describes, then i especially understand that and respect it.

I was a total die-hard for the Pumpkins until I found out about Billy corgan’s association with alex jones. I happily ignored all the goofy-ass pretentious shit he said before that. Now I just can’t take him seriously. But I still regularly listen to those pre-2000 albums because that music was a gateway for me, and got me through my awful teenage years.

my w1fe told me several years ago that she noticed one of her favorite indie musicians was following all sorts of MAGA accounts, Candace Owens and that type of person, she saw her commenting with "vomit" emojis on some BLM content, etc. she told me this as this artist's most recent, long awaited second album was in the mail. i quietly returned it.

The 500 songs podcast, while awesome, is very dispiriting when so many of those people were awful.

At least we’ll always have Fats Domino and Otis Redding, certified good guys.

i think a lot of successful fiction writers get really good at shutting out the real world/people/irl emotions in order to live in the world they are creating on the page. which is why so many of them have so many wifes/husbands/girlfriends/boyfriends. people get tired of being shut out.
i can remember even my part-time writing used to bum maria out pretty bad because i would shut myself off so completely. i couldn't go back and forth from real world to writing world. i had to stay in the zone. i can only imagine what it would have been like if i was a full-timer.
i also think this can lead to writers getting good at just shutting things out in their real lives that is uncomfortable or hard. or maybe that's just people in general. using their work to avoid things.

so, yes, what i'm saying is that being a full-time writer can make you more sociopathic. haha. i mean its kinda true. i do remember (and i miss) that feeling of writing something long and being really into it and nothing else mattered to me. the world didn't matter. people didn't matter. i liked that feeling!

would anyone prefer to have not learned of this? or is it important to know (even though she’s dead)?

(nb i’m not at all suggesting that the victims should have kept quiet or anything!)

lurking - just wanted to say thx for this discussion it is v helpful to read. between this and the Gaiman stuff it all has really put me into a bad place

I think it's hugely important to know, first because it was important for the daughter to tell, but also because it's impossible to ignore such an event if you want to analyse someone's work.

Otherwise, I think the point of experience is true but it can go different ways. I have heard stories of abuse from people close to me that happened fairly recently, that are close at hand. And always with some people knowing and shutting up. Canada 1976 is pretty far in comparison, even if the letter is already much closer. There is always outrage when you read such, but it is somewhat detached, more part of some great misery.

Even if it feels wrong to compare or order suffering obviously

A complex essay from Brandon Taylor:

What I love about her stories is that they come with an aftermath. They dare to offer the reader a glimpse into that rarely seen world to come. When the choice has been made and one has to get on with it. I was told too late. I loved him too much. Is that not the most Alice Munro thing you have ever read?

Furthermore, it’s a kind of thinking I was raised among. It’s how I got through much of the abuse and trauma of my own life. Well, that’s that. Anyway. Not a shrug. But a setting the shoulder against the stone and pushing onward. It is a kind of thinking common to the rural poor and the working poor, among whom and by whom I was raised. I have struggled for a long time in trying to explain it. It is a world without history. Not a world without a past. But a world without a history, which is a story we tell ourselves about the past. Among my people, the rural and working poor, to make a history out of the past is taboo. To speak of a thing done is to make too much of it. To be fishing for sympathy, and for what, when there’s nothing to be done about it anyway.

makes her stories sound less appealing than i remember

These abuse situations, where a parent fails to protect their child, can often have nuance that at least leads to some sympathy for the parent’s position.

But Munro straight up treated the situation like she’d been cheated on. And tbh this story has some parallels to my relationship with my mother so that’s probably why I have a pretty black and white reaction to it. My own mother *accused me* - not gently inquired with concern - of having an affair with my stepdad when I was 16 (fyi there was nothing like that happening) and it permanently damaged not just my relationship with her but also my stepdad.

wow complex is right. but useful too? thx for sharing, really intense food for thought

she did leave at first. alice munro. after her daughter told her what had happened. but then went back to him. i don't know how long she left for.

gotta figure she was the victim of some kind of gaslighting and abuse as well, it makes sense bc you get the sense that this guy was a smooth-talker who intellectualized his toxicity, made it poetic, acknowledged his flaws and his imperfections, tied everything up in a nice little bow, and would love to get into just how unfair it was to hold him to impossible standards, how in being a fallible man prone to what all men are prone to, he was taken advantage of by a duplicitous female. her returning to him is something you see a lot of victims do, people who have been tied up in horrible relationships for so long, justifying not just what's done to them but done to others. not that it excuses what she did to her own daughter whatsoever, plenty of people out there would have fled the situation, or killed the fucking guy.

yeah i suspect a.m. was damaged by abuse earlier in life too. people who have been abused tend to stick with abusers later on. the thing about accusing a 12-year-old of being a homewrecker and a sexual threat, that kind of damage, you only do that if it was done to you once upon a time and you haven't dealt with it afaict. my experience is similar to justine's in that my mother was the one who was treated like that, and she was sexually abused pretty heavily, by her father. she didn't reckon with it, she was in great pain, but ultimate she chose the side of her abuser and was very emotionally abusive, cruel, and narcissistic to me. thank god she didn't abuse me sexually. the rest of that side of the family, that kind of thing of sexually weaponizing minors in order to justify the abuse of men, that was definitely happening with cousins and so forth. anyway that's where i'm coming from when it comes to this story so it's impossible for me to see straight about it. i have nothing against anyone who continues to read and enjoy a.m., in fact i'm maybe a little jealous haha. but there's always joy williams :). i think she runs an animal sanctuary in wyoming or something, i'm pretty sure she's safe.

basically if you've internalized "i am worthless" it's very easy for you to treat others esp your own children like they are worthless too.

I find Brandon Taylor's supreme confidence in the value of his thoughts, and the lesser value of other people's thoughts, annoying as usual.

A certain "There's no right way to think about this, but my way is the rightest" kind of vibe

“Before Alice Munro's husband sexually abused his stepdaughter he targeted another 9-year-old girl. Munro “suspected that her husband might have raped and murdered [12 yr old] Lynne Harper.” It’s increasingly clear that Alice Monro was a sociopath savant.https://t.co/zdgvt0kS58 pic.twitter.com/G9oqqUvaRn

— Tabatha Southey (@TabathaSouthey) August 3, 2024

what the fuck is a "sociopath savant"?

the fuck even knows

The full story: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/magazine/alice-munro-andrea-skinner-abuse.html

so sad. a very well-written piece! and about as in-depth as i can take. the description of that incest book is so sad and scary and heartbreaking. it makes sense though. it all makes sense. given what i know about silence and suffering alone and families and people and abuse and parents. it all makes sense.
i can't think of too many other writers who have impressed me as much as she has when it comes to just writing about people and what people do and why. i don't know, in a weird way reading her again would be a fascinating experience. she was someone who was born to write. the best of who she was is probably on those pages. in my opinion. also: some people should really never have children. a lot of artists for instance.

(also given what i know about a world ruled by men and how silent this world has made women and children forever and ever...can't leave that part out.)

I missed that NYT Magazine piece, but just read Rachel Aviv's very long New Yorker article:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/alice-munros-passive-voice

some people should really never have children. a lot of artists for instance

otmfm