What's so great about Alice Munro?

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.