Dear Life - Dear Alice Munro

Here I go again with another Canadian. Alice Munro, this time.The woman who won the Noble Prize for writing short stories. She earned that prize. 

For those who want to write short stories, she needs to be to understand the form. here's an example:

It still seemed as if we could make our way out of that crowd, that in a minute we would be together. But just as certain that we would carry on in the way we were going. And so we did. No breathless cry, no hand on my shoulder when I reached the sidewalk. Just that flash, that I had seen in an instant, when I reached the sidewalk. Just that flash, when one of his eyes opened wider. It was the left eye, always the left, as I remembered. And it always looked so strange, alert and wondering, as if some whole impossibility had occurred to him,one that almost mad him laugh.

"Amundsen,"; Dear Life (2012; Vintage International, 2013), p 66

Ms. Munro can do what I think of an open ending, a style I'm learning is associated with Anton Chekhov, where the conclusion is left to the reader (read "To Reach Japan" or "Leaving Maverley"),or the James Joyce epiphany (which is how I read "Haven" and "Corrie"), as well as the Edgar Allan Poe punchline "In Sight of the Eye.") Then there are the stories she bends to her own purposes, mixing up her predecessors in her own to her own ends. Sexual misconduct lies behind "Train" (which is the longest story and which would easily be a novel by anyone else and is a wonder of emotional and narrative conciseness that needs to be admired like Niagara or Mount Everest.) There are the people left behind by age and time's changes - "Dolly" or "Pride" or "Corrie."

Only one story disappoint - "Gravel." Could be my being from Indiana taught me about gravel pits.

I see what he meant. It really is the right thing to do. But, in my mind, Caro keeps running at the water and throwing herself in, as if in triumph, and I'm still caught waiting for her to explain to me, waiting for the splash.

p. 109

 

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2/26/20