Chekhov and Alice Munro

By Elizabeth Poliner makes a connection ( and a  better one than  I did) between Anton Chekhov and Alice Munro in her Endings That Change Everything: On Alice Munro’s Literary Innovations.

Some endings of works of fiction provoke the reader to look back and see the story in quite a different light. The effect of these “endings that change everything,” as I’m calling them, is to radically enlarge a given story while at the same time resolving it. The ones I’ve read—and these are rare, to my experience—are master endings, deeply innovative, and, indeed, the two writers I’ll focus on, Anton Chekhov and Alice Munro, are prized for just these qualities: mastery and innovation.

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As with Chekhov’s ending, then, Munro’s enlarges the story while also resolving it at its deepest emotional core. It changes everything; though in this case that everything—at least with regard to Flora—may be a little hard to accept.

And how do we learn to do that, to create that kind of emotional exposure?  Sometimes I fear a lack of emotional understanding in myself.