November 26, 2004
EXCAVATING THE HUMAN SOUL
Canadian writer Alice Munro
Ace reviewer Maria Fish calls Alice Munro's new story collection Runaway 'the synthesizing work of one of literature's keenest investigators into the human soul.' Munro's latest just copped Canada's Giller Prize (2nd award for Munro) which called the stories haunting.
It's been said that Munro's dense stories are richer than most novels. Like Chekhov, she was born for the medium, having published 10 collections of stories & 1 pedestrian novel (Chekhov thought himself a failure because he never wrote a novel).
Born into a farming family in Ontario in 1931, Munro suffuses her tales with a sense of place, like Annie Proulx (altho otherwise the 2 writers couldn't be more different).
Munro on growing up in Huron County: "We lived in this kind of little ghetto where all the bootleggers & prostitutes & hangers-on lived. Those were the people I knew. It was a community of outcasts. I had that feeling about myself. I thought my life was interesting. There was always a great sense of adventure"On writing first thing in the morning: "If I'm going to get anything done that day, I sort of have to do it by 9 o'clock, when the world isn't coming in on me."
On not advising young writers: "It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. If you're going to be a writer you'll probably take a lot of wrong turns & then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better & better just because you want it to be better, & even when you get old & think There must be something else people do you won't quite be able to quit."
On confidence & the lack thereof: "When my first book came out they sent me a half dozen copies. I put them in the closet. I didn't look at them. I didn't tell my husband. I was afraid it was terrible. And one night he was away, & I forced myself to sit down & read it, & I didn't think it was too bad. "
On the poetry of everyday life: "Even totally commonplace things are just sort of endlessly interesting in their physical reality. They seem to mean something way beyond themselves."On timeless fiction: "I don't do a lot of indicators where you can tell what time it is, because that would impinge too much. Somebody writing about now would have to have Iraq in it. They need to have the right music & celebrities & style of clothes. But I always want to see what happens with people underneath; it interests me more."
Online stories: What is Remembered; Boys & Girls (about the modest expectations of girls in Huron County); Chance
Photogallery of Alice Munro's life
Posted by Jeff at November 26, 2004 01:41 PM