Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

contract for
Something
– after obtaining a higher advance than first offered and getting various assurances – with McGraw-Hill Ryerson and had accepted its $5,000 advance on royalties from Canadian sales.
    Returning to London from her Christmas visit to Victoria utterly convinced that she had been justified in leaving Jim, she brought Andrea to live with her. On January 12 she resigned from York and shortly after moved from the apartment she and Jenny had been in to a house at 330 St. George Street across the street from a park. She was elated to have Andrea with her, delighted to have quit her job at York, and was starting in earnest on the work involved in getting
Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You
ready for publication. Just before Christmas Western offered her the writer-in-residence position for 1974–75 and she was again being considered for the same position at New Brunswick. By January 1974 Munro was well settled in London: she was out of her marriage, had two of her daughters with her and, while not satisfied with the public writer role she would continue to have to undertake nor pleased with McGraw-Hill Ryerson as her publisher, she was on her own and beginning to find her way.
“I Know We Can Sell Whatever You Produce”: U.S. Publication and
Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You
    In June 1973 William French, the
Globe and Mail
’s book editor, published a profile called “In Alice Land.” It focuses on a visit French had made to Munro’s Bookstore, transporting the reader to Victoria where
Dance
“is now in paperback, and it’s displayed on the front counter, by the cash register, beside ‘The Happy Hooker’.… Her second book, Lives of Girls and Women, is still available only in hardcover, but it sells steadily.” The piece includes quotations from Jim Munro and recounts Alice’s career and the bookstore’s history. At one point French writes that “for a writer with only two books to her credit, Mrs. Munro has received a remarkable amount of attention and acclaim.” He then ticks off some of the kudos
Lives
has received, anticipates its forthcoming paperback editions in Britain and the United States, and writes that “Dance of the Happy Shades will be published in the United States this fall, and American magazines like McCall’s and Ms. have been publishing her short stories – stories, Jim Munro points out, once rejected by Chatelaine.” Alice is nowhere to be seen. Clearly, she was not there the day French stopped by. Probably she had not been there lately, nor would she be there again any time soon.
    Yet French’s profile offers a snapshot of Munro’s reputation at this key moment in her career. Having watched the encouraging performance of
Lives
in Canada after it had refused concurrent publication, McGraw-Hill New York published its own edition in fall 1972. When it was about to appear,
Publishers Weekly
called
Lives
a “remarkable novel in which peripheral characters and the landscape are made real and wondrously interesting by this gifted writer whose book merits major reviews.” As French notes,
Dance
was recently published in paperback in Canada (in December 1972, so the original Ryerson hardback edition of 2,675 copies lasted over four years) and, after they were able to watch the performance of
Lives
in the United States, McGraw-Hill New York decided to bring the stories out there in 1973. Owing to Kiil’s efforts as her agent,
McCall’s
had already published “Red Dress –1946” and was bringing out “An Ounce of Cure” that fall; it is doubtful that
Chatelaine
ever rejected those stories.
Ms.
, while considering some of Munro’s stories then and later, did not publish anything of Munro’s until 1978. Small barbs aside, Jim’s point that Alice’s work was catching on in the States is clear, and French’s assertion that in Munro Canada had a writer whose work was causing excitement abroad is equally evident. Quite literally, a Canadian small-town girl was suddenly making good. Her own misgivings notwithstanding, Munro as writer was taking off.
    But her career was taking off at a time when, as Munro had realized herself in 1970, publishing in Canada was changing. Here again, the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Writers’ Union of Canada are relevant. In an editorial comment written just after the union’s founding meeting and broadcast on CBC in November 1973, William French noted that “the union adopted a kind of charter