Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

“Home.” Having the experiences she described there over the Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, going back to London after spreading hay for the sheep at her home in Wingham, Munro wrote what she thought would be the last sentence in “Home”: “And so I went away and wrote this story.” In October 1973 as she wrote “Home” for John Metcalf as a birthday present, she did not have to go very far away from Wingham in order to write that sentence, only to London. As 1974 opened and passed into 1975, Alice Munro was moving much closer to her home place in Huron County. 25
Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You
, John Metcalf, and a Changed Career
    After Munro came to terms with McGraw-Hill Ryerson during the fall of 1973, Kiil went to London to discuss his plans for the book and pick up the manuscript. The two had a genial lunch and discussion but, when Kiil rose to leave and asked to carry the manuscript away with him, she said no, it was not ready yet, there were more revisions she wanted to do. She brought it into Toronto herself a few weeks later. It was originally a group of ten stories before “Winter Wind,” “The Ottawa Valley,” and a third story were added. The book went into production for spring publication, but all was not smooth sailing. When Munro got the manuscript back from McGraw-Hill Ryerson, she took exception to the editing. For both
Dance
and
Lives
, Audrey Coffin had been her manuscript editor. She had not been intrusive; during the making of each book she let Munro fashion it as she saw fit, supporting and understanding as the process evolved. With
Something
, either Kiil or another editor made syntactical changes that Munro found to be unacceptable; Coffin knew about the changes and fought them before the manuscript went back to Munro, but was overruled.
Lives of Girls and Women
had demonstrated to McGraw-Hill that Munro was a writer on the rise – she was seen as valuable property – so her work was now receiving additional attention. Unwelcome attention. Through retyping parts of the manuscript and by rejecting most of the proposed changes, Munro eventually came to terms with her publisher. Coffin was then nearing retirement age; she was also the only person at McGraw-Hill Ryerson in whom Munro had any real confidence. As a writer who needs and values her editor’s response when she knows and respects that person, Munro was not impressed by this incident. It did nothing for her confidence in McGraw-Hill Ryerson, all the more so since she was not herself confident in the strengths of this collection. 26
    Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: Thirteen Stories
was published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson in May 1974. McGraw-Hill New York brought out its edition in September (they used the Canadian printing with their own title and copyright pages, binding theirs in the UnitedStates). Significantly, there was no British hardcover edition. In Canada, reviews began appearing in late May. They were quite positive overall, although it is possible to see a thread of tentative reservation running through them, reservations over the settings, the age of the characters, or the variety of incident. Robert Fulford, writing in the
Toronto Star
(a review republished in the
Montreal Star
and the
Ottawa Citizen
as well), began, “You can’t ever really understand anyone, you can only nibble at the edges of comprehension. This is a truth Alice Munro has been telling us, in one way or another, for two decades.” Her new collection “justifies once again all the praise that has been showered on her in the last six years. Her beautifully solemn style now seems, if anything, even better; and her perceptions seem, if anything, more acute.” William French in the
Globe and Mail
refers to “a nagging feeling, … despite Mrs. Munro’s undeniable skill, … about her talent. How long could she continue to exploit the same themes? Was she trapped, creatively speaking, in rural Ontario, or could she break out and write about other aspects of Canadian life?” Answering his own questions he notes that while some of the stories derive from “typical Munro territory, … seven have contemporary urban settings, a new landscape for her. And the good news is that she has made the transition successfully; her talent is transportable.” For her part, Munro saw these two reviews and was not convinced by this praise; her misgivings over the book continued.
    Closer to this apprehension, Chaviva Hosek wrote