Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

You Think You Are?
, for instance, was derived from some Munro attended and one she herself gave during her time in London. Much of Simon’s personal history in “Simon’s Luck,” for instance, came to Munro from a faculty member recounting his own history at one of these parties. Even so, by the time her year was ending Munro had had enough of the academysince she wrote to Metcalf that she was not able to go to a party without being accosted by people who wanted something from her. In March 1975 she wrote to Audrey Thomas that she had not got any work done because the “job is exhausting and unreal. I’ve read so much stuff now I couldn’t tell Rod McKuen from Rilke. A terrible way to make a dollar. But it’s soon over.” She concluded from her year’s return to Western that being a writer-in-residence was not for her.
    Quite apart from the public occasions such a position demanded, Munro was ill suited as a writer-in-residence for a far more fundamental reason: she has never believed in the process of formally teaching so-called creative writing within the academy. More than belief, though, Munro seems unprepared to exercise what critical facility she has on other people’s writing. There is no question but that her eye for what she is herself trying to do in her own work is sharp, acute; but there is also no evidence that she has been willing to apply that sensibility elsewhere. Leo Simpson, another writer who got to know Munro when she was in London and who was writer-in-residence after her, recalls Munro as one who had a clear sense of “what a writer’s duties are,” and that sense was to focus on her own work and make it as good as she possibly could. She would never be enthusiastic about reading student work, he recalls. Both Mary Swan – who continued to meet with Munro when she was at Western – and Stan Dragland – who took sections of his then-unpublished novel
Peckertracks
to her – agree as to Munro’s methods. Swan wrote that “she didn’t dissect things or offer specific advice or suggestions, [but] was always encouraging and supportive as she has continued to be all these years.” Dragland is more analytical, writing that she offered “plenty of encouragement, but no direction.” He notes, “On the wide gamut of possible responses to the writing of others, from dismissal to rave, undiscriminating praise has the advantage of leaving no scars.”
    Dragland, who confesses to being a bit disappointed by Munro’s approach to his work and to that of students, has made some further comments that bear repeating. He remembers once hearing Munro say that “she never showed her writing to anyone before it went to her editor. She was the only writer I knew at the time who was sothoroughly professional in that regard.” As he concludes his reminiscence of Munro at Western during 1974–75, Dragland maintains that “what was far more important about Alice than this cavilling” about her approach to others’ writing “is that she was accessible as writer-in-residence. She was very friendly, highly sociable, anything but distant. She lived in London during her tenure; she was
in
residence and she hosted a variety of people and could talk about anything, even writing if it came to that. Many of Western’s writers-in-residence preferred to commute from Toronto and thus established nothing like Alice’s presence in the community.” 36

    The third notable person who heard Munro’s conversation with Harry Boyle was Gerald Fremlin. Driving between Ottawa and Clinton that afternoon, he did not miss Munro saying “Even since I’ve come back the past year to live here.…” Fremlin was returning to his hometown, Clinton, to help his mother. He did not intend to stay. Having learned that Alice was back in London, where he had first met and liked her, he called her up that fall. They met in London, and Munro took him to the Faculty Club, where they each had three martinis – Munro said they both must have been interested to have had so many drinks. By the middle of November, Munro told Metcalf about Fremlin and was clearly deeply attracted to him, though still a bit wary. She was happy he was not a writer, a bit amazed that he was an academic, and noted that he was Irish. As the winter passed, Munro began to cross-country ski with Fremlin, to be companionable, and she remarked to Metcalf that she was learning all about drumlins and eskers and moraines in what she thought were just