Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

thinking about this for some time and have talked with Robert Stewart, Joyce Johnson, Phoebe Larmore, Alma Lee, and I wrote Toivo Kiil, telling him of my admiration of your writing. It’s time I wrote you.” Barber’s letter is itself a tempting text, since she presents herself precisely, carefully, and effectively. The people she names here – two New York editors, Atwood’s agent, a person involved in the Writers’ Union, and Munro’s nominal editor – were all known to Munro. Barber had done her homework. Her primary interest was “good fiction” and she sketched her background in much the same way she had to Kiil although, tellingly, she added, “I’m married (my husband has been an editor for 17 years, so I was around the business before I was in it) and have two children.”
    After a paragraph expressing her admiration for “Material,” Barber describes the resonance of Munro’s work within her own life. Looking back to the time she was studying “fiction about the artist or the making of fiction” in graduate school, Barber offers an image of herself “changing diapers or scraping egg off plates,” wondering
    if Henry James would have changed places with me, allowing me to tell him that it’s “art which
makes
life” while I dined out the 355 evenings a year in his place. So, I had an occasional sense of “It’s not enough” in my own terms. “Material” put the subject in a perspective I hadn’t seen but which has meant a great deal to me – the one word “authority” calls to mind the whole story for me.
    Barber concludes by asking Munro to not “be shy about answering this letter. Let’s begin talking through the mails. And if you have any questions about my agency or background or whatever, ask.” Her final sentences get right to the point: “I’m convinced that there are many people who would value your writing and who don’t know your work – I believe I can help. It would give me much pleasure if you should decide so too.”
    Barber’s approach to Munro was apt. Writing from the centre of American publishing, the market Munro needed to get into (since Kiil’ssuccess at
McCall’s
had shown as much), Barber here is thorough, professional, and knowledgeable. Even more importantly, she is also wry and a bit self-deprecating, revealing herself as a woman with a point of view and sense of humour similar to Munro’s own. With children and years spent scraping egg off plates, Munro could readily relate to Barber’s experiences.
    She responded to this letter quickly. Less than two weeks after her first letter, Barber wrote again, addressing her this time as just Alice and beginning, “I’m sending you noisy greetings and the word that I’ve never trusted rumors anyway.” Munro must have raised a question about agents, or about the way they work, since the balance of this letter specifically explains an agent’s standard charges (10 per cent for domestic sales, 20 per cent for foreign) and, in much greater detail, what an agent does and how she could help an author’s career. Barber itemized such duties as matching manuscripts with publishers, negotiating the contract, looking after production, and helping with publicity. “Very often, problems come up along the way – again, the agent helps resolve them.” The agent also handles subsidiary rights, which are often a difficult matter. In addition, the agent acts as “first reader” for the author should she wish. “I know it’s to your advantage to have an agent,” Barber wrote toward the end of the letter, “but before you accept such an arrangement, you should be convinced. No good agent would want a reluctant client. Why don’t you talk with some of your friends who have agents?” Munro had been doing just that for some time; so it is probable that her response to Barber’s first letter was a request to know more about this agent’s sense of her own methods.
    Characteristically, Munro was slow to respond. Barber recalls that she sent back a very nice letter thanking her but maintained that she did not need an agent. Responding to this, Barber sent Munro a copy of a just-published first novel by one of the authors she represented, Rosellen Brown’s
The Autobiography of My Mother
. Munro read the book and eventually decided that anyone who handled such writing was a person she wanted to work with too. Meanwhile, she had doubtless been doing her own homework on Barber. The two women confirmed their