Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

Are?
“Royal Beatings” proved to be the first story Munro sold to the
New Yorker
and the lead story in Who. “The Moons of Jupiter,” a lyric memorial to Robert Laidlaw, grew directly from Laidlaw’s death. Always an interested observer of his daughter’s success, after his death he became an intimate presence in the fabric of her breakthrough stories of the late 1970s and into the 1980s.
    A little-remarked scene featuring a character based on her father appears in “Miles City, Montana.” Contrasting her background with her husband Andrew’s, the narrator writes that “my home was a turkey farm, where my father lived as a widower, and though it was the same house my mother had lived in, had papered, painted, cleaned, furnished, it showed the effects now of neglect and of some wild sociability.” She also recalls a visit when, home alone with her father justafter her mother died and, newly married, just before she was to join her husband in Vancouver, she and her father used a rowboat to rescue turkeys that had been trapped by rising waters from a sudden rainstorm. “The job was difficult and absurd and very uncomfortable. We were laughing. I was happy to be working with my father. I felt close to all hard, repetitive, appalling work, in which the body is finally worn out, the mind sunk (though sometimes the spirit can stay marvelously light), and I was homesick in advance for this life and this place.” That is, she was there at home knowing she would miss that place and her father in the years to come.
“A Cloudy, Interesting, Problematical Light on the World”: “Royal Beatings,” Virginia Barber, and the
New Yorker
    In late 1984 Munro’s first editor at the
New Yorker
, Charles McGrath, wrote to Barber renewing her first-reading agreement with the magazine. He did so “with particular pleasure after the Munro bonanza we’ve had these last few months. She is simply one of the finest short story writers alive, and it’s a great honor and privilege for us to be able to publish her.” 15 By this time Munro was well established among the
New Yorker’s
“stable” of writers. Between April 1980 and December 1984, she had nine stories accepted by the
New Yorker
. She also had ten others that the editors there considered and rejected – in one case, “Fits,” they saw it three times before finally letting it go. By June 2004 forty-seven Munro stories had first appeared in the
New Yorker
, under four different editors-in-chief – William Shawn, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, and David Remnick – and the numerous changes their goings and comings occasioned. Recalling Munro’s position with the magazine, McGrath has observed that she has been among “the sinews that held the
New Yorker
together” throughout its many changes. “It’s sort of odd and ironic that this Canadian writer would become a
New Yorker
mainstay.”
    The inclination today is to take Munro’s connection to the
New Yorker
as an inevitable component of her career. Perhaps it was. But her inclusion in the magazine’s august stable was the result of severalfactors: the quality of her work, Virginia Barber’s abilities, good timing, and a bit of luck. She had been submitting stories herself to the
New Yorker
since at least the late 1950s – Jim Munro recalls that they were convinced the magazine must have had a special mailing point near the west coast, so quickly did stories come back. Alice herself recalls
New Yorker
rejection slips, sometimes with handwritten comments. And in August 1973 when Kiil was trying to place Munro’s stories from
Dance
and those forthcoming in
Something
, the
New Yorker
was the first magazine he mentioned. Yet Munro had no success there until she placed her work in Virginia “Ginger” Barber’s hands.
    By early October 1976, their agreement confirmed, Barber wrote then that “of course I want to see some stories. Send them as soon as you can. I’ll read them, send them out, and share my thoughts briefly with you. Then you can say whether or not you’d like to hear more than the brief comments. Never mind about the typing.” Moving past business, she continued, “Share or spare the domestic life, as you will. But if you have any whimsically ironic comments, send them – they’re the get-through-the-day boost that I like.” Two weeks later, Barber wrote again. Not yet having any new stories to consider, she worked in a different direction. She was trying to understand the nature and