Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

purchase were sent on to Shawn, who had the final say. According to McGrath, Shawn was a very good reader of fiction, though by no means expert. He had suggestions of his own, but he usually went along with the department’s recommendation. The head of the fiction department – which McGrath was for many years after Angell – managed the paper flow and had a larger vote in the group discussions.
    When Barber invited “Chip” McGrath to lunch at the University Club on Fifth Avenue, he knew she wanted something. At the time, it was unusual for short story writers to have agents and, as McGrath knew, Shawn was leery of agents, preferring to deal with authors directly. Still, as new fiction editors at the
New Yorker
, McGrath and Menaker were eager to find new writers for its pages. As McGrath recalled, “I felt that was my mission in life at that point.” Barber came to lunch with Phyllis Seidel, a friend, and at the end of it she told McGrath that she had “this Canadian writer that I think is great, and gave [him] a bunch of stories in an envelope.” “To be honest,” he recalled, “I had no expectations. I went back and read them and the rest is history.”
    Yet it was not quite that simple. McGrath and Menaker were completely enthusiastic about the four Munro stories they had read. Their older colleagues in the department were also impressed. Weighing onestory against another, it became clear that of the four the group was most interested in “Royal Beatings.” That story incorporates three vignettes from “Places at Home” including this schoolyard rhyme:
    Two Vancouvers fried in snot!
Two pickled arseholes in a knot!
    McGrath recalls that the very things he and Menaker liked about Munro’s writing – such as this rhyme – “made it a slight bit of a hurdle to get it into the magazine.” Part of the problem was the magazine’s “Naughty Words Policy.” It was real enough: William Shawn did insist that coarse language had no place in the
New Yorker
. Reconsidering this in 2003, McGrath felt that it was “roughness” that most bothered Shawn, “the violence, the intensity of emotion, the rawness of the setting and of what people do.” “Shawn had probably never seen [this] before in fiction of this quality and I think he was a little nonplussed.” These same issues, again, were “the very things that recommended the story to those of us who were younger. We thought this was great.”
    By November 17 McGrath had informed Barber that the magazine would buy “Royal Beatings” but he returned the other stories to her. He also told her about the excitement that Munro’s stories had occasioned among its readers at the
New Yorker
, for Barber added a postscript to a letter to Munro: “Chip says, judging by the excitement, that he’s sure you’re going to be one of the New Yorker’s authors – they want to see all your new stories. So far, it’s a rainbow. We shall see if there’s a treasure at its end.” The next day McGrath wrote Munro directly for the first time:
    Your story “Royal Beatings” has occasioned as much excitement around here as any story I can remember. It’s an extraordinary, original piece of writing, and we very much want to publish it. Everyone who has read it has been moved by the story’s intelligence and sensitivity, and has marveled at its emotional range.
    In this, his first letter to Munro as her
New Yorker
editor, McGrath was at pains to explain the magazine’s editorial procedures. “What I propose to do – with your permission, of course – is to undertake some preliminary editing.” This would involve points where alternative expressions might be used and others where additional information would be helpful. “One of the story’s strengths is the way it moves so easily back and forth in time – in fact, it seems to work as memory works – but, even so, I think there are a few places where events tend to run together.” The “only possible difficulty” he foresaw was that “Mr. Shawn, the editor-in-chief – who, by the way, likes ‘Royal Beatings’ a great deal – has questioned, on the ground of ‘earthiness,’ both the paragraph on toilet noises on page 3 and the rhyme about pickled arseholes.” For his part, McGrath did not think “the toilet-noise passage is absolutely essential to the story” but conceded that the “pickled arsehole” rhyme might be. He says he is prepared to argue her case with Shawn, “though I can’t