Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

or literary quarterlies. In February, when the
New Yorker
rejected “Mischief” “very reluctantly,” Barber sent it to Gordon Lish at
Esquire
. Lish wrote a long letter to Evans detailing his response and wondering whether Munro would be willing to address his concerns. She did revise the story, but he did not take it, backing off once he saw “The Beggar Maid” in the June 27 issue of the
New Yorker
. It was bought by
Viva
for its April 1978 issue.
Redbook
took “Providence” for August 1977 and then had “Half a Grapefruit” under consideration. Its fiction editor, Anne Mollegen Smith, wrote Barber asking for revisions. Munro made them, and it was published in May 1978. As such instances suggest, Barber’s agency was energetic and persistent. At one point in summer 1977 she mentions that she has tried “Spelling” at ten magazines, “including
Mother Jones
where the fiction editor is a client of mine.” After the
New Yorker
, “Wild Swans” went to
McCall’s
and
Cosmopolitan
before being bought by
Toronto Life
, which had also taken “Accident.”
Ms
. bought “The Honeyman’s Granddaughter,” also known and published in the
Tamarack Review
as “Privilege.” Of the stories in
Who
, only one had not been previously published in a serial. 20
    When she wrote to Munro reporting on Gordon Lish’s decision to reject the revision of “Mischief” after reading “The Beggar Maid,” which he thought a much better story, Barber wryly observed that we “think the seductiveness of the New Yorker’s printed page has temporarily deranged editors. We find Mischief a very strong story indeed and will continue to knock at every conceivable door.” Barber’s comment here – though admittedly written by an agent who was stillin the process of winning her author’s confidence in her own abilities – captures the key qualities of her stewardship throughout her work with Munro: her reaction is wry, humorous; her determination is dogged; and her faith in the quality of Munro’s writing unwavering. Munro had found an agent who did indeed “wave banners” for her throughout the publishing world.
    The reason for such rising interest throughout literary New York was, as McGrath and Menaker saw, the strong qualities in Munro’s stories that set her work apart. The spirit of the reaction it caused throughout New York during 1977 was captured by Alice Quinn, who in the future became Munro’s third editor at the
New Yorker
. Then an editor at Knopf, Quinn wrote to Barber expressing her pleasure (and Knopf’s implicit interest) in “The Beggar Maid” on its publication in the magazine: “Some stories are wonderful stories and other stories are wonderful and also read like the truth. It certainly is a provocative piece of writing.” There really was a Munro buzz in New York. Despite numerous rejections of her stories, the
New Yorker
was feeling the buzz too. In December 1977 they sent Munro a “first-reading agreement” for 1978. Shortly thereafter, they bought “The Moons of Jupiter,” their third Munro story. Munro has had the same agreement with the magazine ever since. 21
    Sending this agreement to Munro for her signature, Barber wrote that this “is very, very good news … which I decided to keep to myself until I was certain of its reality.” These agreements, which reflected what Barber called the
New Yorker’s
“amusing hauteur,” were offered, in McGrath’s words, “to a very few writers whose work we especially admire, and the general idea is that in return for your giving us a first look at your stories we will pay you a higher rate for those stories we do take.” Under these terms, if a writer sold four stories within a twelvemonth period, she received an additional 20 per cent for all four stories; should she sell six, an additional 15 per cent for all six, or a total 35 per cent bonus. At the time, as McGrath said when he first wrote Munro regarding “Royal Beatings,” the
New Yorker
’s word rate worked out to a payment of between two and three thousand dollars, so the advantage of this arrangement to Munro was clear. By contrast, during 1977Munro received in the range of fifteen hundred dollars from other U.S. magazines buying stories the
New Yorker
had declined.
    Barber is amused because the payment schedule “listed is
less
than you received previously. However, for the next story
The New Yorker
buys, they will pay you
more
than you received previously.” Signing the