Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

such drives have long been one of their recreations.
    Munro was not able to settle back into Huron County anonymously nor, given her reputation and the increasing number of requests that reputation brought, was she able to stay in Clinton as much as she would have preferred. By 1977 her career had begun its transformation from famous Canadian writer to much-admired international writer to watch. She accepted occasional invitations to participate in public events of one sort or another, and during 1977 she continued to work on the stories that went into
Who
and some into
The Moons of Jupiter
. At the same time, she was involved in other activities. In the spring Munro served, along with Margaret Laurence and Mordecai Richler, on the committee that selected the 1976 Governor General’s Award for Fiction. The award went to Marian Engel’s
Bear
, a controversial choice and one in which Munro differed from the committee’s other members. Their discussions led to some friction with Laurence, who wanted the decision to be unanimous; as a result, Munro withdrew from the committee for the next year’s award. Other recognitions came her way as well. Her story “Accident,” which was first published in
Toronto Life
, received the National Magazine Gold Medal; she received a Silver Jubilee Medal from the Queen commemorating the anniversary of the coronation; and early in January 1978 it was announced that Munro had won the 1977 Canada-Australia Literary Prize. She was its second winner, the first Canadian. Intended to make writers from one country better known in the other, it involved a tour of Australia that Munro undertook during the spring of 1979. 25
    Munro’s move back to Huron County came with a price. In 1978 she spoke out against attempts to ban three books from the grade thirteen English curriculum in Huron County high schools. They were Laurence’s
The Diviners
, John Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men
, and J.D. Salinger’s
The Catcher in the Rye
. She was publicly outspoken and drew considerable press attention to herself as she helped lead the opposition of the Writers’ Union against this attempt. Speaking in London in late May to the Association of Canadian University Teachers of English, she argued, according to a news report in the
Montreal Star
, that “Canadianwriters must fight a conservative backlash that has forced some books from high school reading lists [as] obscene or pornographic.” At the annual Writers’ Union meeting, she was appointed to its committee charged with fighting “this strong uprising of people who feel there has been too much permissiveness.” Though such advocacy was uncharacteristic, Munro’s belief in the need to undertake this work was deep and unwavering. She knew of it first-hand.
    In early 1976,
Lives of Girls and Women
had been singled out for banning on “moral” grounds by the principal of a Peterborough, Ontario, high school at the same time as
The Diviners
was removed from the Grade 13 curriculum by the Lakefield school board just north of Peterborough. (Laurence lived in Lakefield then.) The two writers were linked by these actions, and they commiserated by mail, Munro addressing Laurence as “F.F.P.,” “that’s
famous
fellow pornographer.” In the same letter Munro added that she had been “getting the blast in Wingham for ages” and, though she was used to it, she regretted it for her father’s and stepmother’s sakes. Hence when
The Diviners
was attacked again in spring 1978, Munro was in no joking mood. Throughout, she was an outspoken defender of the targeted novels and, more particularly, of the integrity of teenagers as thinking persons, and of their right to read what they chose to read, just as she had done herself. She understood that there are always plenty of people made uncomfortable by the literary depiction of life as it is and by the fact that literature both communicates ideas and makes people think.
    Munro’s position in this debate was especially precarious since she was living among the very people who were bent on banning the three books. A motion to that effect had come before the Huron County school board. Votes had been taken in the townships, and Munro’s native Turnberry Township had voted 35–1 in favour of the ban. A public meeting organized by opponents to the ban was held in Clinton on June 13. In support of the local English teachers, the Writers’ Union sent along three representatives, William French reported in