Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

Providence, Simon’s Luck, Spelling, all in
third person
(Rose) to jibe with the first half. They said they could only do it with the same title
(Who Do You Think You Are?)
because the cover is designed and in production. Okay, I said, I’ll re-write
Who Do
You Think?
as a Rose story, and I did, and its good. So here’s the book I asked them to do.
    Munro then listed the contents as subsequently published, with the notation “All Rose and in third person,” and continued, “This is like your book except that it omits
Characters
and adds
Who Do You Think
, and is in 3 rd person.” 33
    Munro’s admission to being in “a frenzied state” was probably written on the same afternoon, a Saturday, she called Gibson at home. He recalls returning from the store, bags in hand, and setting them on the counter to answer the phone. Munro announced herself, asked after him, and inquired as to the progress of
Who Do You Think You Are?
He replied, “It’s at the printer, it’s all done. You and I don’t have to do another thing, we should have finished copies before very long.” He recalls her replying, “ ‘Oh dear, because I’ve been looking at it and I think I want to change’ ” the Janet section. Then Gibson got into a “frenzied state” himself. Before they got off the phone, though, they agreed that on Monday morning he would stop the presses and Munro would come into the office to explain what she had in mind. Gibson recalled that those in charge at Macmillan “were very scared … because this was our main title for fall, and a huge part of our budget was based on that book getting out and selling,” so the prospect of a delay caused by pulling it off the presses was nothing they relished, especially since it was already coming out, in November, dangerously late in the season.
    As she makes clear in her second September 19 letter to Huber, Munro knew just what she was doing and was quite prepared to pay the costs involved. When she got into Toronto on the morning of the eighteenth, she met with Macmillan staff and explained what she wanted to do. The reorganization involved the omission of three stories (“Chaddeleys and Flemings: Connection,” “The Stone in the Field,” and “The Moons of Jupiter”), the revision of “Mischief,” “Providence,” and “Who Do You Think You Are?” into Rose stories, the moving of “Spelling” to a new position, and the addition of the new “Simon’s Luck,” a revised Rose story that was the cause of all the commotion after Munro had heard from Huber. At the meeting on the eighteenthit was decided that Gibson would read the new manuscript that morning and, at two o’clock, he would tell his colleagues “whether or not [he] thought it was worth going through all the trouble and expense.” While he was at work, the people in production would investigate the exact costs. He read the new manuscript – as far as it was, since there was further work to do – and decided that the changes were worth their trouble. So Macmillan set about the work involved to make, in effect, a new book. Reporting on these changes to his colleagues at Macmillan, knowing full well that what they were doing would cause a stir, Gibson wrote that “a very good manuscript” had been made a “very very good” manuscript.
    Continuing her explanation of all this to Huber, Munro wrote:
    As is, the cost of re-setting, with continual overtime to meet the same pub. date, is nearly $2500, which I have to pay. I am naturally unhappy about this but there was no other way I could get them to do it and I knew the book they were going to get out would do me harm. They said it would sell on my name (true) and they would not gain or make back their costs by making it a better book artistically. So if I wanted it, I had to pay. All this had to be decided at once because we had to get the altered mss. to the printers
today
if the schedule even with overtime is going to work. So I didn’t even call Ginger. I felt we had to go ahead. Worked all night and in an hour or two the new one will be ready to go.
    Very tough decision but I am relieved – They have a very handsome cover.
    Munro also mentions to Huber that at one point in the negotiations with Macmillan
    Norton’s doing the same book would virtually be a condition of their giving in to me – even at my expense, but I of course have nothing to do with that. I do like having
Characters
out and
Who Do You Think
in, otherwise I have no