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Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

Titel: Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Robert Thacker
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preference.…Anyway we’ve now got two books that are very close and I am immensely happier though poorer.
    Munro’s final sentence, doubtless quite heartfelt at the time, proved in later years to carry an ironic burden: “Never again will I write two versions of anything.”
    Munro’s estimate on the cost was high. The production person at Macmillan told Gibson the cost would be $2,210, but in the end they needed just 99 reset pages, not the 120 originally estimated, so the cost to Munro was $1,864.08. Macmillan was careful to take this from the second half of Munro’s advance, due on publication, rather than send her a bill. Internally, Gibson pointed out that the three omitted stories, already in type, amounted to a subsidy of Munro’s next book, something they should remember when they contracted for it. Macmillan published
Who Do You Think You Are?
on November 11. And on the Friday of the week that saw all the flurry of changes undertaken, Macmillan sent Munro a contract for Robert Laidlaw’s
The McGregors
for 1979 publication. Macmillan clearly knew what they had in Munro and, despite the hard-edged economic realities of publishing in Canada, acted in ways intended to make her welcome and happy.
    Looking back at this episode, Gibson put a positive spin on that process – “The printers were quite thrilled to be involved. This had never happened, and they realized they were part of literary history. Because they knew this was an important book they did amazing things. In the end we only lost about ten days in the whole process.” A good book, he added, “is going to be around for a long, long time.” 34
    The large wrinkles in this book’s publication history were not yet over. Sometime in late September or early October Huber had left Norton. In October Gibson commented to Barber that he was “sorry to hear about Sherry’s departure, since ‘orphaned’ authors are so vulnerable to being over-looked.” Barber, for her part, was not prepared to have Munro’s book left adrift without an advocating editor at Norton. She approached Robert Gottlieb, the head editor at Alfred A. Knopf, whowas among those in the original bidding. Given a fresh opportunity, he took it. Barber withdrew the book from Norton.
    By early November Barber was sending Munro the Knopf contract and, at the same time, soliciting her comments on Huber’s work with her at Norton, since the editor was then looking for another job. Barber reminded Munro that she had told her Huber had made a “substantial contribution” to the book. As Huber was the person whose reaction to the revised “Simon’s Luck” prompted Munro to pull
Who Do You Think You Are?
from the press and reorganize it, that assessment might qualify as a radical understatement.
    At Knopf, Munro’s new editor was Ann Close. In her first letter to Munro, written two days after
Who Do You Think You Are?
was published, she announced that she herself might be leaving Knopf (“You seem to have run into a batch of peripatetic editors”) and addressed what they would do if she did. Close never did leave Knopf, though. With her arrival, the third member of Munro’s editorial book team was in place. Along with Barber and Gibson, Close has been overseeing the publication of Munro’s books ever since – the ninth such shared volume being
Runaway
. The Knopf contract for the book completed (and that with Norton cancelled), Close set out to see Munro’s first separate book publication in the United States on booksellers’ shelves. Gibson still hoped that Munro’s American publisher would use Macmillan’s version and sent Close and Gottlieb copies of
Who
to that end, offering to assist Knopf should they decide to offset from Macmillan’s book. Close was able to choose between it and the Norton first-person version (she also had Norton’s plans for the cover) and she also had at hand yet another rewrite of “Simon’s Luck.” By early December she and Gottlieb had decided to print for themselves, wanting a larger typeface than Macmillan’s and a more appealing overall design. By mid-January they, with Barber, had decided that
The Beggar Maid
was their preferred title; informing Munro about their thinking, Close wrote that “if you feel strongly (or even mildly) in favor of [the Canadian title], that is what we’ll use.” As she was deciding what to do with Munro, Close watched the book’s progress in Canada by means of the reviews Gibson

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