Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

larger circulation than Tamarack Review.” Michael Taylor, in
The Fiddlehead
, uses his review as an occasion to address the growing, progressive wider appeal such magazine publication implies: “What we have in Alice Munro is a fine, serious writer who attracts readers and publishers from a wide spectrum without her having to do anything drastic either toher style or to her seriousness in the process. She neither writes down for
Toronto Life
nor up for
The New Yorker.”
Taylor takes up a key instance, Munro’s use of the phrase “royal beating,” and after quoting it, writes, “This, it seems to me, is Alice Munro writing at her best and most distinctive, seizing upon the buried richness of the literal rendering of a dead metaphor, bringing it to vivid life, modulating beautifully between its incipient imaginative royalty (‘and the blood came leaping out like banners’) and its crassly ordinary immediacy (‘You take that look off your face’).” 38
    Here was an author, reviewers and readers were realizing, whose writing would endure for a long, long time. In
Saturday Night
, Urjo Kareda commented that Munro “has the ability to isolate the one detail that will evoke the rest of the landscape,” and that the collection builds “a rueful understanding of how hard we must struggle, and against what odds, for the little that is actually
possible.”
This is because “Alice Munro has Chekhov’s eye – and there is no higher praise – for the way in which we ourselves provide the blade which slits the thin, protective partition between what we think we would like to be and what in fact we are capable of being.” In conclusion, Kareda wrote, “Alice Munro’s instinct about the way in which we translate ourselves, the routes of fear or vanity or self-deception by which we allow ourselves to be deflected from the road we long ago mapped out, is what gives her writing its urgency and heartbeat. Her stories are the subtlest summonings to reconsider our lives. Their effect reminded me of Gorky’s description of Chekhov’s presence: ‘Everyone unwittingly felt an inner longing to be simpler, more truthful, to be more himself.’ ” In much the same vein, in the
Winnipeg Free Press
David Williamson asked whether Munro was “the best Canadian writer.” “It is difficult to say how very good these stories are without becoming repetitious,” he wrote. “Perhaps I had best put it this way: my last reviewing assignment was
The Stories of John Cheever
. I found that book excellent and said that it confirmed Mr. Cheever’s place as the best American short story writer. Immediately afterward, I have turned to this new group of stories by Alice Munro without feeling any let-down in quality – much of the same shrewdinsight and sheer story-telling ability is there. Her stories are just as good as John Cheever’s.”

    When Gibson wrote to Barber telling her he had sent copies of
Who Do You Think You Are?
to Close and Gottlieb at Knopf, he was already envisioning Munro’s second Governor General’s Award. His hope proved true in March 1979. Margaret Laurence chaired the selection committee. When he wrote congratulating Munro on this award, Robert J. Stuart at Macmillan commented, “You were absolutely right in making the changes you did in your manuscript! Although we had to do some handsprings in order to bring the book out in the fall, the efforts were certainly worth it.” Stuart also noted the reviews
Who
had received, writing, “Few of our books have been praised so highly.”
Who
was selected Book of the Year by the Canadian Booksellers Association, and the Book-of-the-Month Club in Canada selected it as well. Having done so, they bought a thousand copies to distribute to their members at the standard – and very deep – discount customary at the time. Learning of this, Barber questioned Macmillan’s action (“Book-of-the-Month Club isn’t any poor relation”) and, while she was not happy about this since it was an exception to Munro’s contract, she went along with the arrangement. This incident illustrates that Barber was looking out for her author’s financial well-being. Because the U.S. book club did not get equivalent discounts, Macmillan was led to rethink these arrangements in the future.
    In mid-February 1979, Barber told Gibson she was pleased to learn that he was considering work by another of her authors, John Metcalf, and asked for reviews of
Who
(“Knopf wants them;