Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

way,” Wilner concluded that in Munro’s work “the princess steps forth epiphanized in the mundane garb of everyday life, no less beautiful for showing her sweat.” Beginning her review by noting the “small but growing cult of admirers” Munro has attracted, Dorothy Rabinowitz in the
Wall Street Journal
focused most sharply on “Simon’s Luck,” “which may well be the finest story in the collection. In that story, Munro shows that she knows ‘that the rest of life is not incidental to, but competitive with, love.’ ” Rose’s actions in “Simon’s Luck,” and in other stories too, demonstrate that. Munro offers “the world as one recognizes it: One in which hope, however absurd and frequently disappointed, is always resurgent. It is, moreover, a world brought to life in thick, sensual detail”:
    The way things look, Mrs. Munro knows, is the way things are; she knows that surfaces speak for reality as much as do the hidden depths of things, and she puts that knowledge to better use than any writer of fiction working today.
    How does one know when one is in the grip of art – of a major talent? One feels it in the assurance, the sensibility behind every line of a work; one knows its presence as much from what is withheld as from what is given, or explained.
    Seeing Rose’s life as “one long attempt to belong, to make connections, to bridge gulfs,” Johanna Higgins in the
Lone Star Book Review
paid especial attention to Flo, Rose’s stepmother, noting that whenever Rose “thinks of Flo or recalls her stories, the language evokes Flo’s country dignity, strong idiom, and enviable certainties.… Such prose reflects Flo’s secure, nailed-down life. Economically and culturally deprived, she nevertheless is not burdened by anxiety or ambiguity. When she finishes a story, there is no more to be said or thought.” As these comments suggest, Higgins was particularly attuned to Munro’s treatment of class, and especially the differences between places like West Hanratty and Hanratty. Other reviewers took up the more evident contrast between Rose and Patrick Blatchford, a department store heir and Rose’s husband for a time, but Higgins sharply analyzed the deeper relation between Rose’s class and her character. 41
    Reading these reviews in their order of appearance, one is struck by their difference in tone and focus from Canadian reviews. While Rabinowitz articulated most clearly the case for Munro as a major talent, the American reviews consistently show that reviewers saw her as “a writer of distinction.” And while they noted Munro’s reputation in Canada, the American (and the next spring, the British) reviewers of
The Beggar Maid
focused on the range of imaginative effects in the text they read. The reviewer in the
Washington Post
called it “a civilized pleasure,”
Nation
saw in it “the best stories of the year,” and the reviewer in the
New York Times
wrote that “there’s hardly a story in this volume that doesn’t glow.”
Ms
. reminded its readers that “Privilege” first appeared in its pages and called the lot “beautifully written stories.” Virtually alone in her slightly negative assessment, Nancy Gail Reed in the
Christian Science Monitor
notes that some of the stories do not stand up well alone and “vast jumps in space and time often leave the reader with a kind of literary jet-lag.” 42
    Writing to Munro in June 1980, Close sent her some late reviews and commented that “although, as always, we would have been happy with more sales, etc., we are all extremely pleased with the reception of
The Beggar Maid
. People still approach me about it, always with great praise.” Knopf had every reason to be pleased since they certainly had accomplished their aim: Munro had been introduced to the American market as “a writer of distinction.” The reviews attested as much. The book was selected as an alternate by the Book-of-the-Month Club in the United States, and the American Library Association chose it as a notable book of the year. But as Close indicated, its sales were disappointing. By March 1981,
The Beggar Maid
had sold just under four thousand copies, earning back about a third of the advance Knopf had paid.
    In London, Allen Lane published its edition of
The Beggar Maid
in the spring of 1980. As in the United States, reviews were mostly direct and positive. Alan Hollinghurst in the
New Statesman
begins with the book’s Governor General’s Award and