Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

living in the midst of her material, as she wrote about Janet. She lived there knowing what some people around her – not necessarily people she much worried about – thought of her, and of the level of celebrity she had achieved. This awareness cut, most probably, two ways: it both spurred Munro on, and it served as a caution. Or, put another way, it kept her writing and also kept her grounded. Even before her return to Huron County in 1975 to begin her work on “Who Do You Think You Are?” that local voice may be heard in Dotty’s transformation in “Material”: “Dotty was a lucky person, people who understand and value this act might say (not everybody, of course, does understand and value this act).” Munro knew that some people in Huron County very much valued what she was writing; others did not. On balance, though, back there in Clinton she was much more comfortable among such people and amid its landscapes, which, as she looked on them, still moved and fascinatedher. Besides, as she told the journalist who wrote “Writing’s Something I Did,” “Oh, I’m very stubborn.… We’ve created this nice life for ourselves, and nobody’s going to run me out of town.” 6
    During the early 1980s too, Munro’s correspondence with Metcalf continued, and her letters to him are revelatory. While he kept writing fiction, Metcalf was becoming known for his editorial work. Usually working with others, he continued to edit anthologies of Canadian writing. And more notoriously, Metcalf’s voice was increasingly heard in the land critiquing the practice and accomplishment of Canadian literature generally. Owing to their friendship and her success, Metcalf regularly solicited Munro for stories for his various projects, while they kept each other abreast of their doings. Responding to one of Metcalf’s requests just after her return from another trip to Australia in 1983, this one a vacation, Munro commented that she hoped Metcalf “found out I was in Australia and not just churlishly avoiding requests to do literary chores.” She then offers an explanation that very much contextualizes just why, as her reputation has soared, she has often seemed aloof from her own accomplishment. She wrote that she “would have tried to avoid” Metcalf’s request, and continued:
    Why? It’s not so simple as laziness. I don’t think so. It’s that after every book, after practically every story, I’m “trying to get back to” writing. I always have to get back, I’m never safely “in” it – as I imagine other writers are. I’m always frantically trying to protect myself and draw back and clear my time and husband my energies and half the time that doesn’t work, anyway. That, and having almost
no
intellectual grasp – I hope you believe that, a lot of people think it’s an affectation – well, you can see the problem.
    Australia was really very good. There is
no
Canlit in Australia. Also no Barbara Frum, no Barbara Amiel, etc, etc. What’s going on is – football (footies), cricket, races – the Melbourne Cup is a huge event for which the whole country comes to a halt – and a lot of bashing.
    Munro’s explanation rings utterly true here – there is no affectation involved. She is, and always has been, an intuitive writer. She finds the stories and the forms she seeks by writing, not planning, so the key for her is time left alone to write. Apart from the activities of her daily life with Fremlin in Clinton, everything else is interruption. Thus Barbara Frum and Barbara Amiel – two journalists, the first on television, the second in newspapers and
Maclean’s
– embody those who wish to speak to Munro about her fiction.
    As she ended this letter Munro commented that Metcalf was
“good
in the Globe, and I hope I’d say so even if you weren’t good to me. About stories vs. novel. About the whole Canlit business.” Throughout their friendship and their correspondence, they shared a certain scepticism toward the nationalistic impulse then ongoing in English-Canadian literary circles. Munro’s views were private (though, in truth, not very different from those held by her old friend Robert Weaver). Metcalf’s views, by contrast, were
very
public, thanks to his repeated attacks through various polemic publications, on the quality and mores of writing in English Canada. In her letter, Munro was referring to one of these, “What Happened to CanLit,” just published in the
Globe and Mail
: “Think