Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

that Macmillan saw in its favour – a supposed three thousand dollars’ worth of advance that had not yet been earned by the book. When Barber replied, it was clear that she knew her facts, that she knew her (and Munro’s) position in relation to Macmillan on
Who
, and that on the question of its royalties she had been made to do the publisher’s work. “It’s a cruel blow to have no royalties,” she concluded. Gibson replied gratefully and amiably, offering to put some money in Munro’s hands by contracting for the next collection then and there. Passing this on to Munro, Barber wrote that she did not yet want a contract, but that Alice should indicate if she did. She continued, “Do you realize that if all goes well, all of your books will be in print in theU.S. next year. What a splendid endorsement of your work! Cheers to you.” Shortly thereafter she wrote again, noting that on a new royalty statement they had just received from Gage there was a mistake in their favour; she had decided to deposit the small cheque “as payment for work on their royalty statements. Send in the cops.”
    In hiring Barber as her agent, Munro found a person much more than equal to her tasks: as these exchanges (and numerous others in the Alice Munro archives) show, she was professional, knowledgeable, persistent, ethical, and very witty. Barber’s reputation as an agent grew in step with Munro’s as an author, so the two careers proved symbiotic, personally edifying, and utterly complementary. Very early on in the relation Barber began signing her letters “Love, Ginger,” and that emotion is palpable in every letter that has survived. When the Alice Munro Garden was dedicated in Wingham in July 2002 Virginia Barber was among those who were there, and among those who spoke. Taking Munro’s own question, “Who do you think you are?”, as her motif, Barber described her as being among “the talented few [who] stick their heads up above the rules and take a fresh look around.” She also reminded her audience that Munro’s writing had not always been appreciated in Wingham, that “it’s not necessarily comfortable up there, outside the box, being stared at and talked about.… I love the irony, the humor, with which Alice Munro often deals with the conflict.” As one of Munro’s best and most enthusiastic readers, Barber certainly knows this well. 18

    When Gibson wrote to Barber in January 1984 he also offered “congratulations all round for Alice’s
New York Times
best book listing.”
Moons
had been chosen for the paper’s list of the ten best books published in 1983. Its singular success in the United States, complementing as it did Munro’s established reputation in Canada, brought about a marked increase in the number of invitations she received. Munro disregarded university positions; these, however, were increasingly coming from U.S. schools, although Canadian offers still arrived. During the early 1980s she still accepted some reading engagements. She appeared,for example, in Ottawa in February 1983 at a benefit for Interval House, a local community service centre; in March 1984 she read at the David Thompson Centre in Nelson, British Columbia – where she had taught in 1973 – and also at the University of Houston, where Rosellen Brown, another of Barber’s clients, taught; Barber attended. And in September 1984 she participated in a program on censorship at Harbourfront in Toronto called “Freedom to Read.” Offers to contribute specified pieces to various publication projects were continual (for example,
Canadian Literature, Chatelaine, Mosaic, Saturday Night
, a book on hometowns, another on women and sex), as were requests to blurb books by others. Although Munro was by then well known for her avoidance of such literary chores in favour of her own writing (a CBC radio profile broadcast as she set out on her Canadian
Moons
publicity tour in October 1982 made a special point of this), such requests continued. She did support writers she knew and whose work she read and respected. She blurbed books by Clark Blaise, Janette Turner Hospital, and Edna O’Brien (“There are only two or three writers in the world who mean as much to me as Edna O’Brien does”) and was offered others; she wrote recommendations for grant support for Metcalf, Carol Shields, and Leo Simpson, among others. Particularly, she helped emerging Canadian writers whose work she liked: just as she championed Jack Hodgins in